What If the “Bare Minimum” Feels Special Because You’ve Been Starving?

Have you ever been in a season of your life where you were grateful for everything around you, but you could still feel yourself getting restless?

What do you do when life becomes so repetitive that you start losing inspiration?

And when was the last time you stopped long enough to ask yourself what you actually need—not what your children need, your parents need, your partner needs, your job needs, or everybody else who has gotten used to needing something from you?

What do you need?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

One of my pen pals gifted me a book called The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz, and I’ve been reading it while I’ve been here in Vietnam. I don’t know if she knew how much I would need this book when she sent it to me, but the timing couldn’t have been better.

It’s one of those books that makes you stop reading every few pages because something you just read starts a completely different conversation in your head.

Ruiz talks about love, but this isn’t really a book about finding a relationship or keeping a man or woman. He talks about the relationship we have with ourselves and how that relationship follows us into every other relationship we have.

He talks about fear. Judgment. Expectations. The emotional wounds we carry around without realizing how much they’re affecting the way we love people and the way we allow people to love us.

And while I was reading it, I kept thinking about my own life.

I’ve been restless ever since I got to Vietnam.

Today I finally decided I needed some fresh air, so I ordered a Grab and came to Soho, this coffee shop in Vũng Tàu that sits right across from the beach. I ordered myself a passion fruit drink that cost me about two dollars, found a place to sit and started writing this while staring out at the water.

It’s cloudy as hell today. The sky is completely overcast because there’s rain coming, so I’m definitely not getting one of those beautiful sunny Vietnam beach views.

But I actually don’t mind it.

I just needed to get out of the house.

I’ve been spending almost every day with my grandma since I got here. We eat breakfast together every morning. We run errands together, go to the grocery store, come home and spend the majority of our day around each other. Somewhere along the way, we fell into this little routine without either of us really planning it.

The funny thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever had a life with this much routine.

My normal life is sporadic as hell.

I’m used to being responsible for myself and waking up without knowing exactly what I’m going to do that day. Some days I’ll spend hours writing. Other days I’ll wander around a city, find somewhere I want to eat and just go. I’ve traveled places simply because I felt like it. Half of the shit I’ve done in my life probably started with me randomly thinking, You know what would be fun?

Having my grandma with me has made me slow down.

She’s elderly now, and she walks a lot slower than I normally do, so when we’re out together, I walk right beside her. I’m paying attention to the traffic, watching the motorbikes coming from every damn direction and making sure we’re both able to cross the street safely because traffic in Vietnam does not play.

Without even thinking about it, I’ve started paying attention to whether she’s tired, how far we’re walking, whether she’s hungry and whether she’s okay.

Nobody asked me to do any of that. My grandma isn’t controlling me or stopping me from going anywhere by myself. It’s just something that naturally happens when you’re with someone you love and you know you have to move through the world a little differently with them.

And I think that’s what has made me understand caregiving in a way I didn’t before.

I mean a very small glimpse because I would never compare what I’m doing to someone raising children or caring for a sick family member.

But I understand something now that I didn’t understand in the same way before.

Taking care of somebody requires you to constantly consider another human being.

Your day is no longer built around one simple thought: What do I want to do today?

There are other things attached to it.

Who is going to watch the kids? Is someone staying with Mom? Can Dad be left alone? Who’s picking everybody up? What are we doing about dinner?

And somewhere underneath all of that is another question that probably gets asked more than any of the others:

Who needs me?

After enough time, I can understand how somebody could completely lose themselves inside of being needed.

You love your family. You love your children. You love the person you’re caring for.

But you can love somebody deeply and still need some time that belongs only to you.

I don’t think we talk about that enough.

Sometimes you want to go somewhere without coordinating anything, sit quietly without listening for somebody calling your name, or make one decision without first thinking about how that decision affects everybody else.

That doesn’t make the love any smaller.

It just means you’re a person too.

Today my grandma went to visit her siblings, which is actually one of the main reasons we’re spending so much time in Vũng Tàu in the first place. She wanted to be closer to them so she could easily get a taxi and visit whenever she wanted.

So she’s getting her sibling time today, and I’m sitting here with my little two-dollar passion fruit juice and the ocean.

Everybody wins.

Sitting here by myself, though, made me realize how much I’ve missed this.

Wandering around without having anywhere I need to be. Being curious. Having enough quiet in my head to write.

I’ve missed doing something simply because I wanted to do it.

And maybe that’s why The Mastery of Love has been hitting me the way it has.

One of the things Ruiz keeps bringing you back to is how much of our happiness, love and fulfillment we place in somebody else’s hands.

We create expectations around how people should love us—what our parents should do, what our partners should know, what our friends should remember, and how somebody should show up for us because of everything we’ve done for them.

Then when they don’t, we’re hurt.

I’ve been guilty of that.

Especially with my father.

Before I came to Vietnam, my dad and I got into an argument because my birthday came and went and he didn’t even wish me happy birthday.

He didn’t buy me a cake.

And listen, I am a grown-ass woman. I can go to Walmart and buy my own birthday cake.

It wasn’t about the fucking cake.

It was the thought.

My father could go to Walmart and buy himself a 24-pack of beer. He could remember a friend’s party. He could make time for whatever he considered important.

But he didn’t have that moment where he thought, It’s my daughter’s birthday. Let me get her something.

And that hurt.

Especially when I thought about how many times I’ve considered him, the things I’ve done for him and all the times I’ve made sure he was okay despite the differences we’ve had over the years.

Somewhere inside of me was an expectation that because I loved him a certain way, he should know how to love me that way too.

Reading this book made me question that.

Maybe some of our deepest disappointment comes from waiting for people to become who we think they should be instead of accepting who they’ve repeatedly shown us they are.

That’s a hard thing to sit with.

Because acceptance doesn’t mean what somebody did was okay.

Sometimes acceptance is simply saying:

This is who this person is. Now what am I going to do with that information?

I can tell you what I’m learning I don’t want to do anymore.

I don’t want to spend my life trying to squeeze love, consideration or effort out of somebody simply because I believe they should give it to me. Nor do I want to keep score, measuring what someone owes me against everything I’ve done for them.

That’s exhausting.

I can’t spend the rest of my life standing in front of somebody with an empty plate asking them to serve me something they’ve never learned how to cook.

And that brings me to probably my favorite idea from this entire book.

Ruiz tells a story about having a magical kitchen.

Imagine you have a kitchen where you can have any food you want. You’re completely fed. Then somebody comes to your door offering you food, but there’s a condition attached to it.

You wouldn’t need to accept the condition.

Why would you?

You already have food.

But when you’re starving?

That’s different.

And when I read that, I immediately thought about emotional hunger.

When you’re emotionally starving, crumbs can feel like a feast.

That sentence has been fucking with me ever since.

Because emotional hunger can look like so many things.

Affection. Attention. Validation. Companionship. Reassurance. Sex. Being desired, chosen, protected or considered. Having someone finally ask, Are you okay? after you’ve spent years asking everybody else.

Maybe you’ve spent your whole life being the strong one and someone finally tells you, I’ve got you.

Or nobody has touched you with tenderness in years.

You’ve been overlooked for so long that somebody remembering the smallest detail about you suddenly feels enormous.

You become so accustomed to doing everything yourself that someone opening a door, planning a date, paying for dinner, checking whether you made it home safely or remembering something you told them feels like you’ve hit the relationship lottery.

And those things are beautiful.

But the book made me wonder about something else.

Do they feel extraordinary because they truly are, or because some part of you has been starving for them?

That made me think about the man I’m currently dating, who I originally met at Whole Foods about a year ago.

I had to ask myself something I probably wouldn’t have asked before reading this book:

Was I emotionally starving when he came into my life?

Had I been going without something for so long that finally receiving it from someone made it feel bigger than it actually was?

Because I remember how good it felt to be treated a certain way—to feel considered and feminine, to have somebody make me feel like a princess or a queen.

And I don’t want to take anything away from the way he treats me, because there is something beautiful about someone intentionally making you feel special.

But the book made me look at it from another angle.

Maybe some of what felt extraordinary was actually the kind of care I should’ve already believed I deserved.

That’s a very different thing to realize.

When you’ve been emotionally starving, somebody remembering the little things about you can feel enormous. So can having someone check on you, make plans instead of leaving everything up to you, or simply be affectionate, thoughtful, protective and consistent.

Those things do matter.

But I don’t want them to feel valuable because I’ve been deprived of them. I want them to feel valuable because I’m receiving love from someone who is adding something beautiful to a life that was already full.