The looking good, feeling bad paradox

Yesterday, my friend Michelle told me that she is back at work after finishing chemo/radiation. She looks like anybody else (actually, she looks way prettier) but doesn't feel like her old self. This is the paradox of illness, sadness or stress.

Sometimes you look like crap but you feel fine - this often prompts certain types of people to tell you that you "look tired". Which is a seriously annoying but manageable reality of being stressed from work or family*.

I look scary, but chemo is working!

Although I look cute, I've been diagnosed with cancer and tomorrow I'll talk about my cancer with 300 of my students so that they understand why I'm leaving.

The opposite side of the paradox is when you look fine but something is wrong inside of you. I often wonder what people are living through and wish I could understand all of their secret circumstances. What if, like Michelle, you look young and vibrant yet you can't do much physical labour without great fatigue? People will think that you are lazy, a sissy or unfit. However, you don't want to advertise your illness because this sense of "normalness" is what you wished for when you were sporting that hairless cat look months ago. Perhaps you are suffering from great sadness or you've lost an important person.

How can you let people know that you  need to be treated a little nicer than usual without bursting into tears? I haven't figured this out yet. This was obvious to me last week when I didn't want to ask for help out with my groceries at Community Grocery even though I can't lift them :). I kicked them out to my car until a girl my same age carried them the rest of the way. She was lovely and I felt a bit mortified/grateful.

What's the best way to ask for help? How can you intuitively tell is someone needs it?


*One strange truth I'll share is that I started developing wrinkles after working as a teacher for a few years. Now that I've been off for a year, my wrinkles are gone. I just thought that was weird that life can take wrinkles away if you change something... although I am in my 20's so I'm clueless about real wrinkles and feel free to tell me so.