Charity Begins at Home

My neighbour asked me for help the other day but I had to refuse.  I wanted to help but I knew I wasn't able to do it.

She was auditioning for a choir and, feeling nervous, asked me if I could run through the music with her beforehand, on the piano.  It was the sort of favour friends ask of one another: it might take half an hour of my time, not much more.  A few years ago I would have jumped at the chance to help.  Even now, at a different time, I would have been happy to spare half an hour.

But Julie is in crisis, and everything has to be prioritised.  I cannot begin to explain to my friend, kind and patient though she is, how difficult our life is at the moment.  I cannot explain the struggle to work, to put dinner on the table, to pay bills.  It is not money we suddenly lack, but time.  Time that vanishes without warning into waiting in A&E rooms, waiting to speak to crisis teams, driving to hospitals, visiting Julie, talking to staff. We may be sitting down, we may look as if we are relaxing, but often we are in limbo, waiting for the next phone call, the next text, the next shift in mood, the next peak in the crisis.  Because there is always another peak in the crisis.

This goes on, not for hours or days, but weeks.  Spare time, if there is any spare time, has to be hoarded and spent cautiously.  We all need this time to take a precious break, to recover, to breathe out, to heal.  We grapple daily with the unthinkable, and have witnessed things we struggle to forget.  We clean the blood stains off the carpet yet again. We have conversations about suicide and paranoia.  We face dilemmas: is the situation today, this morning, this precise minute, so bad that I should fall my instincts and call the crisis team, or should I try to go to work as normal?  As if nothing was happening.

And the hardest thing is feeling unable to help other people with their problems.   The hardest thing about poverty is not being able to give.