The Friend Manual: How to make friends when you're bad at it

(Continued from part 1)

Uncomfortable truth #1 – Asking for or receiving help means that I have to admit I have a weakness

I was going to call this a misconception. But, I think it’s actually a truth, but an uncomfortable truth.

There’s a difference between someone doing something for you that you can plausibly do for yourself and when someone performs a service for you that you actually can’t do, or that would preclude you from doing something else important. If I need help, then I have limitations. Asking for and receiving help means that I have to acknowledge and accept (graciously or not) to let someone else do something that I can’t do myself.

This is further compounded when it’s something that I could previously do, especially something that I could do so easily that it wouldn’t even registering on my day-to-day. This means that something in my interaction with the Earth and society has broken down…and that something is me.

Is it ok to have a weakness? Is it ok to be able to do less and less? The logical and kind answer is yes. But the reality is to just get humbled over and over again.

I’ve had to ask for help for illness reasons before. It’s easier to accept help when you’re fighting germs that make you objectively a gross, snotty weak mess or where you have a cast or walking boot that shows “yes, my structure is broken, but it’s short term, it’s ok, I’m still whole”.

But here I sit, where all my tests come back saying I’m perfectly healthy and yet, I’ve been unable to do basic shit. I have a weakness, and it doesn’t have a cause you can point to and be guaranteed a full recovery on a decent timeline. I don’t have doctors or tests giving me reasons and metrics to point to, like reduced oxygen in my blood or faulty heart valves. I look the same, I have the same muscle mass. And my body and mind thinks that I can do the same things, until I go to Target to buy a big stupid stuffed animal and can’t even make it back to the parking lot.

I don’t have anything else to point to so that I can blame it or use it for planning purposes and setting healthy limits.

I have to trust my body and my intuition.

And my body just broke, and my intuition failed to sound the alarm.

And because of all this I have had to ask for help…because I have one or more weaknesses.

So, I guess this is step 1, just like AA steps…I have a weakness (problem).

Now what?

Sidebar on semantics

I got all distracted by the word “weakness” and if people would immediately want to come back and say something that sounds better like “need” or “limitation”.

I guess that’s all fine and good. But this is my own fun little roadblock. I’m not have trouble asking for help because I have a healthy relationship with asking for help. I’m having trouble with it because I grew in bootstraps mentality and self sufficiency at all costs and stubbornness to a fault and a healthy dose of “i don’t wanna”. So, I chose weakness, because I am physically weak right now. And talking to myself in plain language may get past my inner angry-teen whose intermittently in charge of my brain right now.

And I’m grumpy. So, it stays.