When you say that you are lost, buried, pummeled badly, in wretched shape, that you are unlikely to recover, that you will soon perish, that nothing shy of a miracle could possibly save you, you are seldom believed. People think you are merely being grandiose and melodramatic. Or worse, you are believed, and they ask, or more commonly command, that you “get help.” There is an unspoken presumptuousness in the invokers of “help”-reception, which I have grown to find deeply galling. First, there is an unearned presumption in the notion that said “help” even exists at all. (By that I mean, “help” that is truly helpful, not as is unfortunately more common, “help” that advertises itself as helpful, but in fact isn’t.) Then there is the presumption that someone in need of help wouldn’t already actively be looking for it. Think of someone who endures chronic, crippling pain. Does one not presume that a person who suffers in this manner wishes to find relief? Yet somehow a pe...
