Daisy asks for what she needs without apology. She is hungry, she tells me. She is lonely, she tells me. She is frightened, she tells me. I have been trying to learn this for thirty-four years.
Daisy has never once apologised for needing something. She has never prefaced a request with ‘I’m sorry to bother you’ or ‘I know this is a lot to ask’ or ‘don’t worry about it, I’m fine.’ She is hungry and she tells me. She is lonely and she tells me. She is frightened by the thunder and she tells me by climbing directly onto my chest.
I have been trying to learn this for forty-eight years. I am not good at it yet.
“She is frightened by the thunder and she tells me by climbing directly onto my chest.”
Mental health, I have come to believe, is largely a practice of asking for what you need. Not performing wellness. Not managing the impression of coping. Actually saying: I am not okay, and I need something, and I am going to tell you what it is.
This is terrifying. It is also, I am slowly learning, the only way through. Daisy taught me this not through any grand gesture but through the simple, daily, completely unembarrassed act of needing things and saying so.
I am still learning. But I am learning. And sometimes, when the thunder comes, I climb onto the metaphorical chest of someone I trust. It helps. It always helps.