The Stoic's Struggle

In which it’s fine, I’m fine, everything is fine.

Will Feral Tomcat (Tom)

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

- Emily Dickinson

I do not know how to ask for help. 

I also do not know how to admit I need help.

I also do not know what help I need.

I was raised a Stoic and that does not help at all. 

“Jane,” you might say. “I notice that a tiger has chewed off your arm. Are you okay?”

“Why yes,” I would answer. “‘Tis only a flesh wound. I just need a wee tourniquet and all will be fine.” 

(Fact: Monty Python is a Stoic’s best friend. Like the time I was at the tail end of twelve hours of unmedicated back labor, and things were heating up, and doctors and residents and medical students started wheeling in lights and machines, and I couldn’t help exclaiming, “That’s the machine that goes ping!” And then I had a baby.)

Where was I? Oh yes. So Ben and I were walking Tinker last week (along with Will Feral Tomcat (Tom), who follows along on every walk, and sometimes tries to go to school with the girls, and who really deserves his own essay), and we were talking about the ways we like to receive love, and we were agreeing that the concept of love languages is woefully limited and extremely cliché, and suddenly I found myself struggling to express something that was not at all easy to capture.

“When you listen to me vent about my day,” I said, “that makes me feel loved. Maybe attention is my love language? But not in a bad way.”

Ben, who understands Many Things, understood. “Like it makes you feel heard? I know you struggle with not feeling heard.”

“Yes, but I also hate opening up and being vulnerable. So feeling safe enough to ask you to listen is a big deal for me.”

He nodded and smiled. “It’s easy for me to listen to you. I’m glad that makes you feel loved.” 

(Readers, I swooned.)

Two of my three daughters hate taking up space. This is different than Stoicism (although my oldest is also a Stoic). But it is a close cousin. Since before she even knew words, the little one has hated being noticed. To pay attention to her is to scrape her raw, to cause her tremendous pain. She is a spunky, sassy kid when she’s comfortable, but take her out of her little bubble at all and she tries to shrink to invisibility. Meanwhile the oldest approaches writing a personal essay for a high school magnet program with the same loathing and aversion that other people reserve for truly awful things like cooked celery (the devil’s own food) and Donald Trump. When the essay finally emerges, it begins: “I hate talking about myself…”

All of these qualities are fruit of the same tree, a way of saying, “I hate to be a bother…” or “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” They are a way of indicating that we are not worthy of concern or even notice, that our problems are not significant, that we are only of value to others to the extent that we ask for nothing and give everything. It is a lonely kind of existence, and a small one.

I have many wonderful friends, and my oldest has many wonderful friends, and I have no doubt the little one will have many wonderful friends as well. But even though a show of concern from a kind heart will sometimes open my floodgates, it is rare indeed that I will reach out and let anyone know that I am Not Okay. And rarer still that I will accept help when it is generously offered. My oldest is the same; she lets everyone lean on her, while she leans on no one. It saddens me to see.

With three minutes to spare before this was supposed to be sent out, hot on the heels of another excellent session with my brilliant therapist, I stopped publication to add this: It is also true that not knowing how to ask for help goes part and parcel with not being confident about what I want or need. I notice this with Ben the most, since he is closest to me. I’ll be moody and sad, and in that moment I cannot even articulate what would help me feel better, never mind finding the confidence to ask for it. He is wonderful at just being present and accommodating, but it is a learning curve for me - and a steep one - to be able to even determine, and then request, the help I am looking for. And so, stuck in my own head, my unhappiness deepens.

I see this in my girls as well. Naturally, being small, they do not have these skills yet. But they should be building the related skills - confidence, introspection, self-knowledge - and I fear that they are not. Which makes the urgency for me all the greater - I have to learn myself how to figure out and communicate what I need, not only for my own sake, but to model this skill for them. It is an annoying, but essential part of parenting: improving yourself so you can lead your children down a better path.

Even if I do work hard at understanding what I need when I’m struggling though, I still cannot imagine ever feeling comfortable asking for help, and I do not know that people really change at my age. (“Why do all of Elise’s friends think we’re her grandparents?” my ex emailed me from her class party last week. “Ummm…that’s my fault,” I admitted, having recently chaperoned a field trip and maybe, perhaps, told the kids that I was Elise’s great-great-grandma and that I had just turned 106. In my defense, I didn’t expect them to believe me!) I try the words out - “I’m struggling…I need a shoulder to cry on…I need help” - and the words taste like cooked celery in my mouth. What’s the worst thing that could happen? I ask myself. There is no rational answer to that question, but it does not matter. Terrified of being a dreary Somebody, I stay silent, like a Nobody.