Not asking for help

Saturday night, while Hero Woman and I were on our way to dinner, I began talking about how isolated I’d felt all the last week while L was in the hospital.  I said that aside from L’s family and mine, both of whom are too far away to be any use, no one had called or emailed to see how we were or to say, “Hi, read your blog and I wanted to check in with you.   Do you need something that I can do?” and that the lack of response had left me feeling very on-my-own.  Hero Woman replied, “I was reading your entries so I thought I knew how you were doing.”

It’s nowhere near that simple.  You see, even if I need—really need—help, I probably won’t ask for it.  The reason to that comes in several parts.  First, there’s the reluctance to admit that events have got beyond my own ability to manage them.  Second, and related to the first, is the feeling that if I ask for help I’m just whining about things I should take responsibility for and take care of myself.  Third, and related to the second, there’s my internal voice saying “Okay, so you say you need help.  You think your friends don’t have things they have to see to as well?  Their lives are just as full of stuff that has to be taken care of as yours is, so don’t go imposing on them and making them feel guilty if they can’t do anything.”  Fourth, if I accept help I believe I’m also accepting a responsibility to give help, to return favors, when asked and I’m never sure I’ll be able to do that.  I despise having to live with a perpetual feeling of undischarged gratitude.

Last, and perhaps the most personal, is something that’s related to the Alcoholics Anonymous mantra “one drink is always one too many.”  I’ve lived with myself long enough to know that if I get started accepting help, it’s too easy to go on taking and taking and taking, until no one wants to see me because it means I want to beg something-or-another.  I’m forever afraid that unless I ride herd strictly on my instincts, I’ll become a kind of J. Wellington Wimpy, always bumming hamburgers and promising to pay on a Tuesday that somehow never comes.

All of those things put together mean it’s rare I’ll ask for help or say that I’m going under, even when I need it and I am.  Sunday at M’s Girl Scouts meeting, I had to fight to make myself say “yes, thank you” when M’s kindergarten teacher asked whether some of the other parents bringing over cooked meals this week so L and I didn’t have to worry with it would be a help.  I did say “yes, thank you” but it cost me to say it.  So if something is going on in our lives and I don’t ask for help, that doesn’t mean I don’t need it.  It may mean I’m being too proud to impose my needs on others, or I’m afraid to say yes for fear of what it might bring me to.