Burdensome
Saturday night was not a first for me. If I had a dollar for every time I found myself in a situation where my life seemed to take a wrong turn… well, let’s just say I probably wouldn’t have been worried about fixing my car.
This night in particular, I had gone to a friend’s house to watch a movie. After a wonderful night of cinematic indulgence, I left this friend’s house in high spirits… until I put my key in the ignition and turned it only to be met with nothing. No sound, no clicking, no turning over.
I will be the first to admit that I am nothing close to being a mechanic. I know some of the basics when it comes to cars. Things like jumping the battery, changing head and tail light bulbs, when to get the oil changed, how to change a tire… That said, my instant response was to check the battery cables and then perhaps try to jump the car. The friend I was with however, does not have a car so he could not help me. It was at 12:30 AM when I left his house with him already asleep when I slipped out the door, so I attempted everything I could think of on my own before texting a friend who works as an Uber driver over an hour later and asking if he could try to help jump me, or at very least, give me a ride home.
This friend was super sweet and helpful and attempted to help me fix the situation as well, but could not get my car started either so he took me home and dropped me off at my apartment around 3 AM. I passed out after a very long day where I had been awake from 5 AM until 3 AM. That night I had struggled in vain with all my efforts. I should note that this is my normal response to so many problems that I have encountered throughout my life. I know, I know. You, dear reader, are probably thinking that there is a simple solution to said problems. The thing is… I hate asking people for help. In regards to the situation with my car, it took me awhile to try to fix the situation on my own, and then quite a while longer to summon the courage to call this other friend. I had very nearly resigned myself to sleeping in my car that night.
The only reason I chose to call my uber friend and not, say, my roommates, is because I knew this friend was likely still awake and already driving out and about town. My roommate worked early the next morning and was probably already asleep as well. I really didn’t want to be a burden.
The next day before work, I asked my roommate take me back to my car to take the battery out and go get it tested… which worked out great because he had to check on his brake lights as well. My battery tested fine, so the man at the auto parts store suggested it was probably my starter. Cool. My automatic response then was to start racking my brain on how I could resolve the issue. I couldn’t pay for a mechanic but I could (barely) pay for the part, so I made arrangements with my little brother to help me fix it because family is supposedly a little easier to allow them to take pity on you… or something like that.
After making arrangements for a ride home from work that night (killing two birds with one stone by asking the guy who wanted to meet me for drinks) because I sure as hell wasn’t walking home alone in the dark. I walked to work that afternoon and just took the situation in stride as best I could. Moment by moment. The following day I had planned to ride with one of my roommates to his job, because then it would be a short walk back to where my car was in order to get the vin number. From there it would only be a little over a mile walk back to the auto parts store to get the part and meet my brother back at my car to replace the starter.
Early that afternoon, I had a guy that I was texting from Tinder call me and ask me to go to lunch with him. I apologized, explained the situation, and suggested meeting another time. He shot down my excuses, said he’d pay for lunch and drive me around town for my errands. Okay… cool. I guess that would work… We had a great lunch with awesome conversation. Upon leaving the restaurant, I asked if we would stop at an atm before we went back to my car. I had $50 in my wallet and $120 in my bank account and needed $130 to get the part.
With Monday being Labor Day, no banks were open and I figured it would be easiest to just withdraw cash and pay for it that way… but I had to transfer the cash from my savings account to my checking so I could withdraw it. While I was attempting to do that on my mobile app, the atm transaction timed out and the machine ate my card…. I went into crisis/survival mode because I didn’t know how I was going to get my car fixed and had a full day of appointments on Tuesday. I called my little brother and told him the situation, where he offered to buy the part and have me pay him back later. All the while this poor guy watched me in panic mode, as I was trying not to lose my shit. He laughed at my freaking out… which wasn’t super helpful… I was already beating myself up for not thinking things through better, for being distracted by the gorgeous smile of the man in the driver’s seat, and for not being better prepared. He explained that it wasn’t a big deal and he would buy the part and I could pay him back……
I know that many people would probably think this was awesome. Problem solved! Except that didn’t take away the overwhelming feeling of smallness I felt as I was overshadowed in the light of his kindness. I wanted to cry. I told him I would rather have my brother help me because then I knew that there was less resistance to accepting help from my family. This man continued to be positive and upbeat and reassuring that there were no issues and it would get better. My little brother, who had been working with a construction company building a new apartment complex in my city, had been working an hour away in the city where he lives that week. A fact I had not realized when I had asked him for help the day before. He would have to go out of his way to drive 50 miles to Missoula in order to help me. My throat tightened as I tried to figure out a way to put the least amount of stress on my brother. I really didn’t want to be a burden.
I was still with my tinder date when this new information was received. His response was to insist on buying the part because it would be the most efficient use of my brother’s time to already have it for him ready to go that evening. I swallowed hard and blinked back the moisture forming in the corners of my eyes. It’s one thing to have to ask for help, it is a completely other thing when someone offers help, especially in such a big way, to fulfill a need in your life that you “should” have been able to take care of on your own. That’s when I realized that my automatic response in many of these situations has been to default to survival mode. Default into protecting myself and taking care of myself, by myself because… well… who else was going to?
I had learned from a fairly early age that to ask for things was in many ways, selfish. As I grew older, I learned to ask for the things I needed as gifts for occasions such as Christmas or birthdays, or perhaps a graduation. At times even then, not getting the things I asked for. On the rare occasions that I would ask for any help (usually financially for things such as gas money, food, paying rent, or fixing my car) apart from these special occasions where gifts were acceptable, I was often made to feel as though I had no other options but to pull myself up by my bootstraps and just “figure it out.”
I have spent much of my life scraping the bottom of the barrel… even as a child, I grew up in a large family — one of eleven children — with very little money to spread between each of our needs. I can recall several Christmas’s where our meal was provided by a foodbank and the gifts under the tree were donated by a program not unlike “Toys for Tots”. I still have an old beat up hardcover copy of the book “The Wind in the Willows” on one of my shelves from the Public Library because the tag on the giving tree at a local department store said that I loved to read. That book still means so much to me to this day.
As I grew older and started earning my own money, I guess I repeated the lessons that I had learned growing up. I never really held the lack that I had experienced growing up against my parents because I knew money was tight and they were doing the best that they could. In recent years as the kids grew and left the home, Mom and Dad both began working jobs that paid decent wages. They bought new vehicles and a new camper. Mom started scheduling regular hair appointments to hide her grays. At one point I asked my Dad to cosign for me to get into an apartment and it was then, in filling out the paperwork, that I realized that the more recent attitudes towards helping their kids financially, was not due to the insufficiency or inability on their own part, but perhaps more of a learned response as well.
I am not here to place judgement or point the finger at my parents. I am merely stating what I came to realize as I discussed these feelings regarding the events that took place on Labor Day with my therapist. I hate asking for help. I hate accepting it even more. I hate being a burden to others. There is a tremendous amount of shame associated with my having a need that I am unable to fill on my own. Is it any wonder that I am an enneagram two considering such a background? Pair that with being the oldest daughter of these eleven kids and well… not only do I have to take care of myself but I have to take care of the younger kids as well, because… you guessed it. Someone had to.
I hadn’t realized how much these feelings affected me on a regular basis or how deeply it hurt until I spent an hour and fifteen minutes in tears in my therapist’s office the following day. The feelings are there, still messy on the surface, with my not knowing what to do with them all. There has yet to be a resolution which is challenging as well, because I often want answers. I want things to be fixed and to be resolved as quickly as possible, but as I am learning almost regularly at this point through my therapy sessions… everything is process. I am learning to be patient with the process.
I know that I am not alone in these types of experiences. Even if not everyone grew up in a family as large as mine, I know there are many out there who took on the role of caretaker due to their parent’s divorce or an early death of their father… perhaps poverty is the thread that binds my story to others with the underlying feelings of shame and lack connected to being honest about their needs without feeling like they, too, are a burden to those around them. Which is why I am sharing these thoughts publicly. I know I am not alone in this, and I want you, too, dear reader to know that you are not alone in this.
Before I left the my therapist’s office, she challenged me to something that made my heart drop to the pit of my stomach because I knew how difficult it would be for me to be successful in what she was asking me to do. “Try to remove the word burden from your vocabulary, especially in reference to yourself and your worth in relation to others…” I know that this, too, is going to take some time to get used to. It is going require lots of intentionality in this process of rewiring my thinking to believe that having needs is human and accepting help is okay. But we’ll get there. I promise.
