It is a common topic. It is a fraught topic for me...
I do not like asking for help...ever. I prefer to handle things myself...always. I am grateful when someone sees that I need help and just helps. Asking makes it all worse for me.
There is something about needing someone else to do something for me that makes me feel incompetent and scared. I think mostly I am afraid that they will let me down...or that the help they give will not be what I need and then I have this weird, hard situation where someone helped but really didn’t.
I will completely own that I am hard to help. I am so particular in my habits that the help that I want or need so specific that anyone who might be poised to help has to be super close to me to even know where to start. And even then, they get it wrong a great deal of the time. Again, I am hard, I know.
I also have a shitty help record. The times that I do ask for it, so often result in a complete and utter failure from the other person that I am have kind of been conditioned to not even bother asking anymore. I could give you lots of examples...but this one should give you a good idea.
My son has need a lot of help over the years. He has some issues and we are constantly trying to help him find new ways to deal with his evolving and changing life. So far, other than medication, the help has been limited. I can’t tell you how many times I have reached out to people who are in positions to help him/us but the help that is promised, advertised or available isn’t really available...
“Sure we can help...$50,000 per month.”
“Sure we can help, but you have to drive him to and from LA every day.”
“I am sorry we aren’t taking a new clients right now.” (This has been told to me for months)
“I think he would be great fit, but we don’t take your insurance.”
“I am sorry, I know we are a crisis line, but we don’t have anyone available to help you right now...” Every single time I have called.
There really are no services for kids with problems. Oh, they advertise everywhere and pay great lip service to wanting to help...but no one really does.
I feel like I have exhausted all of my options. And am standing at the end of a dead end street with this kid who is wonderful and talented and great but needs expertise that I do not possess. He and I are standing there looking at each other - he angry at me that I have walked us down yet another dead end road and me feeling lost, lonely and defeated that I was promised that this time it would be different.
I am tired. I am exhausted. I just don’t have it in me anymore. And he deserves better...I am just failing repeatedly. I can’t even summon up the enthusiasm anymore...I just feel like I have done it all, repeatedly, and now he is on his own...except I can’t say that. I can’t do that. He is 15 and needs something more for me...only I have no idea where to get it or how to provide it.
It is hard to talk about...people do want to help. They offer suggestions, well meaning suggestions that I have tried over and over again. Ideas that I have been doing and re-doing since he was 5. I am not saying that I have done everything, but pretty fucking close.
So I am standing at the end of this very long and tiring road trying to figure out what comes next. I have asked for help and all I get is more evidence that we are standing at this dead end together. No one really seems to care. It is only about the money. And I do not seem to have enough of that to do much of anything.
So I am left with the mother’s greatest dilemma...what to do now? Where do I turn when all the places I have turned, have turned me down? Where do I reach out for help when all roads have led me to this dead end...again?
I haven’t a fuckin clue...
So I am going to just sit down...try to learn the lesson of the dead end. I am going to try to see what this dead end is trying to teach me. I am going to try to see what to do now.
Just for today, I am going to stop the maniacal asking for help. I just can’t bear another day like yesterday. Where I push and jump and grab and beg and plead and I am left dangling holding onto my kid while he slips further from my grasp...
Today I am just pulling my beach chair out of my car and sitting the fuck down. A mini sit in while the powers that be do whatever they do. Which so far, is not do anything to help.
I am trying not to feel completely defeated. I am trying to keep a positive attitude. I am trying to keep moving forward. I am trying...but I would be lying if I didn’t say that I am losing faith, hope and any kind of view of a path forward.
Today, I am going to try to learn the lesson of the repeated dead end...in the ever elusive hope that if I just stop, perhaps I can learn something new, something that I haven’t seen before. Perhaps help is available that I am missing in my drive and push forward...perhaps the dead end is the help...
