I hear your voice in my head at least once a day. You say a lot of wildly inappropriate and sarcastic things—thank goodness, because it really does me well to lighten-up in there.
I’m still in that funny space where I catch myself wondering how you are. Like, gosh, I haven’t caught up with my brother in a while. I should give him a—
Oop. Yeah.
I can hear how the conversation would go though. We stuck to a fairly recognizable structure. The opening pleasantries. The trying to recall when we’d last connected. We’d settle on it not really mattering when that was. I’d ask how you were. You’d preface with a sort of agitated sigh and launch in by saying, “Oh, you know…”
Then would come the laundry list of things happening, on your mind, or required of you.
For example, how I am today, using your response formula, would sound like:
Oh, you know, I have to track down what has happened to A’s last mail-order prescription, tell her school that we’re unenrolling and do whatever paperwork comes along with that, figure out what that’s even going to look like on a day-to-day basis, pay my AK property taxes, file my federal taxes—which means I need to unpack my office, because somewhere in the move I lost track of all my W2’s (yikes, right?)
Granted, it’s a glimpse into the business of how living is going; but it doesn’t really say anything at all about how I am feeling, or who I am being, or exactly how close I am to needing to be institutionalized… I hear that comes with a regularly scheduled naptime. (See there? That was you talking.)
I’m on the upswing from one of my less graceful times. The combination of over-extension and under-preparation lead to a multi-day stretch where I had to lean on the people around me to juggle all the minutia I was dropping.
Gracelessly.
Did I mention that?
It caused some conflict and consternation, and I knew it at the time, and it just added to the soup of shame and overwhelm and insecurity that I steep in on such occasions. The man who chooses to love me, still, even after a number of these stretches in our nine years together, always asks the same thing in exasperation. “I just don’t understand why you do this to yourself.”
I know. That’s a statement. But I hear the question, “Why do you do this to yourself?”
It’s certainly not consciously on purpose, though I don’t have to dig down very far to confront my abject discomfort when it comes to asking for help. This is not at all the same as believing I do not need help. I need plenty. The village isn’t just for the child; it takes a village to be an adult. I only got through 2016-2017 with the help of a small army: a lawyer, a life coach, a therapist, a primary care provider, a bestie, a house cleaner—sometimes all in the same day! The irony of it all wasn’t lost on me at the time either, that somehow the more “secure” I got, the more expensive it became to experience a sense of calm on any given day, and the more difficult it seemed to hear my own voice over the crowd of others in my head.
Privileged panic, let’s call it.
You and I shared a dis-ease with the sense of obligation, of being beholden. I am a lot more comfortable paying for help than asking for it (see exhibit “2016-2017” above). I hire a service. I state an expectation. I receive what I’ve requested. I pay an invoice. Everybody is square. Asking for help feels like a debt with no explicit form of repayment. It makes me feel like I can be leveraged out of the ever-tenuous comfort I enjoy over the times in my life when I had a lot less agency, reputation, and means. And it makes me uneasy.
This is where, if we were talking on the phone, there would be a drop down in the frequency of our dialogue.
“Hmm,” you’d say. “What do you mean by that? Uneasy how?”
And your interest would be genuine, and I would love you for that.
I don’t want to stray too far from my sentiments today; I want to express that it’s hard to have one less Linhoss in the world, one less soul that shared the experience of being set-apart, expected of, simultaneously praised and pressed. Nobody ever said anything to me explicitly, of course, about self-sufficiency sans invoice. Added responsibilities, gained trust, advancement opportunities, and other sought-after things—things it would make no logical (!) sense to refuse—implied the expectation. Somehow, I internalized in each of those celebratory yet separating moments, I can be no less than this anymore. If I am even a little bit less, I will lose everything.
“I’m not sure that extrapolates point for point,” you laugh, “but I think I know what you mean.”
So rude.
I know you know though. And I miss the judgement-free moment of understanding that it’s incredibly beneficial to be competent; it also makes it hard to ask for help. Especially for little things that I “should have no problem” doing for myself.
Isn’t so much of life just little stuff. Incessant, insignificant opportunities to dig ourselves a hole just a little deeper, a little deeper, a little deeper into worry about our worth and performance and good enough-ness.
My practiced self can turn this into gratitude. I am extremely fortunate to be healthy, able, employed, loved, to have freedom of choice, and means to self-express. This longing to be better at doing the first things first and freeing up space in my mind for music, and writing, and art is a privilege.
And, sometimes, the laundry, bills, responsibilities, deadlines, accountability, and expectations those privileges create feels… heavy. Makes me want to just sit right down here, for just a second, to think about what would lighten the invisible load.
One or the other of us would be called away by one of the million minutiae. We’d say we shouldn’t let it be so long next time before a catch-up; we always seem to have to go right when we’ve gotten to the good stuff. We’d probably both know it would still be a long while. But we’d both get it. And the getting it lifted some burden.
“Love you, kiddo,” you’d say.
Love you back.
*sigh*
Talk soon.
❤️❤️❤️