Meeting My Own Needs

By the end of the next two weeks, I will have needed to secure some kind of additional employment, since winter is always a slow season for wedding, engagement and family photography. I have a gift-certificate promotion ready to pull out of my sleeve, but it won’t be enough to make January’s rent, let alone provide for Christmas. Tax season and a Valentine’s Day wedding balance will soon follow, but unless I make some other money somehow sooner...

I’ll be fucked.

At least, in one sense of the word. 

Instinct... survival. I’ve come to understand that that’s what this has all been about, all along. A (heterosexual) woman looks to “get a man” to help provide for her and her children - and she uses sex to do it. 

It’s only natural, I especially realize after looking at Maslowe’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Basic survival instinct. 

Unfortunately, and ironically, using sex to survive sure backfired like a motherfucker when I contracted a deadly virus that way.

(And I always thought I just wanted to be “loved”.)

Without being able even to meet my own basic needs, it’s no wonder why I could never meet my “esteem” needs, either, fucking men “for love” when all along I really just wanted them to fucking provide for me. Using people isn’t esteemable at all. And it’s no wonder why all of my intimate relationships have heretofore failed. Always needing something from someone else, “In time, all [her] protectors either flee or die, and [she] is once more left alone and afraid.” (43, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) 

But I can say now that God did for me what I couldn’t do for myself here. The more I rely on God, and do what I think He would have me, the less fear I have. With His help, I know I can provide for myself and my kids, and hey, when that happens, the higher my self-esteem will be.

I might even achieve my “full potential”.

I just hope to live long enough to see that through.

God’s will, not mine, be done.