Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

This is a more difficult entry to write than it probably looks like. I've been meaning to write it since about the beginning of the year; I've been trying to write it for the past two months or so. I haven't completely untangled all the reasons why it's difficult, though I know some of them, I think.

Friends have complained that I'm difficult to help. I don't want to be. Well, first of all, I don't want to need so much help, which is the first obstacle, but realizing that I do need help, I wish I could unlearn the roadblocks. A while back, faireraven wrote about how some people are really frustrating to try to help. I'm certain she wasn't talking about me, but I did recognize some of myself in her complaint as well ... that's a second obstacle, and I hope a much smaller one. And there's this feeling I have trouble shaking, that either I somehow don't deserve a whole lot of help, or that it's unfair to rely on my friends for the help I need. Or that asking for help makes me look bad -- grasping or something. No, I don't claim that makes even the least bit of sense. I'm talking about my emotional upfuckedness.

The thing is, I need help. Actually, I need a lot of help. Friends tell me, "If there's anything I can do to help, just ask," and first I can't think of what help I need, and then when I do think of it, enough time has gone by that it's like starting a whole new conversation and I feel like I'm asking out of the blue instead of filling in the blanks.

As I said, I've been thinking about this post since the start of the year, at least, and I started writing it back in, uh, April I think. I've erased the whole thing twice, and keep putting versions of it on hold "to get back to and finish later". Maybe today it'll actually get posted. Maybe.

As most of you know, I suffer from fibromyalgia and cannot work full-time or really keep a steady schedule. What work has come my way has been pretty sparse, and I'm in pretty bad shape financially. So obviously I can really use gifts of money. But I've got these huge cultural barriers to asking for it, and the really stupidly ironic thing is that folks who have offered to help have wound up making those barriers higher: that wonderful surprise gift that allowed me to go to ConCertino (which is something I never could've asked for (which makes it all that more nifty a surprise gift, BTW)); the offers (and in the past couple of days, donations) of money to pay for cat upkeep. They're very much appreciated, but at the same time, I feel like asking for additional help when I've just gotten some (there's probably a whispered "that I don't even deserve" faintly in the background) seems ... crass? Greedy? I dunno. Note that this is not y'all's problem: it's a problem in my own darned head. Helping is good; I just need to get better at coping with accepting (and needing) help.

Heck, I have trouble asking people for money they actually owe me, before I even get to the problems asking for help.

By the way, I figured out why it was so much easier for me to accept financial help for taking care of Perrine. She's another being that I'm responsible for, and somehow that makes it a different set of mental rules than taking care of myself. (Yes, someone did point out that my having a roof over my head is good for the cat too. That's logical.) And although the reason I'm keeping her is that a bunch of my friends decided that they thought I should be blessed with a cat (and yes, I wanted to keep her), the way the assistance plays out in my head is that it's for her sake, so it doesn't count the same as asking for help for myself. Even so, it took me how long to get around to telling people where to send the donations? And even though the money is so very much more convenient, I feel ... I dunno, less [some-negative-adjective] for accepting gifts of food, toys, a scratching post.

My mother helps me out a lot with money. She's paying a loan on the house I'm living in. She gives me money to pay some of my bills and groceries. She's also finding it more difficult to come up with extra money to hand me. But I try very hard, by guessing which bills I can be late on each month and get away with only a nastygram and not major repercussions, to balance the essentials on what I can scrape together from Mom, and from performing. (A few people have helped out with groceries, which has made a big difference some months.) The current challenge is to avoid having my health insurance cancelled, buy the prescription drugs I'm almost out of, keep my phone/ISP/electricity connected, and pay off last winter's heating oil bill before it gets cold again in November. But those problems are ongoing ones. They'll be postponed, but not fixed, with simple gifts. And even if a bunch of you wanted to take responsibility for keeping me afloat and insured, you've got yourselves to take care of. (Not that I'll say no to a gift -- it's taken me a while, but I'm trying to learn not to say no.) I have other problems that monetary donations will help with, and I'll get to those later.

I know friends want to help, even though I can't seem to bring myself to ask for help, or to tell them how to help me. And I'm incredibly fortunate to have the friends I have, and I know it. My current car and the one before it were both gifts. Y'all are helping me to care for Perrine. I've gotten other gifts, some of which I'm not allowed to talk about. I've got a lot of friends who care about me. And I'm ... messed up about the whole help thing.

I've gotten some help in the form of advice that I've not been able to follow. Advice that sounds simple enough, but that I for various reasons find difficult. And that probably looks a lot like what Faireraven was complaining about. Obviously I should apply for Social Security Disability Income. And probably food stamps. And maybe some other programs I don't know about. I know this. I've been trying to force myself to do this. I need help. I need someone to hold my hand and lead me through the process. Yes, I know it's not rocket science (actually I've joked that if it were rocket science, I wouldn't have difficulty with it). I can't articulate very well why it's so difficult. But it is. I feel ... like a failed grown-up for not being able to handle beaurocratic red tape on my own, but if I don't [expletive]ing admit it, I'll never get help getting it done.

Gee, I wrote that whole paragraph and the next one before noticing that I described what I need but never got around to asking for it. Isn't the subconscious tricky? Okay, I'm asking: If there's someone who can help me apply for SSDI, MEAP, and other assistance programs, please let me know. And bug me about it once a week until I unscrew my head enough to accept the help.

I need help selling my photographs, and selling my services as a photographer and a musician. Somebody (Nancy maybe?) asked me over the weekend what the difference was between "selling" and "marketing", and I'm not sure what the important distinction is, but I can push the Homespun Ceilidh Band CD and sell it, while finding it very difficult to promote my services or my solo work. If an agent were to take some significant percentage of money I wouldn't have earned at all without the agent's help, I'd still be ahead. And I don't understand the Arts game/business yet. If anyone can help me out in this, I'd appreciate it.

I'm sure there are other things like that, that I need help with and which would then solve larger problems, that I'm just not thinking of right now.

And here's something where monetary donations are a problem-solver: I'm supposed to have a photo exhibit in September. My work is supposed to hang in Xando coffehouse in Baltimore. I need to make prints to hang, and I'd hoped I could just set aside a little money here and there to pay for those, but I've had a bunch of bad months in a row. I would be very grateful for help getting display prints made so that I can actually have this show, and maybe manage to sell a few. So I'm asking. This is not a "really bad things will happen if I can't do this" thing, but it's something I really want to do, which might wind up helping my financial situation (if any of my work sells).

That's something I haven't felt using the bill-paying money from Mom for would be right. So I'm asking my friends.

(And that reminds me -- I need help figuring out how to price my work when trying to sell it through such an exhibit. I really don't know the art business at all. And I've got some insecurity over the "worth" of my work.)

I've also got around 160 rolls of exposed film in my freezer that I haven't been able to afford to get developed, including at least two Pennsic Wars worth. It's too late to get any of the Pennsic film developed to take with me to War this year to try to sell reprints, but I would gladly accept contributions to that end so that I can try to sell prints next year. (Two merchants have offered me table space to put out an album and order forms, or a stack of prints if I feel confident enough to guess what'll sell and get prints made ahead of time. I do have photos from 1997, 1998, and 1999 in an album.)

And I had this great idea (well, butterfluff had this great idea and smacked me over the brain with it) to make little pins out of brass (like the Cyprus pins that I made for my relatives) to sell at Pennsic or over eBay. I need brass, or money with which to buy brass, if I'm going to do that. Please?

Finally, the one I really feel self-conscious about asking for, even though it's something I've got an obvious excuse for with my disability: I could really use help taking care of my house. When I have a reasonably good day physically, there's almost always something more urgent that needs to be done first. But I'd love to get the furniture and the Boxes Of Stuff rearranged so that the house looks like I actually live here, instead of a place where a bunch o' stuff just happened to land.

Okay, now I've written this, which has been difficult enough. Next I get to try to force myself to actually post it...

If you can (and are willing to) help me with any of these, please forgive me for being difficult to help. Bug me about scheduling the things that I find scary that you can help me with, or the things I feel shy about. For my part, I'm going to try really hard to notice when I'm avoiding, and nag myself not to do that. If you want to send money, feel free to tell me which problem the money is for -- if you think my photo exhibit is a worthwhile endeavor and want to designate your gift for that instead of groceries, I'll honor that. (And this is part of the reason I wanted folks to tell me when the money they send me for Perrine is for her care; so that I and you both know the cat money is for the cat, not for the "me" stuff.)

It feels so very strange to be asking, "Please send me money for ____." Even stranger than, "Please help me wade through these processes." And I don't expect help for myself, but I also know that if I never ask, anyone who does want to help won't know.

Okay, I told myself I was going to send this today, and if I start picking apart all the ways this makes me feel (or tweaking it because I don't feel it's well-enough written), I won't finish it until after Pennsic. First step: force myself to send it. Second step: convince myself not to delete it in embarrassment ten minutes later. Wish me luck.