The Permission I Had to Give Myself

Image by @sirnarwhal730 from Unsplash

There is a particular thing I used to do, and I am not entirely proud of it.

A friend, knowing I was in a foreign country and had not yet converted my licence, had told me directly: "Just let me know whenever you need a lift." They meant it. It was not a polite offer thrown into the air. It was a clear, open-handed invitation, made more than once.

And yet, more times than I would like to admit, I quietly opened the Uber app instead.

I told myself it was practical. That they were busy. That it was late, or too far, or too much to ask. But if I am honest, none of those were the real reason. The real reason was simpler and harder to admit: asking felt more difficult than just managing alone. And deep down, I was afraid of becoming a burden.

Growing up in an Asian household, there is a particular choreography around generosity. You do not ask for things. You deflect offers, sometimes several times before it is considered gracious to accept. You manage quietly, you endure privately, and you do not make your needs someone else's inconvenience. This was not cruelty; it was taught as a form of respect. You do not impose. You do not presume. And perhaps most significantly: you do not expect anything from others.

What I did not realise, for a long time, is that I had quietly turned that last lesson inward. Because I was raised not to expect anything from others, I had assumed others expected nothing from me either. Which meant that asking felt like breaking a rule I believed was mutual. It felt presumptuous. Almost rude.

So I took the Uber.

I started noticing something in the moments I turned down help. A slight shift in the other person. Not offence, exactly, but a small withdrawal. The offer had been made with genuine warmth, and when it was declined, something in that warmth went unreceived.

Refusing help, I began to understand, is not always the humble choice. Sometimes it is the proud one. It says: I would rather manage alone than let you see that I cannot. It protects a certain image of ourselves at the expense of actual connection.

There is also something quietly ironic in it. I have always loved being the one to help. To show up with food, to drive a friend somewhere, to be the person someone calls when things fall apart. That feels meaningful to me. It feels like care made visible.

So why did I assume that feeling was mine alone?

If I genuinely love helping others, what does it say about me that I was routinely denying others the same? My friends who offered to drive me between hospital and home were not offering out of obligation. They wanted to show up. All they needed was for me to believe them.

I think asking is actually the harder thing. Receiving, once you allow it, can be warm and even lovely. But asking requires you to name the need out loud. It requires you to make yourself visible in your insufficiency, and trust that the other person will hold that carefully.

That is a different kind of courage.

There is a moment in If Humans Were Spaghetti where, home alone late at night, I find myself undone by a cockroach and, in genuine desperation, send frantic messages to friends. What could have been embarrassing became one of the most unexpectedly warm evenings. They came. We laughed. I bought ice cream. And I wrote, reflecting on it later: "reaching out is not a weakness, but part of navigating the heat." (Chapter 4: In the Heat)

The same principle, it turns out, applies with higher stakes and less comedy.

The permission I had to give myself was not a single moment of revelation. It was a slow loosening. Age softening what conditioning had tightened.

I began to say yes before I had already found the alternative. I began to send the message before I had talked myself out of it. And what I found, consistently, was that the people I had been trying to protect from the inconvenience of helping me were not burdened. They were glad.

Receiving graciously, I have come to think, is its own quiet form of generosity. It gives someone else the chance to show up. It says: what you have to offer matters. I trust you with this part of my life.

That is not weakness.

That is something closer to wholeness.

Think of a time someone offered help and you declined. Was it genuine contentment, or trained reflex?

Is there someone in your life who finds it difficult to receive? What does it cost them? What does it cost the people around them?

What would it look like, this week, to say yes a little more readily, and leave it at a simple thank you?