Needs

I told myself, aged 5 or so: Ah well, everybody else seems so sure of things; I’ll just keep quiet about my needs. Which were – primarily – to be loved.

I remember once being at home, aged slightly older than was thought appropriate (maybe – gasp – 6!). I was tired and I wanted to be carried upstairs to bed. Whether I said ‘carry me, carry me’ or I had it said for me, ‘carry me, carry me’ became a joke at my expense. So I lay there on the floor downstairs, wailing, and everybody else went upstairs and ‘laughed’ about it.

And eventually I stopped crying, picked myself up, went upstairs and to bed.

So, that established a pattern – a pattern of not having emotional needs, which finally reached its conclusion in 2014 in the woods outside Mistley…

I had not less needs but MORE, after the stroke, and that was inadmissible.