Helping Myself Be Honest

I'm in the middle of catching up on one of my favorite blogs Keep It Trill. Over the holiday season, Kit was very honest about what was happening with her family.

In one post, she said,

I have to think about this value system more, where helpers hate needing help and become so embarrassed when they do. On one hand it makes you utterly self-sufficient and independent, but on the other hand, it slows down the problem-solving and healing process because you've walled off some of best resources with secrecy.

It was not easy for me to accept that I needed to see someone about whatever was going on in my space. It wasn't easy hearing my mom tell me I needed to and it wasn't especially easy admitting it to my friends or here on my blog. It wasn't easy because I've spent a long time perfecting an exterior that looks put together. As I write this, I'm not even sure why I did that. I don't know what happened that made me think it was easier to "fake it till you make it" than to just ask for the help you need.

Perhaps it was the time I sat crying in the middle of my student center in high school and my two closest friends, at the time, came out, watched me cry and went back inside, never once asking what was wrong. It's been 7 years and we've never spoken about that day.

Maybe it was growing up in a single-parent home and learning early on that self-sufficiency was best. I don't ever blame my mother (though she thinks I do, and I've tried to assure her that I don't, but I can't fix her own guilt) for anything that's resulted because she was a single parent. However, I am cognizant of the effects it's had on me.

Whatever the reason for my need to not only have it together (or look that way as much as possible) but to also be that leaning post for others, it takes a toll. There comes a point where what you've been showing doesn't matter because what you need has been neglected and is most important.

Another blog I frequent, Stuff White People Do, recently had a post about how black women are treated as if we are made of teflon and adamantium; nothing sticks to us, nothing hurts us. The comment section blew up; it took me quite a while to get through it all and before I could even make it to the bottom, I had a conversation with the blog's author, Macon. We talked about a lot of things and I told him,

I don't ask for help, but sometimes I just want someone to offer it... even though I assert myself as not ever needing help as a response to never being asked. It's a wretched connundrum

but a connundrum I need to get over.

My BFF always says, there's a point in your life where "my mama didn't hug me" and "my daddy wasn't there" ceases to be a quality excuse. Well, "no one helps me" ceased to be an excuse for why I don't ask for it. I imagine it will always be something I struggle with, but dangit, I gotta get over myself. The end.