Those of you who follow me on Twitter or like View From a Walking Frame’s Facebook page may have seen that my life got a bit more interesting last week when my walk-in shower broke.

Back when I first started this blog I did a post explaining how much getting this installed in my house when I was about 16 or 17 changed my life. It meant that I could wash when I wanted and without help which had a massive impact on my life. I’d used a swivel bather before (which is a chair that you sit on a bath and it spins around so that you’re sitting over the bath), so I used to sit in that to get a shower.

However since having the wet room installed we don’t have a bath anymore so it meant that for some of last week I had to go back to getting my mum to help me get washed. Because my mum has helped me on and off with personal hygiene stuff, it doesn’t bother me in a sense that I get embarrassed by it, but it does bother me because it feels like I lose a lot of independence, which is never easy for me to deal with, even if it was only for a few days.

It’s fixed now though and life is back to normal. Happy days!

Today’s post is inspired by Nora, who also blogs, because she asked me if I would do a post about accepting help even when I don’t want it.

First of all, I’d like to say that I think NEEDING help and WANTING help are two different things. I don’t always want to ask for help, but I do because it is sometimes the safest, (and also sometimes the only), way of getting things done. That’s okay. Everybody needs help sometimes. I think that’s part of being human, but that doesn’t mean that I always find it an easy thing to admit.

It took me a long time to accept that we are all interdependent. When I was a teenager I also thought that one day I would be independent. Lots of people over the years always made a point of telling me that my parents won’t be around forever. That always annoyed me. Of course I know they won’t be around forever, nor will I, but it always makes me feel guilty that I need help, even today.

While I like to think that I’ve reached a stage where I’m sensible enough to ask someone to lend me a hand when I need it, there are times I find myself thinking that it would be nice not to need it. For example, if I want a bath, I have to ask my mum o my boyfriend to lift me in and out. I don’t want them to do it, but I need them to because I can’t do it myself and it would be dangerous if I tried.

Sometimes it gets me down that I can’t just go for a soak whenever I feel like it, but then I have to remind myself how lucky I am to be able to do all the things I can do already. I used to be ashamed that it made me sad, but I’m slowly starting to learn that everyone feels sad sometimes and that’s also normal.

Learning that it’s okay to ask for help once you’ve done the best you can for yourself was one of the hardest but most important things I’ve ever had to learn.