The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

Brené Brown has found through her research that women tend ot feel shame around the idea of being "never enough": at home, at work, in bed. Never pretty enough, never smart enough, never thin enough, never good enough. Men tend to feel shame around the fear of being "perceived as weak," or more academically: fear of being called a pussy.

Both sexes get trapped in the same box, for different reasons.

If I ask for help, I am not enough.
If I ask for help, I am weak.
It's no wonder so many of us just don't bother to ask.
It's too painful.

Things you get when you couchsurf that you don't get in a hotel:

The rattling sound of pots and silverware in the morning. Bathrooms with ratty, beloved mismatched towels. Leftover birthday cake. Dark hallways humid with the smells of baking. Looking at the weird shit people keep in their medicine cabinets. Cats to pat, who are at first standoffish then decide they love you at four a.m., when you're finally asleep. Walls of Elvis plates. The recaptured feeling of having a sleepover party. Dodgy electric blankets. A chance to try on hats. Morning coffee in a wineglass for lack of enough cups. Children of all ages and temperaments who draw pictures for you. The ability to make your own toast. Record players. Wet grass in the backyard sunrise, where the chickens are roosting. Out-of-tune pianos and other strange instruments to fondle. Candles stuck to mantelpieces. The beautiful vision of strangers in their pajamas. Weird teas from around the world. Pinball machines. Pet spiders. Latches that don't quite work. Glow-in-the-dark things on the ceiling.

Late-night and early-morning stories about love, death, hardship and heartbreak.

The collision of life. Art for the blender.

The dots connecting.

Neil writes fiction about very non-real things: a book about a boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard; an America in which old gods and new battle over humanity's fate; graphic novels in which a star that falls from the sky turns out to be a girl with a broken leg. Neil sets his Art Blender at eleven. The reader usually has no idea where the experiences of his life have settled in the superfine purée of the final product. You may taste a finger, but it's not recognizable as a human one.

Since I've met him, he's dialed his blender down a bit for certain projects, and I've dialed mine up. Neil and I have wound up as human ingredients in each other's work.