Dependence

Apologies in advance, because this post is rather a train of thought so probably a bit disjointed.

I am an interesting mixture of dependence and independence. Given the option, I hide behind other people. On those occasions where I can't get out of a social occasion, I have a tendency to attach myself to somebody with whom I am comfortable and follow his or her lead. Until recently I had very little confidence in who I was as a person and depended on others to define me and affirm me.

On the flipside, I can be very independent when I need to. I can manage my life very well on my own. I have a job and hobbies, and a few good friends and everything works quite nicely. I don't need anybody else for my life to work and I can quite happily up sticks and move to a foreign country where I don't know a soul.

Reading this back and thinking about my life, it seems very strange to see the complete dependence in some areas and complete independence in others. I can't quite make sense of it.

Now I have tended to slightly despise the dependent part of my nature. In the culture where I grew up there is a pressure to be independent. We are supposed to make our own choices, know what we want and be prepared to get it. Dependence is weakness. Unfortunately this does not come even slightly instinctively for me, and, through letting others define me, I have always felt there is something wrong with me because I wasn't independent.

Over the last few years I have begun to discover who I am, which has been amazingly freeing, but I have still felt the nagging need to be even more independent than I have become. Then one day, it clicked. (Although I'm sure I've been told many times before) I don't need to be independent; I need to depend on him, and him alone. My inclination to dependence is only weakness when it is focussed on the wrong source.

What do you depend on? Or do you need to learn to let go and be more dependent?