Day four

Today I did something I hate doing – I asked someone for a favour. I needed some data for a research project, and I asked someone at Columbia to help me retrieve the newest year’s data, which I do not have since I retrieved the data a couple of years ago as a student at Columbia. I hated it. First, I walked round and round, chewing up my fingernails and mentally skimming the list of old classmates, junior PhD students, faculty, tossing each name out one by one, and cycling through the list again. I forced myself to pick a name, because I really did need the data. And then I tortured myself for the next few minutes, going over all the reasons why this person was going to be annoyed/cheesed off/not want to be my friend anymore because I was just using them as a means to an end. Then, I moved on to justifying to myself that this was not such a terrible thing to ask, because I have helped this person out in many ways over the course of our many years together surviving the PhD, and never asked anything in return. Then I went back to torturing myself with the possibility that this person would not like me anymore. I couldn’t deal with it anymore so I sat down and rapped out the email as though someone were choking the words out of my throat.

I don’t really profess to understand what it is that’s going on. This is not new stuff. I have always hated asking for help, for a favour. Conversely, I love doing favours. I jump and run to spread them around as soon as the words leave someone else’s mouth, and then sit back and feel virtuous, Lady Bountiful, doling out charitable acts, never asking for anything in return, feeling good about the fact that these people are all in my debt. Oh, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I won’t deny that little shadows of these thoughts exist in my subconscious. S has always insisted to me that this insistence on only giving help while not asking for any in return is unhealthy, that it rapidly makes other people feel uncomfortable, and that it is hardly virtue but instead just a big old hang-up.

Anyway, I’ve gone and done it now. Is it going to be easier the next time?