Yes, I know, we're not near Samhain yet.

Although I did get the tortuous experience of the Supernatural "Sam Hane" episode over the weekend. I'm still not sure they weren't completely pulling the piss with that one. No, I won't link it. 😝

Nuff said about that.

But this week's blog post is continuing on the theme of how people play things small and the costs of staying silent. The costs of not speaking up.

And if I'm honest, it came up at 2am on Friday night as well. (Yeah, I was out again. We partied hard. Well ok - we partied at a reasonable pace and took the "marathon not a sprint" approach, but still.) Myself and two friends got into a conversation where we were revisiting our youth. And things that two of us considered absolutely normal at the time but really weren't.

Casual sexual assault from strangers, in the form of inappropriate touching and grabbing and other stuff. Assuming that any man giving you a lift somewhere would want some form of payment. The assumption that the adults in our lives weren't to be trusted with certain things and honestly, we were better off sorting ourselves out rather than involving them in anything. The default that from a young age, we were responsible for decisions I recognise now were way beyond our age and maturity levels. We just dealt with shit.

This isn't saying my parents were shit parents. They weren't. But I was left with a feeling of having to rely only on myself. No one else could be trusted to do the thing.

So when I say "staying silent and not asking for help isn't the best idea" - I'm speaking from experience here. It took years, if not decades, for me to learn to say, "Hey, I'm struggling and I need help" before I ended up in hospital. No word of a lie there.

Honestly, you'd think after the 3rd, or even the 4th time you ended up in hospital because of stress and/or mental health issues, you'd start to read the signs? Because remember, I'm in Ireland (and some of this was in the UK). We don't have the "paying for healthcare" issues many of ye have in the States.

This was pure me. I couldn't ask for help. I had learned that asking for help led to me being blamed for whatever situation I was facing. Because the adults around me (or, once I passed 18, the adultier adults) couldn't be wrong.

As always - it's hard work. I remember the first time asking for help -it was through my company's Employee Assistance Program. And I broke down crying when the poor man in the call centre said, "Yes, of course we can help you. Hang on until I get some details."

I think my poor counsellor thought I was incapable of not crying for about 6months.

But I got better. I did the painful work. I can now look back and accept that ok, I made mistakes growing up, but so did the adults around me. The ones that should have been aware of what was going on - they weren't. And that's ok - I survived and I'm thriving now. But you can be damned sure I'll be watching my niece for similar signs!

Independence is sold to us as this great amazing thing. That it's the mature and responsible thing to be independent. To never need help.

And sometimes - it is. But there are times when it's really, really not. Times when asking for help is the responsible, adult, sensible thing to do.

Because we can't carry it all ourselves. We can't hold up the world. It's not up to us to make sure everything is good and well for us and everyone around us.

Learn from my mistakes, basically!!

Bríd libh

Órlagh

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