Amber Spencer

Help paper

8 September 2008

Help

In cases the word help can be a word of people wanting assistance or people that are in distress. Some people hate to use the word, while others use the word constantly. At times people can not help that they have to have assistance, people who fall into hard times, or the elderly who can not take care of themselves any more, are just some of the many people.

I have only just graduated high school so thinking on how I have helped people in the past was hard. I had only helped people in a minor way, like when my friends have boy trouble they come to me, when they were sad I would cheer them up. I am a good listener so my friends would come to me. But as I went to work one night I realized that as a nurses assistant I help people in need without even thinking about it fifty-five hours a week. The ladies that I work with are all over the age of ninety and their bodies aren’t working as well as they once were, so I help them do things so that they can lead a normal life. I work the night shift, so I help the ladies get ready for bed, and wake them up in the morning and all the daily living activities that surrounds those activities. All the ladies are at different stages of dieses, so the ones that are more in tune with reality, are embarrassed to ask for help. When I had only begun the job they were all embarsed about me being there, but since then they see me every day so they are less embarrassed. I try to keep all of things I do to help them seem like they are little so that the ladies dignity is still kept. The ladies have their good day and their bad days, at times I never can do anything right, while other times I am like a perfect worker, and can never do wrong. They are always grateful, in the end. They wake up in the morning, to a cheery worker, who has their coffee made the way they like it, a hot breakfast that had just been made, freshly ironed clothes, and the paper on the table, and the news blaring in the living room. Sometimes I know I have interfered with the helping process, because I do things for them that they could have done for themselves. Like in the morning I have thirty minutes to get to school after I get off of work, so I get them up like five minutes early help them get dressed so that one goes in the bathroom as the other one leaves, so that I have more time to get ready myself.
When I am helping my ladies, the emotions that I experience are almost all of them under the sun. I love all of the ladies, each person is so special, and they each have their own little way of making my day better. One of the ladies has very bad dementia so when she see me all she does is laugh, and its funny you ask her why she is laughing, and she only smiles. I am grateful that all of the ladies and I get along it makes going to work fun. I am also saddened when they get sick, and I can see there illnesses getting worse. I get frustrated when they expect me to do thing that they can complete themselves but are just to lazy to do them. But my ladies overall make me laugh and smile.
I am a person who is very stuck in her way, hard headed, independent and almost always hates asking for help. It makes me feel that I am weak and that is the feeling that I hate to feel the most. To me asking for help makes me feel inferior, and that I am not a successful person. I have these feelings because the way that I was raised. I had to be almost independent at a very young age in order to survive. I also had no one to turn to ask for that help so I learned that if I needed to get something I would find a way to do it without assistance. It has been kept on that way, like when ever I do homework I will never ask for help I will keep working at it in order for it to be done. I never go to the doctors unless it is dire, which has only been once, asthma to get an inhaler. I have lived through a ton of life experiences in my short life, but one time that I had to ask for help from friends I felt bad.
It was last summer when I was kicked out of my aunt and uncles house when they were my guardians; I had to ask a friend for a place to stay so that I didn’t have to drop out of high school. I was so depressed when I had to ask for help because I was still in school, broke, and in my mind couldn’t help them out in any way that I thought was respectable, for letting me live with them. I stayed with a friend in who I had babysat her children, and she was more then willing by letting me stay with her and her girls. She put a roof over and gave me food to eat. In return I cleaned the house, did the laundry, made breakfast, and watched the children.
Over time things interfered with the help process, I went from being the adopted daughter to the maid/nanny. I had to put the family before my school work; I had to give up some school activities. They began to take away my things that I paid for myself. I had to clean before my homework, and got in trouble if I did my homework first. I had to pay rent, then on top of it spend all of my money helping with food, and I ate always outside the house.
At first when I moved in I loved being there it was so much different then my aunt and uncle’s who were controlling. I was allowed to be me, I became a jock and prep at the same time. But as the time went on I dreaded going home, because I never could do anything right, if I even thought about anything other then house cleaning before nine at night I was yelled at. It came to the point when I had to ask to take track my senior year fourth year of varsity year, and they said no that I couldn’t take it cause I didn’t earn that right. And the seventh grade daughter got to take it cause she was the daughter, and she never did house work, I did all of the work. I went from loving where I was living and the people I was living with to dreading going home, because all I had to look forward to is to doing house work the same thing day after day.
I hate asking for help because it always seems to turn bad for me. But I will never turn away a person who is asking help form me. I would rather help other people them have them help me. It is always better to give then to receive, I always think and say.