First things first: I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I got to see some of my best friends from high school when they came home for break and we TORE IT UP. (By that, I mean we went out for sandwiches and watched television together. Exactly like we did in high school.) As for Thanksgiving, my family celebrated with great friends and we had a lovely time eating turkey and cornbread with people who like/tolerate us. Unfortunately, mom had to bow out because she was struck with tachycardia. (Gee, I wonder if POTS is genetic?)
A week before Thanksgiving, I had a very serious #throwbackthursday and actually threw my back out while shopping at Wegmans. I squatted down to get some marshmallows and nothing has been the same since I stood back up. I’m still in a lot of pain on and off two weeks later (I think I might have sciatica) but people are being very kind to me and letting me take it easy.
As tacky as it sounds, throwing my back out has been a little bit of a learning experience. I might be one of the cockiest people in the world when it comes to asking for help. I generally equate going to therapy and going to my other eight million doctors as “asking for help.” But I’m full of crap, because I forget that there are so many other opportunities in life to ask for help that everyone should take advantage of in order to be happy and functional human beings.
There have been a few opportunities where my back was hurting more than I thought possible, spasming out with every step I take, and my mind has been screaming “ASK FOR HELP. TELL WHO YOU’RE WITH THAT YOU CAN’T KEEP WALKING.” but for some reason I just didn’t. There was such an internal war going on that I thought about for a long time afterwards—I was with people that I knew cared about me, why didn’t I tell them just how bad things were? Why didn’t I tell them that the pain made me think I was going to throw up? Why didn’t I speak up?
I realized that it was all out of fear. I was afraid that they wouldn’t understand. What would happen if I got vulnerable, told them how much pain I was in, and they didn’t care? In one of those moments, I subconsciously decided that I wasn’t prepared for the potential pain of them not understanding me and went to suffer in silence aside from the sharp inhales of breath I couldn’t contain.
In retrospect, given the people I was with, I wish I had spoken up. I was with people who loved me. I was with people who have taken the time to understand me, understand my pain. And worst case scenario, if I asked for help, if I told them I was in pain and they didn’t get it, would the world stop turning? Would they stop caring about me? Would it mean we don’t have fun together? Absolutely not. It would just mean that this isn’t one of the things that we are all on the same page together on. And that’s OK. Because none of us are going anywhere. What matters is that I know I have the option of speaking up and asking for help when I need to.