After my last post, I had some people reach out and ask if I was ok. I’m ok now. Thanks for caring. I really mean that. 

It also led to a good conversation with a friend about asking for help. Asking for help is hard. I’ll be honest, I wrote that post without reaching out to anyone or telling anyone besides my husband, who was witnessing me having/trying not to have a panic attack for a good part of the day. My friend referred to it as “screaming into a void,” an apt description, and we talked about how it’s easier to admit things like this to the faceless monolith that is the internet. Or maybe it’s the monstrous insect with so many eyes that one can’t fathom them all – not faceless, but so many faces that a person can’t take in how many faces there are so there might as well be none. 

So I’ll say it again. Asking for help is hard. It’s difficult to be vulnerable. Also, feeling pitied sucks because others can unknowingly belittle you when they’re not struggling and you are. We are also physically distant right now, and so many people are struggling for many different reasons. We question if people want to even hear our troubles because they’re dealing with their own. Plus, I tend to turn to the same people with my complaints, so there are a few people who might view me as a complainer (I mean, it’s my husband, parents and sister – they can think of me as a complainer and still love me), while there’s a decently sized contingent of people in my life who may have never heard me complain. That doesn’t change the fact that I see MYSELF as a complainer when I share my complaints with others. 

Maybe equally telling is I immediately equate sharing my struggles with complaining, which is a trait not held by tough people who know how to do things on their own. Being a complainer has such a negative connotation that I (and presumably others, since I certainly didn’t make this up myself) would rather either not tell anyone or anonymously declare my difficulties to the masses. Plus, I know that so many people’s struggles are bigger and more serious than mine. Admitting I even have struggles makes me feel shallow and weak.

Anyway, when I am struggling, I am so unwilling to be vulnerable with real people who love me that I was more willing to share my problems with the internet, which I view and regularly refer to as evil and the root of all of the problems we’re facing today. I guess the internet didn’t cause the pandemic, but it certainly spread all of the misinformation about it. WEAR MASKS. WHY IS THIS HARD.

The funny thing is, I screamed into the void, and some calm voices answered back. It wasn’t in the way that the internet usually talks back, via comments meant to tear a writer apart behind a guise of anonymity, a way that I fear. It was a few friends and family members texting me, saying they read what I wrote. Some said they struggled with similar things. Others just said they were here. This was an interesting and necessary reminder that the internet is PEOPLE. And some of those people are kind and caring. And maybe next time I’m having a tough day, I can call or text one of them instead.

Thanks for reading. I hope some of this openness is helpful to you too.