You Should Have Planned Better

I don’t know when I stopped asking for help. I do know that it’s always been a difficult thing to do. To need help has always felt vulnerable, scary, and unsafe.

I do remember one specific time I asked for help, and I remember clearly feeling as if a line was drawn in the sand.

My dad and I were out for dinner at the Olive Garden. When I think of special dinners with my dad, I remember the Olive Garden.

I was one class away from graduating with my master’s degree, but I didn’t have enough financial aid to pay for it. I asked my dad if he could help me finish that semester rather than waiting for my aid to come through for the next one.

He said no.

I should have planned better.

We’ve revisited this conversation since. He apologized and said it was his one regret. And while I believe him, I think something in me changed that night.

I wonder if that was when I became hypervigilant. When asking for help became dangerous. When asking for help became something to avoid at all costs.

So I started planning.

Planning for every possibility. Every emergency. Every bill, every problem, every what-if I could imagine.

Because if I planned well enough, maybe I would never have to ask again. Maybe I would never have to hear no. Because if I could out-think the future, I could out-think the pain.

Many women become hypervigilant as a form of self-preservation. We learn to anticipate needs before they arise. We learn to solve problems before they become crises. We learn to carry more than our share because it feels safer than trusting someone else to carry it with us.

I am surrounded by powerful, independent women.

I am a powerful, independent woman.

But I wonder sometimes how much of that independence is actually hypervigilance.

How much of it is fear and not really strength, like I keep telling myself?
How much of it is exhaustion parading around as capability?

I look around and see women holding all the strings. Women keeping track of the appointments, schedules, birthdays, bills, feelings, and plans. Women who can do it all. Women who often feel like they have to do it all.

Not carrying everything isn’t necessarily the hardest truth to accept.

The hardest truth is accepting that we believe that if we put even one thing down, no one else will pick it up.

So we hold it all. We do it all. We don’t ask for help.

Then we don’t have to hear “no.”

Or “you should have planned better.”

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ♡