Skip to main content

I Need Help

I need help in every aspect of my life.  It took my a very long time to realize just how much help I need.  Left to my own devices I have very little independent agency.  Outside of my creative endeavors I am not naturally inclined toward action.  I am absentminded to a fault, though I do remember to take care of myself.  I forget about chores, dates, and rent.  I cannot support others.

On my own, I'm capable of trying to do things.  But I usually opt not to.  I can't see ways forward in the world.  When it's not clear what I should do, and when I can find no clarification of such, I do nothing.  I'm comfortable doing nothing.  Trying to act with no guidance causes me severe anxiety.  When pressed or judged I retreat.  I am comfortable retreating.  Being that the world is hopelessly confusing to me I rely heavily on the safety of inaction - the only safety I know.  Forced to leave my zones of safety I experience extreme stress.

In the past I have tried to fight through all this.  Trying to subsist on my own I had no choice.  With no one to help me and no recourse to retreat, I could only move forward into pain.  I had to endure anxiety comparable to that which soldiers feel in a foxhole.  I was barely capable of passing for an allistic person, but that gave people the false impression that I didn't need help.  It doesn't take much to convince people to ignore suffering. They want to ignore it because helping requires a commitment and weakness is anathema.  So I was able to hurt in obscurity, which seemed best.  But now there are people in my life who want to help me and I'm seeing for the first time the extent to which I need help.  And I am worried that I won't get it because I can almost pass as competent.

But I'm not competent to conduct my life alone.  I have always had to seem strong.  But I've never been strong.  Forced to walk barefoot on broken glass, I've tried to do so as little as possible.  But any amount of trying can look like capability.  The assumption that I am fine on my own has proven detrimental to me all my life.  While I prefer my own company, I need constant, patient help to navigate the world.  And it is my great misfortune to realize this only now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Man Is Not Great: The Evolution of Anthropocentrism

Why do humans care whether their species is special? Why are they so invested in their specialness that they're uncomfortable with the idea that they aren't? Why is it a bitter pill to swallow that humans aren't uniquely important in the universe, that they aren't the intended end of evolution, and that their wondrous and diverse subjective experiences emerge from the same physical processes observable in "lower" animals? I think that the maladaptive human tendency to insist upon their specialness in the universe is an extension of an adaptive tendency to self-advocate in their tribes. Consider fear. The predisposition to turn around when you feel like something might be behind you is likely to save you when there really is something there. Most of the time, when you can't help but turn around on the dark basement steps, there's no threat. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s better to turn unnecessarily than to do nothing in a moment of danger. That...
Post a Comment
Read more

Threat and Opportunity

Humans see everything as either a threat or an opportunity. These are the only classifications they have. A threat could be a corporal threat, like a violent person, or it could be a threat to their attention, like a boring person or a waste of time.   You're not in control of whether something looks like a threat or an opportunity. You can certainly apply control to turn one into the other, but your first impressions of anything are unconscious. I'm a waste of time. There's nothing to be gained from socializing with me because I'm profoundly socially impaired. I have no status and no way to earn status, so I'm a threat to attention. People who choose to pay attention to me find the endeavor prohibitively expensive of their energy. Attending to me is necessarily a struggle against the Darwinian impulse to conserve energy.  We can call this a rejection response.   I've said that humans naturally have a psychological allergy to me, but that's not a good...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Human Protocol

Humanity is a spectrum. Some people move through human society without ever belonging in it. I'm such a person. Every thought, every emotion, every sensation, everything your internal organs do, your balance, your muscle tone, your proprioception, every experience you have, from the big ones to the little ones, corresponds to something that happens in your brain: a neural event. Most neural events are beyond our direct control. Every neural event has a trigger. Someone says your name and you turn. You like a song, so you turn it up. What triggers neural events is determined by things like your genes, your upbringing, your culture, and your values. Many neural events are reserved for human-to-human interactions. If you encountered a mosquito that spoke English, you'd recategorize it, and you might change the way you went about trying to keep it from biting you. It would qualify for a kind of consideration that we don't usually offer mosquitoes. It would be more than just an ...
Post a Comment
Read more