Dear Someone: When will I stop being everyone's safety net and become someone's chosen destination?

Dear, Dear Someone, _

The phone rings only when storms gather on others' horizons. My name appears in messages that begin with "I need" or "Could you help." Like a lighthouse on a forgotten shore, I stand ready to guide ships that never dock at my harbour.

Years of being the responsible one have carved deep channels in my soul. The weight of others' expectations sits heavy on shoulders that learned too young to carry burdens. Each crisis brings them running to my door, each problem sees them seeking my counsel, yet my own storms go unnoticed.

Do you remember when I fell ill last winter? The silence was deafening. My phone, usually buzzing with others' emergencies, lay quiet as I battled fever alone. How strange it felt to be the one needing instead of giving, to discover that the safety net I'd always provided for others had no reciprocal threads.

Being the eldest taught me to shrink my needs until they fit into the spaces between others' demands. I learned to translate "I'm drowning" into "I'm fine" so fluently that sometimes I fool even myself.