Who matters?

It’s fair to call my current thoughts on “mattering” a fixation. I’m a little overwhelmed by the thought that one day the person I matter to most in my world (my mom) will be gone. Typing that is even hard. My mom lost her mom in her 20’s, and I can’t even bear to think what that would have been like. My mom has spent my whole life showing me that I matter to her, in more ways than I could possibly explain to anyone. So although she’s number 1 on my list of knowing who I matter to, I’ve been wondering who might also be on that list, almost thinking I will be needing a reason to live when one day my mom is gone. Who do I matter to enough to want to live?

Shit, that sounds almost suicidal, no… that’s not how I mean it. Life is full of doing things because we need to. If there were nothing needing us to do anything, I have a feeling there would be very little happiness overall, very little fulfillment, and lots of depression. For example: I need to have a house, therefore I need to go to work, doing so because the work needs doing. Ultimately it’s people that need me doing that work, and in that circle of neediness, they are fulfilled, I am fulfilled, and I have my house. Dumb example, but it works.

So in needing to have a reason to live, mattering is at the core for me. The majority of people have children and being a parent automatically means you matter to your child. Everything about their life puts you in a position of mattering. Once I divorced, and not having children, I realized there really weren’t many people I mattered to. It was back then after the divorce that I realized I had so few reasons to eat, to get out of bed, to do anything. The main reason living next to me every day for 12 years was gone, and nobody knew if I got out of bed or ate or lived… except those few that I mattered to.

Mattering and being loved are not the same. Someone can be loved without mattering, but mattering is another level of love. Mattering is where love becomes a knowledge, not just a feeling. Mattering isn’t as ethereal as love. If love were a book, mattering would be having read the book.

Love tends to be reciprocal, mattering is not necessarily so. To matter to someone does not mean they will automatically matter to you, or vice versa. It’s likely when one matters to someone, the someone will matter to the one… but that is conditional upon circumstance, perspective, perception, and a number of things including priorities of any given individual. Mattering is a choice, it creates reaction, it cements action… it’s so many things I struggle to explain because it’s almost impossible to turn love into something non-ethereal. So there, mattering is more solid.

It is here that I am required by my heart to admit I am loved by many people. I wouldn’t want anyone that loves me to think for a second I don’t know it. I do. I’m so incredibly lucky to be loved by some amazing humans.

It’s the lack of knowledge in mattering to some that matter to me that has been making me so analytical as of late. It was also the realization of a friend treating me like gold that I realized it’s impossible for someone who treats me that good, to not matter. It’s a level of communicated importance… that’s what it is! That’s what my mother has done. She has communicated to me in so many ways that I’m gold to her, that I’m important to her, that I MATTER.

Knowing I’m worth mattering doesn’t make me matter to anyone because mattering is something that becomes… it’s created… it happens through time and experience and is shown TO and felt BY because of dedication and attention… again, importance.

Understanding the craziness that passes through my heart is something I really strive to do. I’ve said it before, the heart feels, the mind thinks… getting the two to communicate and understand each other is so satisfying when it happens because it doesn’t happen often enough.

These are heavy thoughts that will border on nonsense for some. I’m not writing to be understood, I’m writing to understand. This fixation of mine has me over-thinking life, over-thinking communication, and most importantly has me feeling a bit too uncomfortable for my liking. The desire to matter in life is a real one for me… not yet sure to what level my need of mattering is… I just know it’s there.