A Good Way to Shut People Down

When we moved to Brooklyn, I didn't expect it to be easy, but still I was surprised at how brutal our introduction was. My girls were three years old, and four months old. I was coming off a C-section, and I'd been sick with some virus or another since Lucy was born. When we boarded the plane, both girls and I were fighting stomach viruses and colds. Simultaneously. I was nursing. We arrived in the dark on a cold Sunday night in March. Justin picked out our apartment alone while I was putting our house in Colorado on the market, so I hadn't seen our new home yet. Seeing it that first night was tricky because the electric company was working in the street and our building was completely without power when we arrived to inspect it. I walked into the entryway with the girls, and every possession that hadn't gone in the moving truck, and the hallway suddenly filled up with flashlights and voices. Our neighbors had come out to introduce themselves. There's nothing more reassuring than disembodied voices in the dark, right? Someone loaned us a flashlight. I accepted reluctantly, worried that it was an imposition. I helped the girls up the precarious staircase that felt downright treacherous in the darkness. After "seeing" the apartment, mostly by street light, we rushed to the store to buy the air mattresses that would be our only furnishings for the week, until our moving truck arrived the following weekend. My husband went to work the next morning (the rest of us were still horribly ill and stumbled out in search of toilet paper), and he was kept an hour and a half late in meetings. I saw the neighbors again, in the light where I met their faces. A family below us had a young son and seemed excited to have more children in the building. Emma offered to watch the girls for us when the movers arrived. I thought she was being polite. Then she offered again a couple days later and I considered the possibility that she really meant it. The baby was pretty stationary, but my three-year-old would have trouble staying out of the way as movers carried heavy loads blindly through two entrances. So I accepted. I think I went back to get her three hours later, but Emma says it felt more like twenty minutes. (It was at least two hours.) I was worried about imposing,leaving her so long that they'd regret offering and never do it again. When I knocked on the door, Emma asked, "Are you sure?" Movers were still filing in and out. But I was at the limit of what I was able to receive. "Yes," I said. I thought I was not overstaying our welcome, but when Emma and I tell the story now I realize that "whisking" my daughter away made Emma feel like we didn't trust them. It took me a year to confess to her how difficult it was for me to receive that gift, how I couldn't even believe they really meant it--100 percent and all day long, if necessary. It took two years for me to learn how my "manners" really made her feel. I'm really thankful that our friendship survived that hard day, and I'm sad that my struggle to receive shuts down the people offering me real and true gifts. When someone offers me anything that is hard for me to accept, I remember Emma on moving day. I say, "Thank you." And then I say, "Yes."

Comments

[Dave Lemen]

I can relate to this story! Thanks for sharing it. I am simultaneously afraid to impose on others, but oh so happy when I can help someone else with a need. It's clear that our lovely little community here is successful to the degree that we've overcome that barrier.

[rowena]

Wow. What awesome NY neighbors you have. I know about that difficulty receiving thing. Me too. Why is it so hard?

[Trish]

Great post. I'm always ready to help but so reluctant to receive help. This is a lesson that keeps showing up that I'm stubborn to learn. The next opportunity that arrives I will think of you and your post. My manners are sometimes my protective boundaries, 'I don't need anyone's help', etc.

Thank you for making me sit with this today.

Love, Trish

[Wanda]

I can relate to this. What a beautifully written piece. It is always interesting to look back together at an interaction such as this and debrief it. "What I meant was..." What I felt was..." I am learning not to make assumptions about what others think or feel and it is still quite a challenge at times.

[Christiane]

I have been in that exact situation more often than I could count: Pushing away someone who's offering help by relying on the "manners" that I was taught as a kid. "You don't impose on someone". "It is impolite to use someone like this". And so on.
It took so long to realise I don't need those artificial rules. It took even longer to realise they were part of what was keeping me away of what I wanted most: real friendship and connection. Thanks for sharing, Jen, it is so good to now I'm not alone with this.

[Katie]

This is so important. Thanks for sharing - I echo everyone else in that it's hard for me to receive, but I'm learning what a beautiful thing it can be, and what connection it can create.

[Renae C]

Those lovely old tapes that run in our heads that we can't seem to erase:

Don't ask - for help
Don't tell - the family secrets
Don't feel - anything

I'm trying so hard not to record those same messages in my daughters - but instead
Ask -for what you need
Tell - your story with passion
Feel the whole range of emotions - and ask for what you need!

[amy]

thank you for sharing this story. it resonated deeply with me. i used to brush off questions about how i was doing or deflect heart felt compliments with self deprecating jokes. it took some dear, persistent friends to make me understand how my unwillingness to trust in their love made them feel. it is still difficult to change old habits but i'm trying to get better at accepting help, love, compliments and anything else that comes my way.

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[...] others have written about this topic recently – which helped inspire this post. See Jen’s “A Good Way to Shut People Down” and Annie’s “Not [...]