Last night I mowed my yard for the first time since I had surgery on my finger back in April. Now lest you think I've been living in a jungle for the last four months, let me assure you that my yard has been quite adequately taken care of by one of my young neighbor boys over the summer. The truth is my finger's been healed enough for several weeks that I could have been mowing the yard myself, but I felt sorry for the kid and knew he could use the money so I just let him keep on mowing. He's been having some serious allergy issues for the last couples of weeks though, so I told him I'd just go ahead and mow this week. Of course, as fate would have it, it's like a gazillion degrees in Kansas City this week, so by the time I was done, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. I was dizzy and queasy so I went straight to the fridge when I came inside, knowing I needed to hydrate and fast. But even though I knew I desperately needed to drink something, even though I was devastatingly thirsty, I stood in front of my open fridge and said to my dogs, "What do I want, dogs? What do I want?" I finally settled on tea, and yep, I absolutely drank it straight from the pitcher ... you bet I did.
That question has been on my mind a lot for the last couple of days ... the "What do I want?" question ... mainly because of a conversation I had with my life-saving head doctor on Saturday. She was telling me that I need to care about myself the way I care about others, that I should stand up for myself and stop letting people treat me poorly, that I need to think about my own happiness for a change.
"No one ever asks me what I want ... no one ever just asks me what I want," I mumbled as gigantic crocodile tears rolled down my cheeks. "I ask them what they want, but no one asks me what I want. They don't ask me what I want on the little things in life, and they don't ask me what I want on the big things either. No one asks me what I want."
The dear head doc didn't miss a beat as she quickly asked, "So what do you want, Terrie?"
"I want to help people ... if I had tons of money, I would want to buy a ranch in Montana or Wyoming and open a retreat center for kids. Kids like me ... like the kid I was ... kids who are terrified of being who they are. It would be a place where kids could come and feel safe and accepted and loved. A place where kids could just be themselves ... where they wouldn't be judged or made to feel less than anyone else or like there's something wrong with them. I want to help people ... that's what I want."
"Well, I'd say that's a pretty wonderful want, Terrie," she said quietly as I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. "But what do you want for you?"
Here's the thing ... it's easy for me to say what I want when it comes to my dream to help people, really super easy. But saying what I want for myself feels selfish to me, wrong somehow ... because down deep inside I don't believe that my desires or opinions or feelings are as significant as the desires and opinions and feelings of others ... because down deep inside I don't believe my wants or needs are as important as the wants and needs of others ... because down deep inside ... way, way, way down deep inside, I struggle every single day with believing I'm worthy enough to ask for or receive any of the things I want.
So ... what do I want? Believe it or not, I probably want the same things you want, friends ... to be happy, to be loved, to be needed, to be appreciated, to be shown kindness and respect, to be heard. I probably want the same things you want, friends ... because for as different as we all are, we are all very much the same in the things that matter most of all.
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