I am so guilty. Guilty of trying to do everything on my own. Guilty of bottling all of my stress up and exploding eventually. Guilty of either being too scared or to prideful to ask for help. But I’m working on that. Last week, I went through one of the most stressful weeks of my life, and it humbled me.
Those that know me can attest to the fact that I am a perfectionist. I want to be the best. This trait has manifested itself in my life in many ways, but one of the most prominent is in school. Growing up, schoolwork came very naturally for me. Senior year things started to get a little bit harder, but I thought to myself, I got this. Freshman year of college had maybe, oh, a few challenging moments, but I got through it. I was fine. (My life motto should really be, “It’s fine, I’m fine.”) And here we are, sophomore year.
I was so excited coming into this year. I changed my major and am finally extremely passionate about what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I came into this school year in several leadership positions, I was in a better and more positive mindset. I’m taking more hours, I’m planning events, I’m carving out time to do office hours for two different leadership positions, AND my room is clean. Well, all that is, until last week. My graceful handling of my life and juggling of all my extracurriculars was going just fine until my perfectionism began to catch up to me.
I had three week’s worth of homework assigned to me in one weekend with a test the first class period of that following week. In Microeconomics-which let’s just say, is not my strong subject. It really doesn’t sound that bad once I type it out, but for my brain, nothing was clicking. I was a mess. If I wasn’t in class, I was sitting at my desk attempting to talk myself through my homework, crying a few tears in frustration, and showing all the signs of a mental breakdown. I was at my breaking point.
AND I STILL DIDN’T ASK FOR HELP. Luckily for me, God blessed me with some amazing friends that I don’t deserve. They saw me struggling, although let’s be honest, it was obvious, and helped me. It wasn’t anything huge. But as soon as they did it, I calmed down. I started thinking things through. And I did it.
With the help of a cherry limeade. Sometimes, it’s the smallest things.
My point is, ASK FOR HELP before you get to the mental breakdown point. That’s something that I’m working on for myself. Personally, being the “nerd” growing up in school, I viewed asking for help as a weakness. I thought I should be able to figure everything out on my own. I’ve slowly been learning that God didn’t put us on this earth to do things alone. We were made to need God and other people. The older I get, the more I find myself needing more of those things. So ask for help. That can look like asking for help with homework or asking your friends to go do something because you need a break.
Believe me, I’m the first person to think I can do it all. And it won’t be the last time I have a mental breakdown because of that. But the truth is, we can’t do everything ourselves. We all need a little help sometimes.
