If you ask anyone that has known me for a good while, they’ll happily tell you how determined I am.
I think that’s their ‘nice’ way of saying that I’m pretty stubborn and it’s hard to change my mind once I latch onto something.
But, if you ask my mom, she’ll definitely tell you the truth about just how pigheaded I am!
Even then, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always hated asking for help with something.
No matter how mundane or basic the task or situation was, I would only ask for help as a last resort and struggled my way through a handful of situations.
It was annoying in school if I wasn’t paying attention to the teacher and missed something and had to raise my hand to get clarification.
My fellow classmates laughed a time or two when I did that or someone else did.
And, if I didn’t ask the teacher, I asked someone seated near me and would get in trouble for talking during class – I couldn’t win!
Looking back at it now, had I been a hyperactive child instead of a mostly quiet one, I might have gotten diagnosed with ADHD earlier in life.
Still, those horribly shameful moments led to me just going my own way and not asking for help unless it was in a private moment at the teacher’s desk without anyone in earshot.
Plus, I honestly believe that even if I had asked for help during algebra class I still wouldn’t understand half of it.
There’s just something misleading and unnerving when you start throwing the alphabet into math equations and then expect me to graph it.
I could only ever get one of those answers right at a time – either the graph or the equation, it was never both.
But, don’t ask me how I excelled at Geometry because that makes no sense to me either!
I’m sure it has something to do with being a visual learner for the most part, but I don’t have the time or willpower to deep dive into the internet bowels for results on that theory.
Suffice it to say, I don’t like feeling like I’ve inconvenienced someone else or any weird sense of shame for not paying attention to something I clearly don’t care about.
Still, since this broken leg ordeal began, I’ve had to rely on help from my friends and family to have some semblance of a normal life.
It’s gotten better after my surgery to be sure, but when I consider how much further I have to go I’m close to having a meltdown.
Before this incident, it wasn’t an act of Congress to get to the bathroom or fix me something to eat.
I felt like a more productive person running errands for my mom and covering events for the newspaper – it was easy!
And perhaps that’s what I took for granted.
The ease of handling things for myself, taking care of myself, and not having to rely on someone else for the most basic tenets of human independence.
I can certainly say that it’s put things in perspective for me and I’m not looking forward to however long this haul continues.
