It was my turn on the Playground Duty rotation recently. I'm love my middle school kids, but it's always fun to hang out with the little guys. The kindergarteners and first graders gave me hugs and high-fives and showed me their missing teeth. One asked me to tie his shoe, another to zip her jacket, yet another to open his squeezable yogurt. I started keeping track of these requests. By the time the bell rang, I had been asked for help twelve times. In twenty five minutes. None of these appeals came with an embarrassed, "I'm sorry, I hate to bother you," or the ashamed admission, "I know I should be able to do this myself, I'm just a mess right now." The kids needed help, they asked, I helped. Pretty straightforward.
Except it's not always straightforward, at least for some of us. When a five-year old has a problem she needs solving, she thinks nothing of reaching out to someone bigger, wiser, and with better fine-motor skills. When a 31-year old (me) has a problem she needs solving, she vows to work ten times harder to figure that problem out on her own, all the while maintaining perfect composure and refusing to admit there's anything wrong. That approach wouldn't work for the five-year old; the shoes would go untied and be tripped over, the jacket would stay unzipped and a chill would be caught, the yogurt wouldn't open and there would be tears. The approach doesn't work so well for the 31-year old either, as it happens.
Somewhere along the way I developed this notion that asking for help is a sign of weakness. I taught myself to be self-sufficient, and when that didn't work, I taught myself to lie and manipulate in order to cover up whatever calamity I was mired in. I'm not sure when this shift took place. A long time ago, if I needed a cup in a high cabinet, I would've asked someone to get it for me. I wasn't born resistant to help. That behavior hatched and grew like a parasite until eventually my whole brain was contaminated. I think it's normal for teenagers to go through this phase; they're flexing their independence and they need space to try, fall, and try again. Most people realize in early adulthood that everyone needs a hand sometimes, and they lighten up.
Some of us don't. Some of us become so revolted by the mere notion of asking for help that we'd rather die trying to do it ourselves than admit we're struggling. We want to be strong. We want to be capable. We want to be needless, wantless, anti-dependent. We love when people ask us for help, of course. The helper is in the power position. God forbid we should need to be rescued ourselves, though. Can you imagine?
I've done a lot of growing and healing over the last several years, but this is one of the issues I still struggle to overcome. I love looking like I have all my shit together. There's no drug quite like hearing someone ask, in awe, "How do you do it all?" Well, friend, since you asked, I do it all by sacrificing every last shred of sleep and sanity. (Probably not the expected answer.) The truth is, I do it all because I'm absolutely terrified of what might happen if I don't.
I can ask for the simple, practical things. "Can you watch my kids for a half-hour?" "Can I borrow your stapler?" "Would you mind covering me for five minutes so I can run to the bathroom?" There's no guilt attached to that stuff. But sometimes I want (need) to say, "I'm really having a hard time. Can we talk?" or, "I'm scared that things aren't going well. I'm not sure what to do." Those are the things I don't speak aloud. Those are the things with sacks full of shame and guilt tied to them like anchors. Incidentally, those are the things that are the most important. Funny how that works.
My challenge to myself - and to any of you who battle the insecurity demon - is to be more childlike. Instead of attaching all sorts of self-deprecating connotations to asking for help, let's just throw caution to the wind and DO IT. What's the worst that can happen? Someone says no? Worse, we get judged? Well, is that such a big deal, since we've been judging ourselves this whole time anyway? If someone says no or cops an attitude, we'll just move on to the next person. Lucky for us, there are lots of them out there. Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe people will be glad we asked. Maybe someone will say, "I've been sitting here for months watching you drown, just waiting for you to ask for a life preserver. I'm glad you finally did." Maybe someone will even say, "Wow, you need that? I do too. Maybe we can help each other."
In the interest of starting off strong, here I go: Friends, will you help me take this challenge?
