Asking For Help

So, I don't usually write about "serious things" but lately I've been feeling really thankful for my friends. This week alone I have a friend who brought my packages into my apartment for me when I wasn't there, another friend who is hanging a chandelier for me and putting up with my not understanding tools or wiring or anything at all related to this light and my impulse to buy it, and another friend who is going to come over and sit in my apartment and wait for my groceries to be delivered because I'm not only too busy to grocery shop but I'm too busy to wait for groceries to arrive. And while my friends are truly amazing and deserve bunches of thanks a part of me is really proud of myself right now because I'm asking for help. Which is a new thing for me.

There's a long back story but basically my parents are a little (read: lots) nuts and kicked me out of the house when I was a teenager. I know it sounds hard to believe but I honestly was a great kid and hadn't done anything wrong. I've made a few attempts at a relationship with my mom but it's just never been worth all the ups and downs and headaches that come with it. I've always described it to people like, if that was a relationship with a friend or boyfriend everyone who loves me would be telling me to get out. And while some people have lovely families the one you end up with is really arbitrary and mine just happens to not be that awesome. I'm not going to let the fact that I'm related to someone mean I need to make myself stressed and upset over a relationship I get nothing beneficial from.

So, this relationship, or non-relationship, I have with my parents has sort of fucked me up. Not like extremely but enough that I have a major part of me that insists I must be able to care for myself in every aspect of my life. It doesn't really lend well to asking for help with anything. And it sort of sucks because I won't ask for help until I'm at my breaking point and by then it's too late to really matter.

This past year was really rough for me with a lot of friends leaving my life which left me feeling all those feelings I had with my parents again. I felt even more determined to do everything myself and a bigger refusal to let people into my life, because, in my mind, they all would leave anyways. And then, I was driving one day and I couldn't breathe. It was pouring rain, really hard even for here, and I couldn't pull over and I just felt like I couldn't make myself do the most natural of things and just take a breathe. When I finally did start breathing again I realized it was time to ask for help.

I know this is maybe a sort of taboo thing to reveal but I feel it's important to be open about this. I don't think making people feel bad for getting help does any good whereas being open may allow someone else to feel well and that would be awesome. So, I started seeing a therapist. Who was really bad at her job. So I stopped seeing her and started seeing someone else who is amazing and everything I thought I didn't want. I was not keen on seeing a male therapist because I thought I wouldn't be able to be as open as I would with a female doctor and I didn't want to see a psychiatrist because I'm not that cool with taking medicine for a cold so I didn't think I'd want to be taking something daily. But after some time and some of the medicine I was so opposed to once upon a time I started to feel better and realize how not normal I had been feeling before. I started relaxing and not feeling like any mistake I made would make people leave me and I stopped being so insane about schedules. And all of a sudden now, I'm able to ask for help. Which may seem like a small step but is huge for me. And luckily I have amazing friends willing to give me that help.