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

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not weird at all!

I had to learn to stop reflexively apologizing for the mess when people came over, because it made them feel like their houses must seem like pits of squalor to me. It's not that I'm thinking, "Oh, well, I need to be a good housekeeper, but other people are just not as good as me," or, "I need to be a considerate friend, but I can't expect that others will." It's that the bits I'm in charge of and the bits I'm not in charge of are separated fairly firmly for me (if not always accurately), and so what bothers me is when I'm registering that I am making someone else deal with what I "ought to" deal with. And I don't have nearly so firm a concept of what other people "ought to" deal with.

[redbird]

*nod* That one is tricky; it goes with reminding myself that just because someone keeps a cleaner house than I do doesn't mean they're judging me. Some days I believe that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think this one is made harder by the fact that you can't say, "Nobody would be judgmental about that," because clearly some people would. But "My friends wouldn't," is a different thing.