I'm not proud. Or tired. Well, kind of tired.

[mrissa]

A couple days ago a friend asked a question that seemed like it might have more broad application than just the social situation he was mentioning, so I thought I would put it and my answer here: what he wanted to know was whether I am okay accepting help from people outside my immediate family in order to be able to do stuff while the stupid vertigo is still around.

And the answer is yes, absolutely. I am not at all proud about accepting help. It may not be that the help you offer is workable for one reason or another, but I will not be at all upset that you offered, and I will not turn whatever offer down out of the sheer desire to avoid accepting help.

What I am not good at is soliciting help from scratch. "You know what would be fun? If you came and got me and then [actual fun thing here]," or, "If you rode the bus down and came over and then [actual fun thing here]," is very hard for me. It sounds to me like, "You know what would be fun? If you baked me a pan of brownies. Wouldn't that be awesome? You could go to the store, and buy the ingredients, and do all the work, and then I would have brownies. Doesn't that sound like fun?" Yes, I know I've baked people brownies before and will likely do it again. And in fact I do like baking brownies. But, "How about I make you a pan of brownies?" is very different from, "How about you make me a pan of brownies?"

Comments

[moiread]

It definitely does! Which may be because going out requires a bunch of prep and effort for me a lot of the time, so in my head asking someone else to go out just for me seems like a lot. And I guess it also follows that since I am only out and about on good days (as opposed to the days where I am struggling to get to one single place because I absolutely have to do it that day and could not reschedule it and then after it's done I am going to come home again and die, which are the scenarios where I have to ask for rides), someone else asking me to pick up X for them while I'm out seems totally reasonable to me. I definitely know on a rational level that not everyone (or even most people) operates like me (if only because they are not disabled and do not have to organize things in that way). And there are definitely people in my life for whom the standards are very different from mine. I can adjust my thinking accordingly in some places! But still. That's what governs whether or not it instinctively causes negative feelings on my end, I think.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think for me it started when we lived in Hayward. That wasn't the same reason as my vertigo or your health issues for going out being a lot of prep and effort, but it still was the case that a trip to the bank, the post office, and the library would take a huge chunk of the afternoon. Whereas here it takes well under an hour for an able-bodied person. Which I am not at the moment. So.