Care That Moves in Both Directions
I am learning to expect care to flow in both directions. I am no longer the one who carries the whole connection.
For a long stretch of years, you may have been the person who held connections together. The one who initiated. The one who remembered the birthdays. The one who reached out first, every time. The one who carried, in the small invisible ways, more than your half of the weight, because if you did not carry it, the connection would quietly stop happening. That carrying became invisible to you. It was simply what relationships felt like.
In healthier connections, you are not the only one carrying. The other person reaches out, too. The other person remembers things about your life. The other person asks how you are and listens to the actual answer. The other person does some of the planning and some of the showing up and some of the small daily work of keeping the connection alive.
This may feel almost strange at first. You may catch yourself doing more than your share out of old habit, then noticing that the other person was already on their way to doing it themselves. You may catch yourself apologizing for needing something, then noticing that the other person was glad to give it. You may catch yourself braced for the conversation to become about them, then noticing that they are still asking about you.
That is the body relearning what a balanced connection feels like. The work, here, is to let yourself receive. To let the other person carry their share without you rushing to take it back. To let yourself need things, sometimes, and let those needs be met without payment plans attached.
A relationship that flows in both directions is the resting place you have not had. Let yourself rest in it. Let yourself be carried, sometimes, by the people who are willing. They are willing because they love you. You are allowed to let love arrive at you, instead of always sending it out.