"No one asked"

I think part of my distress, some of these days, is that I get asked to do an awful lot of things - serve on committees, give make-up exams, do tutoring, make decisions, so on and so forth. And yes, true, much of it is part of my job, or part of being a responsible adult living in community.

But the distress comes because.....I just don't often get asked what I want. Oh, I get that that's in some way my own fault, living alone, never having partnered up, never having had kids.

But it would be nice, once in a while, to be asked what I want.

I realized one of the reasons I liked going to my parents' all these years was that at least a few of the days I was up there, my mom would ask me what I wanted for dinner. She likes to cook, and she would cook what I wanted (within reason, of course, but I'm pretty easy to please). It was....just nice.

Or to have someone ask me what I wanted to do. And yes, at least a little of the time, I get to do what I want to do. Like, this weekend, I tentatively plan to go antiquing. But.....somehow there's a different tone to someone asking you, "So, what would you like to do?" than me just going, all on my lonesome, "I need to get out of the house so I guess I go antiquing"

 But yeah. I THINK what it is is the concept of "attention." I don't get a lot of attention on a regular basis beyond being asked for stuff, and that wears on me.And yes, I know it's kind of childish and selfish and all, but....I would like for someone to ask me what I wanted.

What I might want? Oh, lots of things:

- To go out to lunch somewhere with somebody. Just to have someone to talk to over a meal.
- To try one of those hot-stone massage things
- To be able to sit somewhere quiet and nice in public and have a cup of tea and a small cake or even a full tea with fancy sandwiches and everything
- To have something....kinda like a spa day? To have someone wash my hair for me and look it over and reassure me that no, it's not really thinning that badly, and maybe have someone do something for my face, I don't know.
- To go to a nice big craft emporium and just walk around and look at the supplies
- To go to a REAL bookstore that has ambiance and doesn't feel like a superstore
- To have someone reassure me that yes, really, it's going to be okay (and for me to believe it)
- To have someone look at what I'm trying to do and go "You know that really is too much, here, let me take on these five tasks you normally would do"
- To go somewhere where there are a lot of friendly cats (or kittens) and just lie down on the floor and let the cats crawl all over me and purr at me
- To go somewhere fun like apple-picking (not a thing here) or even just to get a cider donut (also apparently not a thing here)
- For my house to be clean
- To have more time to sew and knit
- To have fewer of the small annoying everyday tasks that make me feel like I can never get out from under them
- To have something BIG and GOOD and NICE happen in my life, and I don't mean something stupid like "yay I didn't have any cavities," something genuinely good.
- To not feel like certain things are such an effort.
- To do more cooking, ideally, cooking with another person around.


And yeah, I kind of hate myself for feeling so needy, and also not recognizing that I have it comparatively good. But I get really lonely some times and it's so hard sometimes constantly having people asking me for stuff and I get to where I am feeling like no on really cares what I might want, I'm just seen as some kind of vending machine that can hand out extensions or sets of meeting-minutes or whatever, and I do it automatically, and it's no drain on me or anything....I used to be able to do that kind of thing but lately I am just so tired and a lot of the stuff I used to do fairly easily feels like more of an effort...