The Crane Wife

Herself speaks.

Today, I read a piece titled The Crane Wife, by CJ Hauser. You can find it here, in the Paris Review. 

Go ahead and read it. I'll wait.

It is beautifully written. The story the narrator weaves is not of her ex-fiance (who appears to have been, at a minimum, an extraordinarily callous individual) or of her leaving, but rather, of her own self-effacement and self-denial: her need not to need.

Does it speak to you?

This: There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes me hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient.

Or this: Even now I hear the words as shameful: Thirsty. Needy. The worst things a woman can be. Some days I still tell myself to take what is offered, because if it isn’t enough, it is I who wants too much.

Or even this: it’s harder to tell the story of how I convinced myself I didn’t need what was necessary to survive. How I convinced myself it was my lack of needs that made me worthy of love.

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Why do we do this? We try so hard not to need, as if needing is a fault, a failure, a flaw. If we do not receive what we want, we assume that we want too much. We give and give and give. We hope that if we behave just right, if we do all the right things at the right time and in the right way, we will somehow receive what we need in return without asking. Our needs magically met. 

It doesn't work like that, though. 

Perhaps it is time to learn to speak our needs aloud. 

Do we have the bravery for that?

We shall see.