(No) Help Wanted.

Some people will look upon your efforts to be polite, kind, and helpful as an act of empathy, and they appreciate it. Others? They see it as a sign of weakness and, devoid of guilt and drunk with power, they waste no time attempting to exploit it, to control you, to make you their servant, and I’ve found that its important to shut that shit down as soon as possible.

And then there is something in some people that makes them instinctively percieve your act of offering to help them as insulting, for they interpret that as you perceiving them as being incapable of doing it themselves, of being too ignorant to know this or that already.

Most of the people that have this within them recognize that this perception has more to do with them than the true perceptions or motivations of the other person, and while they can’t help how they feel, they realize their feelings don’t necessarily reflect reality. They’ll grin and bear you helping them or politely decline assistance. I respect that and once I sense this in them, I steer away from attempting to help them. Discomfort is contrary to my objectives here.

There was this regular we had who was in a motorized wheelchair. There was a sign taped to the back advertising items for sale, which I thought was unique, but nit as unique as the helmet he always wore. I quickly found he wore it so he could hit the button on the hand dryers in the rest room or help push open doors with his head without bruising his skull. He was a guy who wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible despite his handicap, and I admired that. He’d grin and bear it and give a warm thank you when you opened the door for him, but you could feel he hated it. That it hurt him.

Others who are like this aren’t so self aware, however. To the contrary, they become possessed by their overwhelming fears of feeling or being percieved as weak or ignorant about anything, and as a means of self defense convince themselves that they know all, can do all, and immediately go on the attack, responding to your attempt to be helpful with viscious bitterness. Often these same people also like to assert their dominance over others even in the absence of having any recognized authority over them. They don’t want anyone to offer help, no, they want to tell you what to do — not because they can’t do it, of course, but because they can do it better than you. Because they know better than you. Than everyone.

And these are one of a handful of personality types that in turn triggers something dark in me.

I feel myself shift from my painful default of hypersensitive to unbelievably insensitive in a flash. I feel a rush of insane rage and profound hatred that I try to hold inside myself with every ounce of effort I can fucking muster. I dig my nails into my palms, bite my tongue until it bleeds or my coffee-and-cigarette-stained, not-so-pearly whites shatter into countless pieces and I find myself compulsively, aggressively ranting to someone about it or bleeding it through my fingers just to relieve the unbearable inner pressure.

So yeah, I guess we’ve all got issues.