By Maria Padhila
I am catching up on things I couldn’t read or didn’t see through the massive power failure / severe weather clusterfuck that hit the DMV last week.
And yeah, I’m scared, too. I think this is it — the severe and abrupt have stormed on in, and it might be too late to turn it around. There was a time when I found power in storms and reveled in them; this isn’t happening now. I feel apart from these storms. No anger at nature, just the knowledge that it is separate from me, that she is standing away. Well, all that’s for poems, later; words that will sink into the mud at the bottom of a spillway in a matter of decades, if not months or even days.
For some reason, a lot of links, Facebook pleas and random chatter had to do with need. Whether people’s needs were being met. Whether people should have needs at all. Women being “too needy.” The difference between wants and needs.
I tend to go around thinking I need nothing from relationships, which of course is an illusion and wrong. I must need something from somebody. So what is it, and why?
An outside observer would immediately say that I need lots of attention — otherwise, why the two men when others are perfectly content with one partner? But both those who know me and those who look at what tends to happen might wonder if that’s the case. I use another name for all my writing and public appearances; most people in literary, art, burner, whatever communities don’t know who I am and wouldn’t recognize me. I’m a very invisible woman; I don’t even show up in photos most of the time. I’m OK with that, most of the time — it means I can do my own creating and thinking, and it keeps me safe.