Help.

You know that scene from How To Be Single in which Dakota Johnson’s character struggles to unzip her own dress? It’s a very relatable moment for any gal who’s recently broke up with her boyfriend, or for anyone who lives alone.

Even if you haven’t “scene” it, I bet you can still empathize with feeling this inconvenience when it comes to being single and having to power through simple tasks without assistance, like unzipping your own dress.

That’s practically all I’ve ever known, and even though I’ve gotten used to doing it by myself, I still get excited when I have moments in which I can zip myself up without assistance.

Take this morning.

After struggling heavily with some clasps on my vintage bracelets, I finally got the hooks in the eyes and reveled in the satisfaction of doing it without the help of friends, family, roommates, or my non-existent boyfriend.

It was even more invigorating when I swam through the straps and zips on my wiggle dress, which was an absolute maze to get through.

So I’m at work, pink power lips pouting and spicy summer dress hugging all the right places, and as I’m confidently walking about, I take a quick bathroom break only to run into the inevitable disaster that comes with all days that seem to be going too smoothly.

My zipper breaks.

Remember those “hugging all the right places” remarks about my dress? Well it seems my dress was hugging all the right places just a little too much and as I was sliding the dress back down my hips, the zipper goes pop and the whole backside erupts out of my dress.

One thing about this dress: the zipper goes up the entire length of the back of the dress. So when the zipper breaks, there’s nothing else holding the pieces together, leaving my rear end bare like a patient in a hospital gown.

Of course this would happen in my single girl power story.

Naked in the bathroom, I timidly opened the door and finally called for help.

“Help! Pssssst I need help!” I called out to my brother, who flagged down my mom.

After enlisting the help of both her and my friend Hayley, I cover up and bound across the parking lot to get more assistance from my sister, who successfully manages to secure my zipper for the rest of my brunch shift.

It unzipped twice more, luckily not in the presence of leading guests upstairs (wouldn’t that have been a memorable visit?), and at the end of the day, I had a very different opinion of being a defiant independent woman who don’t need no man.

See, whilst being single is empowering, it can also be inconvenient to live with. Unzipping dresses (or zipping them up when they’re broken and leaving your backside naked to the world), moving heavy objects (which I can totally do on my own but sometimes I just don’t want to mess with the struggle), going to theme parks (which is fun to do by yourself most of the time, but there are occasions when you feel like the plague when no one sits next to you in the ride), amongst many others.

What I learned today is that it’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to need help, and it’s normal and acceptable to want others to help handle your burden. It doesn’t mean you’re weak, it doesn’t mean you rely on others, it means you’re human and you recognize that sometimes, you can’t do it all on your own. Plus, who wants to?

In fact, in most cases, asking for help alleviates the pain of having to struggle on your own, and in today’s particular instance, it made me laugh and was a hell of a story to tell all my friends.

It even inspired me to try out this new look.

You know, the one where my zipper’s undone in the back?