My neighbor is seventy-seven and she still works.  She's lived with her son for the last eleven years, since she left her abusive husband.  Two weeks ago, her trunk latch broke, hubby helped her out with some zip ties.  Her sister requires surgery but also waits hand and foot on her senior, incontinent husband who refuses to wear a daiper.  Other stuff going on too.  Last week, her car wouldn't start, the trunk light had been on for the past four days and had drained the battery.  She sat at Shoppers Drug Mart for hours, waiting for AMA or her son to help her.  Shoppers is 3 km from here, I could have walked it.  

She finally made it home after dark, just as we came home from supper out.  Her son was helping her, had boosted the car and and removed the lightbulb in the trunk.  She started telling me what had happened and then burst into tears, so I gave her a long hug and listened.

She's never asked for help, doesn't like asking for help.  She lived her whole life with an abusive man who threatened to kill her.  The police didn't take her complaints seriously.  She sheilded her two sons from the abuse she suffered.  She's a cancer survivor.  The son she lives with is seriously depressed, an alcoholic and doesn't really talk to her.

I asked her why she didn't call us for help.  Her words, "I don't like to ask for help."  I asked her who convinced her that she isn't allowed to ask for help.  She didn't know and it breaks my heart to see a lovely lady, a hard working woman, so afraid to ask for help.  

She's not alone.  I hate asking for help, although I have improved with age.  I got so used to doing it all that I just did it.  Also, if you don't ask for help, nobody can say no.  You don't make yourself vulnerable, don't open yourself up for hurt.  It's a form of protection that just hurts.  Nobody can do it all.  We all need help sometimes.

Our society also encourages the myth of the individual, that self reliance is all important.  Except we're all babies to begin with, requiring care.  We all get sick, we will all die and unless we have a catastrophic death, we will require care while we're dying.  Humans need each other.  We need a human touch, a hug, a kind word.  We are more a collective than individuals except we seem to have forgotten that.

None of us would eat if there were not farmers.  None of us would be able to buy goods unless other human hands had made them, packaged them, and driven them to our city or town.  When we're ill, we need doctors, nurses, and techs.  All of us rely on each other without even realizing it. 

My lovely neighbor, and me, we isolate ourselves in hopes of avoiding pain and rejection.  It's not possible.  To be alive is to open ourselves to pain and rejection, and to still go on, to deal with it, to forgive, to have compassion with ourselves and those that hurt us.  None of this is easy and life seems filled with suffering, no wonder we seek so desperately to avoid pain.