It’s Not “Me Against the World”

To say that I was raised in an environment where independence was valued would be an understatement. It wasn’t just that my parents preached self-sufficiency, they firmly believed that needing or asking for help from anyone was a sign of weakness. I am a strong advocate of being independent, but when it is taken to an extreme, the results can be troublesome. Don’t get me wrong, I like being able to tackle the countless projects around the house that Andrea comes up with – the subtle difference between “tackling” and “completing” is a subject that we often debate – on a daily basis. It’s just that, over the past few years, I have realized that the “me against the world” attitude I have developed since childhood, is flawed.

Regardless of the task at hand – chores, sports, school projects, etc. – I worked my buns off to ensure that I could do it on my own and wouldn’t have to ask anyone for help. To this day, I am still not sure if it was foolish pride, needing my parents’ validation, or what, but I can’t even begin to count the number of times I made things much harder than they needed to be. One time, I even strapped a full-size sleeper sofa to my back with a bungee cord and carried it up a flight of stairs, just to avoid the embarrassment of asking for help.

The sense of accomplishment I felt when I was finally able to get the couch up the stairs was drastically overshadowed by a partial hernia and the fact that I was unable to walk upright for nearly four days. Well done.

Unfortunately, it seems as though the “insurmountable obstacle” is always looming and eventually, a challenge arises we can’t handle on our own. For me, it happened when, out of the blue, Tyler started having seizure-like episodes. I have never felt as helpless in my entire life as I did during the 4 – 6 weeks when he was ill and no one could figure out why.

Prior to this, I felt like I could fix just about anything. But this time, my son needed me and there was nothing I could do. I was resigned to pleading with doctors, nurses, testing facilities and insurance companies trying to schedule whatever was necessary to figure out what was wrong. With my ego aside, I begged anyone and everyone for help. And they did.

The response we received from friends, family, coworkers, doctors and everyone in between was overwhelming. People brought us meals, prayed for us, babysat Kailey while we ran Tyler to appointments, researched possible explanations, gave me paid time off at work so I could focus on Tyler, everything. I had spent my entire life refusing to believe that I needed help from anyone, but I was wrong. I never would have survived without all of the help that I had previously been too proud to ask for.

Since that time, I have come to realize that it isn’t me against the world. Or at least if I continue to think like that, I know that I won’t get very far. The people in my life, and the relationships that I have with them, have gotten me where I am today. There is a part of me that still struggles with admitting that I need help, but sometimes I do.

Often, there are challenges that I face that are overwhelming, or where I simply don’t have the right skills to get the job done. Having a strong support network has allowed me to reach out and get help when I need a hand. And it hasn’t made me less of a person, I feel like it has actually made me stronger.

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