How to be your own best friend? Speak up when you need help. When I was fifteen I fell from my bike and twisted my ankle. My brother had to carry me inside the house piggyback. Mom was out of town, so it was just me and the boys—my brother and father.
“Does it hurt bad?” my dad asked.
I nodded, wincing, but because he didn’t suggest the emergency room, and my brother said I was milking it, neither did I.
I spent the entire night soaking that ankle in the bathtub switching from ice cold to scalding hot to take my mind off the pain.
At five in the morning, I heard Dad shuffle past the bathroom door and go downstairs. I waited long enough for him to have his breakfast and a cup of coffee, and to read a bit of the paper. I got dressed with great difficulty because every move was excruciating, then scooted downstairs on my bottom holding my ankle aloft. My purple ankle bone was the size of a grapefruit.
Why didn’t you say something earlier?
“Dad?”
He lowered the paper. “Have you been up long?”
“All night,” I said, trying to hold back tears.
“Emergency room?” he asked. I nodded. He folded the newspaper. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
Stoic or a cry baby?
I thought: Because I wanted you to suggest it. Because I wanted you to take care of me without my having to ask. Because I wanted you to know how much I was hurting without my having to say so. Because you should have known. Because I didn’t want to be a cry baby. Because I thought I should be able to bear the pain, to suck it up. Because what if it really was just a sprain and I put you to all that trouble for nothing?
But I said none of those things.
I thought love was people taking care of you without your having to ask for what you needed. They should just know and take care of you without your having to ask for help. I hadn’t yet learned that it was the opposite—that love is about being vulnerable and valuing yourself enough to ask for what you need when you aren’t sure what the response will be.
It turned out I had a very bad fracture and would be in a cast for twelve weeks. I had waited so long to ask for help that the bones had started knitting together incorrectly. So much for stoicism.
Dad said, “You must have a very high pain threshold.”
Stoicism was my fatal flaw
Back then I thought that was something to be proud of. But stoicism was one of my fatal flaws. Because it wasn’t just physical pain I tolerated—I was in emotional pain, too. And that needed attention as well.
Stoicism might be something to be proud of, but not when it exceeds healthy limits. We all need to ask for help and not be ashamed of needing it. Isolation is unhealthy and hurts us and everyone around us because the consequences are mental illness or disease.
It took me years to learn to use my voice and speak up for myself. Contrary to what I believed when I was a kid, asking for help shows friends and loved ones I trust them. Most people like to be asked for help, to be of service to help a friend. But most of all, by asking for help I became my own best friend. For many years, I wasn’t. Today I value the precious child of God that I am.
To learn about my memoir A Minor, Unaccompanied, click here: https://pollyhansen.com/nasty-girl/
And if you live in the Chicago area, here’s a great ecumenical place for an affordable personal, private retreat. It’s where I started writing my memoir: https://holywisdommonastery.org/visit/personal-retreats/