Hello everyone,
One of the things I've explored in therapy adjacently over the years and more directly lately is the idea of asking for help. It's so hard, I hate it. I feel so intensely vulnerable and experience strong waves of self-hatred and shame. It's just really tough. I have made progress, though. For example, I now think of asking for help as an opportunity for connection. And I understand that I've hurt people by not asking them for their support when I needed it and they were willing to give it. It's still hard to do, very hard, but I've really worked to change the frame around it and treat myself the way I would treat anyone else.
The last time I went home I had a revelation about asking for help. That's just not something my family does. In my family you vaguely state your need and then wait until someone volunteers to help you. For example, if I need a ride to the airport I would say "Next week I am going out of town." And then wait for someone to say "Oh do you need a ride to the airport?" And if they don't offer me a ride to the airport, I would turn up and say "Next week I'm going out of town and I guess I'll just part at the airport." And get more and more intense with it until someone offers. It's like we're supposed to anticipate each others needs in this way and then try to sort it out even though no one has technically asked anyone for anything. Feelings get hurt over this. If no one offers to help you feel rejected and like you aren't important. The more I thought about it, the fact that my family doesn't ask for help, the more examples I came up with and the more I saw it in our relationships and family dynamics, both past and present. I've made a serious commitment to ending this. I think it's unrealistic and unfair to expect people to anticipate my needs such that I never need to ask for anything. Additionally, it's not how I want to treat people or myself. I find it a twinge passive aggressive to be honest. It goes against pretty much all of my values about relationships, connection, and intimacy.
This next part is hard to get through. Today is the anniversary of my dad's death. It's been fourteen long years since he passed away. Sometimes people ask me if it gets any easier as time goes on and I usually say no. Today I was thinking about what has changed over the years and honestly it just gets sadder and my grief grows. The further away I get from the version of myself that I was when he died the more I feel like he's out of my life. I often wonder if he'd even recognize me now. Even though I think it's a good thing that I've changed over the years there's part of me that would prefer to stay just as I was when he passed so that he'll always know me and life won't go on without him.
I made this about 10 days ago. I was just thinking about the anticipation of today and decided to draw/paint. When my Dad passed away I promised him I would be brave. (More about that in my post on going to Peru and Bolivia in 2018). Anyway, as I was making this I was listening to a song and one of the lines was "I will be brave" and that really resonated so I included it and re-committed to that promise. I feel like one thing I need to be brave about now is asking for help. It's hard, it's risky, and it doesn't feel good. But I promised to be brave.
My Dad passed away at 52 due to complications with one of his major organs. An organ that someone in his situation would go through the process of applying for an organ donation. When he died he was in the process of getting listed to receive a donation. The thing is, none of us knew any of this. Not me, my brothers, nor my grandparents. He needed a new organ and the chances that one of us were potentially a match feels likely, but this possibility was never considered because we didn't know. He never let us know or asked us. Because he couldn't ask for help. I cannot express to you the agony I've experienced over the years knowing there's a chance I could have saved his life but that he kind of took that from us by not asking. Knowing that he could still be here today, with a piece of me or one of us standing in for what his body could no longer do. It kills me. It is absolutely gut-wrenching to me that he was so impacted emotionally that he couldn't ask for our help. It hurts. (Just so you know, I am leaving out some pieces of the story to protect my family's privacy. If it seems like I'm making some leaps about what he was thinking or feeling that's probably why.)
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