Strong Enough to Ask for Help
My mom took me to a therapist for the first time when I was fifteen. I remember her encouraging smile as she pushed me into the small, dark office lined with bookshelves and a book window. Convinced I didn't need therapy, I sighed and immediately told the therapist, "I'm just here because my mom wants to be. She's really the one who needs therapy."
After a shorter conversation in which I insisted I was fine, the man shrugged and instead started a casual conversation that ended with him showing me pictures of his kids on his phone. At the end of the half hour, I walked out of that room smugly, feeling like I had proven to the world that I was strong enough to get by on my own.
To be honest, as hard as my teenage years were, I did manage to get through them mostly on my own. Maybe I really was lucky enough to not need therapy at that time, but whether or not that was true, I certainly internalized the belief that I was somehow stronger for getting through it on my own. That part, at least, was not true at all.
Years later, I lost my mother to cancer while we were living in Mexico. Once I returned to the United States, I immediately plunged into working two jobs at a time and taking online classes. I left myself no room to think or even begin to process my grief. I spent the next year of my life either working up to seventy hours a week or traveling full time, whether it was living abroad or living out of my car and driving back and forth across the United States. Either way, I was constantly distracting myself.
After a year and a half of pushing my feelings away, I started to break. I was a full-time student at university by this point, and working thirty hours a week on the side. The relationship I was in started going south, and some family from Mexico was visiting the states, bringing memories of my trauma from the time of my mother's death with them. In an attempt to cope, I started using drugs more and more frequently, which sent me spiraling. I felt so lonely and isolated, and yet I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone.
I felt stupid, because I had been through objectively more difficult times than what I was currently going through, and yet I felt worse than ever. I felt like I didn't deserve to get help, and that it was a sign of weakness that I couldn't get through the situation on my own. So I kept pushing it back.
But then one night after a particularly bad trip, I ended up curled up on the floor of my apartment whispering "I need help" over and over again as tears streamed down my face.
The next day, I finally emailed one of my professors.
"Hi professor, sorry this is out of the blue but I was hoping we could talk. It's nothing school related, I just need some general life advice and thought you might be willing to help me out."
It took me fifteen minutes to muster up the courage to push send. But once I did, I felt relief wash over me, and later in the week I met my professor and got all the advice I needed.
After taking just that small step, asking for help got easier. I found a mentor who helped me use writing to cope, and finally, I started therapy.
Therapy was harder than I thought it would be. I found myself stopping mid-sentence to choke back tears so many times that first session, but my therapist gently pushed me to keep going. I explained so much about my life and how alone I had been feeling recently, and by the time I left, I felt changed in some small significant way.
That time instigated a period of healing for me that lasted for months. I confronted things I had not had the strength to before, accepted some tragic realities, and started to forgive myself for things I had started letting harden my heart. It was a process of shedding many bittersweet tears and surrendering to my pain, and it's still one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I never, ever would have done it if I hadn't had people around me helping me along.
Now I realize that asking for help was the strongest thing I could do. It takes so much strength and courage to be able to admit to yourself that you need other people. It's so easy to convince yourself that you have it figured out and that you can do it on your own while at the same time building a wall around your heart that someday you won't even be able to get past yourself.
Vulnerability is fucking hard. Showing another person your pain and asking them for help is by far one of the most vulnerable things a human can experience, and it's scary to feel like you're putting yourself in someone else's hands. But the truth is, there are kind people out there –– whether you know them yet or not –– who are willing to help you and make sure that you feel supported and safe. I know that people can be assholes sometimes (trust me, I've had my fair share of people who used the information I trusted them with against me) but I refuse to let them shake my faith in people. If I didn't keep trying to open up and ask for help, I wouldn't have so many of the people who matter most to me in my life right now.
So if you're in a place where you feel alone and unsure of who to turn to, have faith. If you're not comfortable talking to friends about a problem, then look into therapy, or try talking to your professors or even family members if you feel comfortable. I promise you that there is someone in your life who is willing to listen to you and be there for you. It's scary, I know. But one day, you'll be so proud of yourself for taking that step. You are strong enough to ask for help.