Help: receiving it, asking for it, and making use of it once you have it

I knew I should have asked for help cutting my pork steak.

After a few minutes, and about halfway through the meal, I decided the pain in my shoulder was enough to stop me eating, so I asked Steve if he wanted to finish off the veg for me. "Did you want me to cut things up for you?" he said. Well yes. But actually no I didn't. I wanted to be able to manage a proper adult Sunday dinner for myself, which means cutting meat while holding it still with my left hand, and forking it into my mouth with my left hand. A combination of my struggle with this and the use of the fork in my left hand brought on a muscle spasm. Steve commented he knew he should have cut the meat for me but didn't want to belittle my abilities.

There will be bubble and squeak for lunch tomorrow.

*****

I am so crap at asking for help.

And when I do, I tend to forget that I have the help and just carry on regardless. Take the planning process I went through before the op. I asked my friend Ghis who is a medical herbalist, to go through my supplements with me and work out when I should resume taking what supplements, and what to add. Needless to say the only part of it I'd remembered was the Vitamins E and D3 to start when I get home from hospital! So today, when I was putting up my medications for the week, I noticed a large tub of glucosamine, which jogged my memory that it is now 4 weeks post-op and I should be taking that, and also the Organic Beauty Oil from NYR Organic, which is full of omega compounds and which I've been taking since its release. Both of these will help with my knee and hip joint problems and mean I can walk better, so they will be started tonight.

*****

So why would this be? Well I think it goes back to me being an only child, and learning at an extremely early age that I had to sort things out for myself, that I couldn't trust my parents to help me and that if I needed their help, it was more often than not delivered with raised voices or slaps. I think it goes back to this "self-settling" nonsense that was practised when I was a baby: this is where you leave your crying child until they stop crying. One of my earliest memories was having a "tantrum", and being locked in the living room. I vividly remember sitting there, and thinking "well that's it, I'll never see my mom again" and crying even louder and harder. At that point I decided that, if my mother wasn't going to be any help to me when I couldn't stop crying, I would call on whatever help was available - and I'm pretty sure that was when my "invisible friends" started to materialise.

I created my own world - Christinonia - where I was ruler, full of people who actually liked me, enjoyed my company, and talked to me as if I was a friend. They did what I asked: if I needed their help and support, I got it. Even though nobody else could see them, I certainly could. (This ability did fade as I got older) Of course, now I know who they are - they are my spirit family and, as I once said to a medium who visited me, I keep a full house. Even now, I talk to them and they do really talk back to me. However, it took some time before I sorted the good voices - the ones who were always supportive - from the bad voices, who at their worst advised me to kill myself as I had made a real cock up of my life (aged 15). Sometimes they reappear, but now I know them and I remind myself that I'm only hearing them because I'm tired and I need to sleep

So, if I have nothing to take away from this episode of enforced reflection, it is that if I need help, I just need to ask and it will arrive. Of course, I then have to remember that I asked and it is there!