When I was 10, a neighbor knocked on our door. She sat in my mother’s kitchen all polyester grief. She told my mother about a broken down car that was at the shop. A broke down car is and is not a metaphor. She clearly wanted a ride to the market, but was afraid to ask. I watched the way she moved her mouth like a hint. It made me furious. Why didn’t she just come right out and tell my mother directly what she wanted? I left the room disgusted at how a person could be so weak. A half hour later, I smiled a greedy smile at the slope of my neighbor’s back as she walked down the street to her own home. I crept down the stairs and watched my mother quietly humming, washing out the dirty tea cups in the sink. I thought my mother the most beautiful thing.

My mother used to tell a story about my brother and I growing up at Christmas time. She liked to explain how my brother never asked for anything. Brian always believed in working hard for every thing he got. My mother would extol with obvious pride. I do not fault her in her storytelling. It is true. My brother is this very sort of amazing. Always has been. Enter the foil. Apparently, I was the opposite. I would sit with the Christmas catalogue and circle entire pages. I want this, and this, and this. The other children on the block called me Princess. When I hear my mother tell these stories, I marvel at how I could have been that little girl. Sometimes, I miss her.

All grown up, I once followed a homeless man down a street begging for him to get in my car so I could give him a thermos of hot tea and a blueberry muffin. The more he resisted, the more I was desperate to help him. There was something about his stubborn refusal that had me quite convinced that no one in the world could save him but me. Everyone needs. Some of us just need a lot more than others.

I am constantly trying to pin down my own definitions of self, but self is slippery. I grew up manipulated and angry. I grew up with the enormity of love. I spent my teenage years with an indefeasible loneliness and an inability to speak. I am constantly told that as an adult I talk too much. I am a woman surrounded by people. Sometimes all I do is ache to simply be left alone. All definitions are hazy.

Need is this strange thing, isn’t it? Look around and you see it, here, everywhere. Blogging only magnifies it. Sometimes I feel like we are this human circus. The fat lady charging a buck fifty to let the audience marvel in awe and revulsion at our skin. Some of us just smoke and mirrors, bravery like the man who stares down the open mouth of a lion and dares the crush of teeth on the vulnerability of his own head. Only most times the audience is unaware that the ferocious beast has been drugged into submission. Needs get tamed.

I do not know what I need or if I actually need anything at all. I am no longer the little girl who can turn the slick page of a Sears catalogue and have happiness materialize. I’m not a sullen teenager, either. I’ve been thinking a lot about that long ago neighbor. Why was I so angry with her? I think the answer to what I am asking might be found in the washing of dirty dishes and the broken down car that is and is not a metaphor.