Why You Can't Accept Help Even When You Want To


Notes from the In-Between: A series about the season where life changes and you don’t yet know what comes next.

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Someone asked me recently what I needed.

And I froze.
Like a deer in the headlights.

What came out was, I don't even know what I need anymore.

Not because there wasn’t anything to help with. There is plenty.
But because I’ve been doing it alone for so long, I’ve lost the language for what I actually need from another person.

That is a strange thing to realize about yourself.

I have people in my life who show up. Genuine people. Offering to help in ways that would actually make a difference.

And I still stand there trying to find the answer and come up empty.

Because part of me feels like I should have been able to handle it all on my own. Like needing help reflects something I should have done differently. Like I’ve let myself down in a way I can’t quite explain out loud.

You hold it together long enough and it stops feeling like a choice. 
It just becomes who you are.

You become the one who handles it. The one who figures it out. The one who doesn’t ask for anything. The one other people come to when they need something.

And then someone offers their hand, and you don’t know what to do with it. Even when it’s someone who would help without wanting anything in return. Accepting it feels like crossing a line you’ve trained yourself not to cross.

I’ve spent a lot of this season learning how to stay with myself. How to sit with what’s hard instead of running from it. How to trust something I can’t always explain.

But letting someone else show up for me is different.

There is a kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from being alone. It comes from not knowing how to let people reach you.

You have the people, you just don’t know how to let them in.

I still go blank when someone asks what I need. But I’m starting to recognize the moment it happens. The pause. The deflection. The instinct to say I'm fine and move on.

And maybe the work now isn’t having an answer yet. Maybe it’s just learning how to stay in that moment long enough to let one exist.

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Related reading from Notes from the In-Between

When the Worst Thing Already Happened and You're Still Here

Trust The Process: On Hope You Can't Explain Yet

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