Content Warning: self-deprecation
Dear stranger,
Have you heard of the phrase, “the squeaky wheel gets the oil?” How about, “a closed mouth doesn’t get fed?” It’s a pretty common sentiment that if you want something you have to ask for it, or better yet go get it yourself. No one’s a mind reader. You can’t expect anyone to just intuit your needs. At the end of the day, if you’re stewing in the existence of your missed opportunities and unaddressed problems, then it’s your own fault for assuming things would just sort themselves out. And yet, I find myself spending my time justifying never going to the few people left in my life for help.
My sister is the one I trust the most, and the one I would most realistically go for help, gun to my head. But, “they have no responsibility,” still rings in my head, even years later. I replay that one time in my senior year of high school, when I had received an email telling me I had qualified for a scholarship for good grades. It was nothing huge, just $1,500 every semester. Compared to my cousin who was the same age as me, getting full rides and sizable scholarships for exemplary accomplishments, $1,500 for a couple A’s and B’s really wasn’t anything at all. But still, this was something you tell other people, and they say how proud they are, right? People would look at you and say good job? I usually keep most things to myself, but maybe this one time, it would be okay. Before dinner, I pulled out my phone and announced that I had something to share with everyone. I hadn’t even pulled up the email yet when my sister said something.
“Ugh, that’s something you have to do yourself!”
I don’t clearly remember what happened next, just that I quickly corrected my sister that I was simply showing them something, and my Dad read the email with an “oh.” Maybe he said good job, it really doesn’t matter. The reason I keep replaying that stitched together reel of a memory—who knows if I’m remembering it right, or if I made that big of a deal of it back then—is because it was the big first instance of my sister validating my fear of how other people, how my own family saw me. They think I’m some sort of parasite that can’t do anything on their own, that I constantly need someone to wait on me hand and foot or else I’ll spontaneously disintegrate into ash. I’m a burden to everyone around me and I throw all my problems to someone else to solve.
If I think that, then that’s just intrusive thoughts and self-deprecation. So whatever, everyone has some self-hate. If my sister thinks it?
That’s reality.
She got mad at me for getting lost the first day of college. She gave me an incredulous, disgusted side eye and ignored me when I asked a simple question about paperwork. She basically told me to figure it out myself when I asked her how to mail a package. She expects me to ask her to solve my problems, and she’s resigned to it, she’s exasperated by it. If I ask for help, I would just once again validate that fact and expose myself as some baby loser that never grew up.
So I would prefer to say “the tall poppy gets cut.”
