I Can Do It Myself

A few years ago, I fractured my leg just before Diwali.

Diwali is my favourite festival. I love cleaning the house, decorating it, getting everything ready. I have always been the one who takes care of all of it.

That year, I was lying in bed, unable to do any of it.

And I was so angry.

I wanted to get up and clean the house. I wanted to decorate it. I wanted to do all the things I had always done. Instead, I had to depend on other people, and I remember how frustrating that felt.

I had always been proud of how well I managed things on my own. If something needed to be done, I did it. I figured things out. I didn’t have to wait for anyone.

I had never really questioned it. Why would I? Things got done.

But lying there, I began to see something I hadn’t noticed before.

I had become so good at managing my life and my home that I had very little room left for anyone else to participate.

And it wasn’t that I had never asked for help.

I had. But asking meant explaining what needed to be done, waiting, reminding, sometimes asking again. And when I got frustrated, I was told I was being too demanding. We’d end up fighting, and the task would still be waiting to be done.

So I’d do it myself.

After a while, it honestly felt easier than going through all of that again.

I didn’t have to explain why something mattered to me. I didn’t have to keep checking whether it would get done. I could just do it and move on.

I don’t remember when this became the way I lived. I only know that somewhere along the way, I went from being someone who could manage things herself to someone who would rather not need anyone.

And I hadn’t realised what that meant for my relationship.

I was managing everything. My partner had got used to me managing everything. Things needed to be done, and somehow, they got done. I was so used to taking responsibility that I don’t think either of us stopped to question how much of it had become mine.

But I wanted him to participate. I wanted him to notice things, to take initiative, to do something because it needed doing, not because I had asked him to.

I wanted to feel that I wasn’t the only one holding everything together.

And here is the part that is uncomfortable for me to look at.

When he did try to help, I could correct him. Point out what he’d missed. Explain how I wanted things done. Sometimes I’d take over because it was quicker than watching him do it differently.

I can see how, over time, that could make someone stop trying.

But I also know what it felt like to be the person who had to ask in the first place. I was tired of explaining, tired of reminding, tired of the fights. I wanted him to take responsibility without my having to manage that, too.

I could see my part in the pattern, but that didn’t make the hurt disappear. And it didn’t mean that every time I needed help, I had somehow made it impossible for him to offer it.

Both things were true, and I found that difficult to sit with.

I think that is what I began to understand when I was lying in bed that Diwali. Not that I needed to become less independent, or that I should have asked for help differently.

But that I had got so used to being the person who managed everything that I hadn’t noticed what was happening between us. My partner had become used to me taking care of things, and I had become used to not counting on him.

I still believe in being able to stand on your own feet. I want women to have their own money, their own choices, and the ability to take care of themselves.

But I wonder how often we mistake not needing anyone for being safe from disappointment.

And how often, after years of doing everything ourselves, we begin to resent the very thing we have become so good at doing.

I keep coming back to this.

When I say, I can do it myself, do I really mean that I can? Or have I just stopped believing that someone else will show up for me?

And when I keep doing everything, and the person beside me slowly stops participating, what am I looking at? Someone who has learnt that I don’t need them? Someone who has never wanted to take responsibility? Or a pattern that we have both been living in for so long that neither of us knows how to step out of it?

I don’t think the answers are always the same.

But I do wonder how many of us are so busy proving that we can manage on our own that we don’t notice when our relationships begin to reflect that very loneliness we were trying to protect ourselves from.