You Are Allowed to Need

Therapy is a gift, a guide, a refuge—but it is not a replacement for love. It is not meant to be the only space where your needs are allowed to exist. You are not a burden for seeking comfort outside a paid hour. You are not exploitative for needing people, for asking to be seen, for craving the warmth of a friend’s presence.

It is a deathwish to pretend you have no needs. To swallow your pain whole, to shrink yourself into something self-sustaining, self-soothing, self-contained. You are not a thing. You are not a machine. You are a person, and people need people. Not because they are weak, but because they are alive. And yet, we have been told—over and over—that our needs should be transactional. That to ask for time, for care, for attention outside of a professional setting is selfish. That love, freely given, is too much to expect. But this is not liberation. This is loneliness dressed up as self-sufficiency.
Stay alive, beloved. And do not resent your alive friends. It is okay if you cannot meet someone’s need right now. It is okay if you choose to step back. Boundaries exist for a reason. But please—do not tell people that their only option is to pay for the privilege of being human.
You deserve to cry in the arms of someone who loves you. You deserve to be held, to be heard, to be cooked for, to be understood. Therapy is a tool, but love is the foundation. And love was never meant to come with a price tag.