freedom

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.” — Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.

I spent many years believing this was the essential definition of freedom. I thought that if I could be free of needs and wants then I could do just about anything. I didn't have to rely on others or worry about how my needs were going to get met, because I didn't and wouldn't have needs. I also lived with expectations of how my life should look but didn't really expect much from others. Afterall, I had been hurt, trust shattered, so why expect that anything different could come from someone? I thought being the most independent person I could be would make me free.
And I was wrong.

Trying to live without needs, without needing love or relationships or nourishment or adequate rest was a factor in my eating disorder. They talk in treatment about feeling "terminally unique" and how we often think that we are so different from everyone else and that we are invincible. I can't even count how many times I said to myself "I don't need that. I'm not like everybody else. I can function just fine without." False. The human body is designed to require nourishment and rest and care to function properly, thrive, and survive. One can only exist for so long denying themselves basic human needs before the body will just give out. And pretending not to need is isolating and lonely and creates a wall that prevents people from really getting close. There is nothing freeing about pretending to be so independent of all needs that a miserable life of subsisting becomes the probable outcome.

Ultimately, living by this definition of freedom got me years of pasty colored hospital walls and uncomfortable beds, cost me my ability to walk by myself or eat without assistance, wasted hours of my life sitting around in circles processing feelings that i didn't even know existed, and spent money my parents had saved for decades. I've lost jobs and friends and roommmates and school and wonderful opportunities all because I thought I could be free of want and need.

I'm learning now that wanting and needing are a natural part of life. It took me a long time to get comfortable with saying "I need." First, I had to get comfortable with the idea of saying it at all. Then, I had to get comfortable with being more assertive. I still have trouble asking for what I need and get timid about it, but I'm doing much, much better. In terms of nourishment, I know that I need food. I know that one cannot live on bread and water alone (or however the saying goes.) It is harder for me to say that I want food, but I am getting better at that as well. Learning to listen to my body and my taste buds have helped me to begin saying "I want" in terms of food. And there isn't as much guilt associated with it, either.
I'm also seeing what freedom in life looks like. It is the ability to laugh until I cry with my friends, crack inside jokes, be flexible enough to change plans if needed and spontaneous enough to make plans if they don't already exist. It means being okay with having a down day or a lazy day or a pepped up day, and that every day does not have to look the same. It involves trial and error, give and take, and a little humor. It is about being okay even if things aren't always okay and trusting that life is exactly as it should be at this moment in time. True freedom acknowledges wants and needs, lets people in, and allows one to fully experience life.
Wanting, needing...so natural, so okay, and so part of the process.

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” -- Charlotte Bronte