Hello, I need you

The longing to live in reciprocity

A still from Lars and the Real Girl (MGM)

My favorite scene in one of my favorite movies, Lars and the Real Girl, always brings tears to my eyes. When Lars’ “girlfriend,” a doll he ordered off the internet, is diagnosed sick, a group of neighbor women come over and knit in his living room. When he looks around, unsure of his place, one says, “We came over to sit. That’s what people do when tragedy strikes: they come over and sit.”

I had a rough summer. I didn’t work all season and I wasn’t dating, so my days lacked the scaffolding that workplace purpose and partnered support once provided. In the void they’ve left behind, I have fumbled for routine and floundered between who I thought I knew myself to be and who I feel like I am now. Like a parent watching their child move through puberty, I’m baffled at how temperamental my preferences and needs have become. I don’t always know what I want, and my efforts to stay true to myself have resulted in last minute cancelled plans and discovering that what I used to enjoy is newly unappealing. I think this is growth; I’m building a new version of myself. But my edges feel fuzzy and indistinct some days, dense and unbending the next.

Through it all, I’ve nursed a gnawing, needy ache that feels a lot like loneliness. Instead of feeding it the sugary distractions of swiping on dating apps or finding a crush, I took the season to ask what I’m really hungry for. I don’t just want to not be alone, or simply be soothed by a partner during my hard times. I want the springy chewiness of reciprocity, the filling satisfaction of being needed by friends who are married, retiring, moving, having babies, and knowing it’s alright to need them in return. I am longing for a village.

That scene in Lars and the Real Girl touches me because I yearn for a community where people aren’t afraid to overstep or be burdensome, where I don’t worry about stepping on toes or disrupting the peace at the expense of being useful. Fear of this keeps us small and our circles thin. I want folks knocking on my door, calls that aren’t scheduled in advance, requests to build your kid’s birthday present and pleas to grab a mango for you when I’m at the grocery store.

I know our culture has trained us away from needing each other. We turn to apps to easily find rides to the airport and someone to let out the dog and help hanging photos on the wall, and we keep our phones in our hands to alleviate our loneliness and despair. We see our unhappiness as a problem to be fixed in isolation, avoiding being burdensome to the people who are in our lives while they avoid burdening us in turn. I could write for miles about how this keeps us and the people we love starved for connection while we feed an insatiable capitalist machine.

But when we endure the discomfort of vulnerability and fears of getting in the way, we can re-strengthen our ties to one another. Acts of service and reciprocity weave a net through our relationships, wide enough to hold all the versions of ourselves who emerge and thick enough to catch us if we begin to slip through the cracks.

In lieu of waiting for my friends to ask me for help, I have begun to offer it without giving much room to say no. I invited myself over to help make wedding place cards for one couple and painted the walls of another’s new apartment. I threw a themed party for friends who were moving. When a former coworker said she’s been exhausted learning to feed her newly-diagnosed diabetic toddler, I offered to make her and her husband dinner so they had one less thing to think about for a night. I have allowed my fuzzy edges to tickle the more structured lives of the people I care about, co-creating soft places for all of us to land.

I’ve also been more forthright in asking for what I need. “I’m having a rough day. Can I come over and watch the Olympics on your couch?” “I need another body around to stay productive. Would you work next to me while I apply for jobs?” “I want to spend more time with you. Could we schedule a weekly coffee date to stay caught up?” I’m deeply grateful for those who have offered up seats at their dinner tables and invited me to trivia nights and driven me home from the airport. Community is hard to create in a big city where many of my “local” friends live nearly an hour away, but my hope is that as I normalize imposing on friends nearby, they’ll impose on theirs, weaving a net of reciprocity across the city.

Sick of dawdling in the space between the life I have and the one that I want, of waiting for my purpose to find me, I declared August “Community Month” and filled my calendar: I hosted a craft night for friends I wanted to get to know better, I went to Pickleball and tennis meetups, I joined a waitlist to train as a community emergency responder. I went on a camping trip with friends-of-a-friend. I’m starting a club. I have standing weekly coffee dates, some for co-working and others for socializing. I joined my neighborhood Resident’s Association and have taken on the task of finding a way for neighbors to set up meal trains and ask for help.

With each gathering and new routine on my calendar, I am buttressing my life with community that withstands job changes and parenting and breakups and loss. I am forging my village.

I don’t want to live in a world where we replace each other with apps, withdrawing further into our homes and wondering why we lack the closeness we crave. I want to live in a world where people I know will come and sit in my living room with their knitting and a few plates of food. Where I need you and you need me.

As I bring this new version of myself into being, she is bringing with her the world she wants to exist in. Lend her a hand. She could use some help.

Craft night

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Some villages I’ve seen around the internet lately:

This game night | 🚲The Bike Bus🚲 | Nesting parties | A PhD gift registry