“I need some help.”

It seems simple enough to ask for help, but it is a very hard thing to do (and to clarify, I’m not talking about anyone seeking help for addiction or other things like it – I’m speaking of financial assistance). We are encouraged in America to ‘pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps’ and in movies, books, and television we see character after character defiantly turn help away, always loudly proclaiming, “I don’t need your charity!” Why is it so hard to ask for help? Maybe it’s because, at least here in the United States of America, weakness and vulnerability are held in disdain. Asking for help is construed as a failure of the person in need of aid, and society roundly mocks those who require welfare or food stamps or unemployment insurance, or pretty much any kind of help at all from the government. In far too many cases we portray those who accept such assistance as lazy failures who have made a choice not to work out of a desire to be taken care of by more deserving ‘hard working’ people. A powerful stigma has been attached to governmental assistance and I know of many instances where people who were rightfully entitled to and in desperate need of such help have refused to accept it in order to avoid the negative associations with even needing such help to begin with, let alone taking it. I know this because I am one of those people.

On September 18^th, 1998, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back as I rose to leave my first period class. I was born with Scoliosis and had a major surgery when I was 3-years-old, but in the 10-years after that surgery I had never had back pain of any kind; since that September 18^th, I have never spent a single day out of intense back pain, and all of those days without hurting have long since faded from memory, and now seem like a dream of someone else’s life. The constant pain I deal with has put me in a situation where doing even the slightest bit of physical work is almost impossible. I can’t stand for very long, and while I can sit for a longer period of time, even that will hurt before too much time has passed. Walking or running hurts because my many spinal surgeries have left me with a fused spine and without the natural shock absorption that is a normal feature of the backs of most human beings. I am forced to take large quantities of powerful medications to deal with my suffering which makes many jobs impossible and makes driving even short distances something I must plan hours in advance to be sure my head is clear. I am in pain when I close my eyes to sleep at night, and again when I open them in the morning. It is my constant companion, and judging from the fact that most people develop back pain as they age, I’m not expecting it to get any better as I get older.

Because of my disability, I am eligible for many kinds of governmental assistance. While I enjoy the benefits of having Medicare, I have never accepted certain other things that I’m eligible to receive; I have not and cannot foresee accepting food stamps and welfare due both to the stigma attached to such things and my own foolish pride. I live a Spartan existence on the meager amount of disability money I get from the government while I simultaneously look for a job that will allow me to take advantage of my intelligence and my specific abilities, but it is hard to tell potential employers right off the bat that there are things one cannot do. I don’t even like to accept help when moving a heavy box; I refuse help and try to do it myself. Afterwards I’m either forced to admit defeat and accept the assistance I had refused before, or I manage to do the job myself and then spend the rest of the day – and sometimes more than one – dealing with the ramifications of my foolish decision.

I almost don’t know why I bring this up because I don’t expect to start seeking out or accepting aid tomorrow or any day soon. I have seen this strain of stubbornness in others both within and outside of my family, and have seen it lead to death too. I honestly believe that my grandfather’s death last year was in large part due to his refusal to accept the offer of my Aunt to move in with her both during and after Super storm Sandy hit New York and flooded his house in October of 2012. He finally took her offer after about a week of staying there freezing in his home and being forced – along with my step-grandmother, who had bad lungs for most of her life – to breathe in the mold of the rotting walls and hardwood floors. Just under a year later my step-grandmother Renee was dead, and my grandfather died two months after her. It should be a flashing neon light warning me of what can happen when one puts stubbornness and foolish pride ahead of necessity, and yet I have not changed my ways and I keep trying to deal with my disability the same way I have for years, keeping my head barely above the crashing waves while I refuse to accept the aid of the nearby rescue boats.

Asking for help is not easy and accepting it even less so. As a society we need to do a better job of teaching our children that it is OK to admit weakness and that requiring help is not some kind of moral failure. I hope we can pass this lesson on to future generations and remove the stigma of seeking help. And I hope that I too learn the lesson before I pass a point of no return, because over 16-years of near constant agony hasn’t been enough to convince me