I Am Needy By Michelle Lee Aguilar

Carl Wycoff CC



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I Am Needy


It's disappointing.
Seeing who I used to be and feeling like that person wouldn't care to be friends with the person I am now. She wouldn't even recognize this person as identical in a mirror, 
because we're not.

Now I'm more quiet.
Now I barely talk to anyone.
And worst of all:
Now I am needy.

I used to naturally become the center of attention in a room and would orchestrate that spotlight in such a way that would leave people around me charmed and enamored. It felt like a superpower I could wield around like a wand at times, "Now I'm friends with you! And you! And you!"

There were so many days filled with plans, interest and wanting to know what this Me is like in hopes some of my nature would rub off onto them.

Now I lay in bed at 10:41am, staring out at a big window that reveals the backyard. 

I sit in my quiet. No whirlwind of charisma. No sounds of laughter or agreement or awe. Just the distant hum of a lawnmower outside. 

It's a strange thing. When you're doing great and the world is a happy blur, you don't stop to look around and soak in those moments, or maybe I just didn't. 

The love, the care, the feeling of taking up space unapologetically. I remember twirling friends on the dance floor and hiking up Enchantment Rock while talking about the deep theories on life. How people would be so mesmerized by this. "She's surprisingly smart for being so pretty!" 

That gold star stuck for so long, so well onto me, that I almost forgot that the stickiness fades.

These current times, these current years, these current 2,190 days, I soak and I soak and I soak until I'm drowning in my loneliness, going over every little piece as if my fingers could run over it and even feel it. If they could, I imagine it'd be prickly and warm.

Who is this shell of a person now who takes my place in this bed? I used to think all of my performances were validation-seeking and maybe they are. But now I even miss that so much. 

My circle gets tinier and tinier as I spin down the drain. I start to think that people only love you when you're shiny and sparkling and when you become less so, when I become a real human, they all disappear.

"She was so happy, I never expected this" they'll say in the fantasy I overplay in my mind again and again. How I love this fantasy. The one where I'm dead and people react to the news. 

I often daydream of their faces when they look back at how they treated me when I wasn't the sparkling firecracker bouncing its light onto others. When I wasn't making their lives easier; filling their world with confidence.

Only mine now is hard. While they venture out into new experiences, I lay here, looking at the blue peeking between the trees. The neighbor has now decided to use a weed wacker instead.

Would they think about how they should've been there for me? How they should've treated me better? Would they look back at all my kind messages and see how little they gave back? Would they see my attempts at connection that are met with nothing in return? 

It doesn't escape me that this fantasy is one of revenge. Yet the fact that I could never view the outcome because I'd, well, be dead, is part of what leaves it to stay in fantasyland. It makes me wonder though, if I was given a genuine opportunity of a lifetime (ha ha) to be able to see their faces after, would I do it?

I could've been a singer in a band, a well known artist maybe. A fashion designer. A plushie designer. I could've been a journalist. I could've been so many different truths brimming with hopes and dreams. But I lack the prerequisite. I always do.

I always fall short when it comes to becoming something worthy of love. I wish so badly that I could turn back the clock or better yet, be born into a new body with a new family who when I’m growing up, forces me to be who I'm meant to be and refuses to see me believe I'm any less. The family that cares about grades, cares about curfews, the parents who care about where their daughter went when she runs away for days on end.

But in this current life, instead I feel so small. So fragile. So stunted. 

In the fantasy, as I drown, I push further towards the deep end so that I won't wash up to sea ever again. I fight the innate will to live and I win and for once I am free.

These are thoughts my therapist tells me shouldn't stay. But what is there to change them? More time between the same white walls? Hours upon hours spent in silence with no human interaction? It feels almost cruel to take away my sliver of peace. 

Who cares if it's vengeful? I'm not acting on it and even if I did, nobody would even notice me enough to see the signs!

People make it loud and clear that while they speak of positivity, mental health and being a good friend, that they don't in fact like when someone becomes a person who needs them.

So now I'm more quiet.
Now I barely talk to anyone.
And worst of all:
Now I am needy.

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Michelle Lee Aguilar is a writer from San Antonio, Texas. She crafts short non-fiction works and lyric essays exploring themes of deep isolation, mental health and personal growth; building structured philosophies based on her own personal experiences. Rooted in realness, sharp observation and at times, dark humor, her writing uses unconventional formatting to capture the precise shape of internal states. She is currently focused on building her independent voice and sharing authentic, creative narratives.

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