Last week, I reached out to someone I know strongly aligned with That Republican Party for advice on an issue which is negatively impacting someone else’s life and health. I wished them well before laying a bullet point of problems at their feet and they then went out of their way to help me try and help the other person. Their response and directions were swift and threaded with sympathy and an explanation of why the person who was suffering had been meeting a brick wall. Spoiler alert, lots of advocacy organisations in this country are desperately under-resourced. Their advice might not actually solve the issue but it was the equivalent of hot tea, a hairdryer and warm fleece pyjamas after walking home in the rain.
Holding dear to your fault lines can often stop you from asking for help from those who may have the power to help you. This is a little whisper to say it's okay, sometimes, to be friends with people you don’t think you should be friends with. I always think dignity can be a person’s worst enemy. I want to reframe survival skills as the peak attribute. Asking for help means you are capable of begging for your life. You can say of yourself, “I fucking deserve better than this.”
I often think of how people talk about the dole. Some are of the stance, ‘you have paid your taxes or you eventually will, do not let anyone make you feel bad about needing some support, it is society’s role to continue building society’. A variation on that. Others take an opposite slant, to put it politely.
A few years ago I was on the Dart going from the southside of the city. I would have gotten on at Booterstown. A couple I knew from college got on at Sydney Parade. We did the catch-up chat. They were doing the things their CV prescribed. I was on jobseekers. One paid internship had ended. The next one had yet to be secured/acquired/found/fought for. Both of them told me they didn’t agree with the dole and people leeching off the state. My face froze in a lupine smile, my hands didn’t move from what I remember as a primary yellow pole. I wasn’t really shocked. The carriage swayed as it made its way to Grand Canal, passed houses worth a lot of money. The got off at a city centre stop, I got off at another one.
I wish I had told that couple various things - painted a picture of possible circumstances, tugged on empathy sinews, explained how social welfare actually works. But people like are immovable, and I hope that doesn’t work out for them. See, I can be a cunt too.