No Worries if Not

I sat with the text message for 2 hours.

Rereading it. Tweaking it. Deleting + writing. I dissected how it sounded. How it would be received.

Even with all those feelings + thoughts the text itself wasn’t hard text. No one had died. I want delivery bad news. It was 4 sentences asking someone I’ve known for almost a decade. A mentor. Someone I had looked up to for help with money.

Two hours + my stomach was in knots. I’d delete a word, turn my phone face down + walk into the kitchen for no reason. I changed the wording from “I need” to “if it was possible”. I took my dog for a walk. Read it one more time.

Then I sent it.

The exact words I wrote:

I know I don’t typically ask for favors, but this is something I need to take care of something for my kid. If it’s possible could we work something out? I will absolutely continue to show up. I will fulfill everything in every way. I just need some help with this.

Read it again. Mainly because I kept rereading it even after I sent it but also look at it in a he way I started to.

Four sentences. Every single one of them apologizing + deflecting to soften my urgency.

I know that I don’t typically ask for favors. That establishing credit for the fact I’ve never had to ask for anything in the entirety of us knowing each other. Like need is something that needs to be earned.

So Im able to take care of something for my kid. Justifying the need + quickly moving the focus off of myself. I couldn’t just want it. Someone else had to be the reason. Me needing it without any explanation wasn’t enough.

If it’s possible. Me accepting the no before I got a response.

And then the last thing. That’s the one that felt like a punch to the gut.

I will absolutely continue to show up. I will fulfill everything in every way.

I was reassuring + pleading my case to the person that was asking that this would cost them nothing.

I promised to continue being good to her while she decided whether or not to be good to me.

Truth Moment? I trained her to respond to me in the way that she did.

Not on purpose of course. We could even chalk it up to trauma responses.

For years every single room I walked in I answered the same question: how can I support? I said yes on short notice. I filled gaps that weren’t mine. For this person in particular, I sang her praises in rooms she wasn’t even standing in. And somewhere in all those yeses, I stopped being seen as a person + started being seen a an endless resource.

Nobody checks on the resource girl.

Resources don’t have hard weeks.

Resources are just there. Always available.

She didn’t respond for hours. I want to be honest about what those hours did. I checked my phone like it owed me lol. I made up her side of the conversation in my head. I decided she was busy. That she was somewhere really thinking about it. I decided that she was figuring out a way to say yes. That she was actually thrilled to be able to give back in a pinch the same way I had shown up for her.

Then she said no.

I felt like shit. I ate a bunch of trashy food. I cried. Then, I wiped my tears + meditated. Because that’s who I am now. I am the eldest daughter I reminded myself + I will figure it out.

How I always do.

That’s the part that I have been sitting with. Not the “no”. The four words after it.

I moved through this how I’ve moved through many things. Feel the things, feed the things, breath through it, find resolve, get back to self sufficiency before anyone has to be inconvenienced by me, before they know they have impacted me. All of that in under four hours. That’s not healing. That’s rooted efficiency.

I didn’t ask anyone else after that. Not one person. I told myself that there wasn’t anyone else to ask + that felt completely true at that time. Truthfully it still kinda does.

Know what’s truer: no one gave me permission to stop asking. Deep down there was a part of me looking for that permission before I sent that text.

The two hours wasn’t about her. I’d already knew what she would say. That’s what my stomach was in knots about. I knew her response before I typed a single word.

The two hours was about me having to admit, in writing, to another human being that I needed something. It was about me asking someone who knew me for real to see humanity in me.

That’s the thing people don’t warn you about when it appears you have it altogether. You become so fluent in giving that receiving stops being a skill that you have. It becomes a language you can’t speak anymore. I can hold an entire birth. I can hold a friend at 3am. And yet I couldn’t type out four sentences about a need without a 2hour negotiation.

There isn’t a pretty bow at the end of this revelation. I won’t tell you I’ve learned how to ask + now I’m free.

All I got is clarity. Clarity on the spaces that I occupy that treat me as a resource. And not in a pleasant way. Also the clarity in no longer apologizing when asking for things I need.

Nothing fancy. Just a simple ask. And letting the person answer. No cut to self value needed.

Will I still get a “no” ? Maybe. That’s not the point.

This is about standing in authenticity + not being the woman who can’t stand being seen asking.

XO

Denawa Deniece