I hate asking for help.
I’ve tried to figure out why, but it’s like peeling an onion. Just when I think
I understand my motivations on one level, I reveal another layer. Seeking help
makes me feel inadequate. I should handle each and every situation life dishes
out with confidence. When I can’t, I feel disoriented and depressed. I realized
recently that I differentiate between asking for aid and delegating
responsibility. In one, I need someone else to take care of me (or my duties)
in some way. I want and need to completely drop control. With the other, I
still maintain some level of influence.
So, if I reach the point where I’m saying, “I can’t
do this any longer,” it means I’ve hit rock bottom. I’m Wile E. Coyote plummeting
over the cliff, holding the little useless “HELP!” sign in the air right before
splatting on the rocky desert floor. Another onion layer reveals that a part of
me resents having to ask for help. Shouldn’t those around
me be aware enough to know the cliff edge looms? Shouldn’t they run some kind
of interference before I find myself peddling in the air? Shouldn’t they volunteer
to step in and thwart the Road Runner before he misdirects me into my downfall?
Yes. I expect the people around me to read my mind, notice my body language,
listen to how I say something, not just what I say. My husband, thank
goodness, mastered the nuances of Liz Language years ago. However, he can only
do so much by way of helping—he has a full-time job, after all.
My mother’s condition worsens in subtle ways,
making it difficult to ask for help because I don’t know what I need. Many
people with Huntington’s disease suffer from mood disorders. For my mother,
anxiety crept into her daily routine. Later, depression made infrequent and
unexpected visits. Eventually, these two moods dominated her days unless she
took medication. Lately, other changes in Mom’s personality have begun to
surface. Each one signals to me that her HD continues to progress. Medications
may control or mask symptoms, but the underlying reality is that she’ll never
get better. She’ll only grow worse.
In recent weeks, irritability slips into the room
unnoticed. If I don’t smile as I help Mom get into or out of her wheelchair, if
fatigue or frustration tinges my tone of voice as I try to figure out what she
wants, if my temper flares, then Mom responds with a verbal cut edged with
cruelty that I’ve never heard from her. If my mood is dark, she becomes paranoiac
and worries that I won’t help her.
I’ve resorted to asking her doctors for help. It’s
rare that I request an adjustment to her medications, and usually it’s to help
her deal with the anxiety and depression. Today, though, I found myself
complaining to Mom’s internist that she’s not sleeping. Her insomnia started
with one or two wakeful nights a week, but has turned into four or five nights
where she sleeps only two or three hours. She usually doesn’t “catch up” on
her sleep by napping the next day, so we all run on a deficit. Not good for
anyone’s moods. Of course, the doctor didn’t miss a beat. He instructed me on
which medication to increase at night before Mom goes to bed. Nothing in his
response made me feel inadequate for asking, or guilty for wanting peaceful nights
again.
Copyright 2012 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
