For as long as I can remember, I've always been told that if something really serious happens, tell an adult that you feel like you can trust. I only had one situation in my high school career that actual made it to an adult. It was my junior year AP US teacher, and he more or less coaxed the truth out of my after I nearly broke down in class. Other than that I have never really gone to an adult with a problem. Most things I looked at myself in the mirror and said "Don't stress this, it's something you can handle".
That's not the case anymore.
Last night I had a conversation with a friend that really scared me and left me feeling emotionally numb. I spent my whole night feeling scared, despite talking to one of my really good friends who could do little more than assure me that I had done the best that I could do and telling me "you're twenty, you're not equipped to deal with things like this yet". And he was right.
No amount of looking in the mirror and assuring myself that I'm strong enough to do this was going to help this situation. It actually holds the potential of making it much worse. So for the first time in my life I had to accept that this wasn't something that I could deal with all on my own, that I needed to ask for help. Not help like the kind you need on a final paper or on zipping up a dress, but the kind of help that requires you to be vulnerable in front of someone else and say in honesty: I have no clue what I'm doing.
Now this, scares the hell out of me. I've spent my entire life trying to always have an answer, a plan, anything. The thought of being alone and without a hope in the world terrifies me like nothing you can imagine. And so to have to admit that I didn't have the skill set to deal with this issue made me feel really worthless and like I couldn't do anything to help.
Today I talked to my academic adviser, who has been one of the kindest people to me since I came to college a little over a year ago. I told her what the problem was and that I didn't know how to handle it and that I was so scared that if I did anything wrong that the everything would end badly and that I'd never be able to forgive myself. She just looked at me and calmly told me all the options that I had available and who to contact and what steps to take and that if I needed any more help that her door would be open.
I'm an adult, and there's a lot of things that I'm very capable of handling, but there is still so much that I'm completely lost on, and that I can't afford to be lost on. I'm glad that even as an adult, I can always talk to someone older and wiser who knows exactly what to do, and make sure that I know what to do in the future.
