Today was just talking to one of my friends, I've only known him for three years and in that time he's had to deal with homelessness, unemployment, drunk people, illness and the home office. It's like the pentarchy of the apocalypse. He leveled with me here after the home office kinda gave him an olive branch - they'll let him get citizenship next year, which means one more year of still being homeless and unemployed, as in that year he still isn't allowed to work. The alternative is voluntary repatriation, but he levelled with me and said it's not that he can't go back, it's that he just doesn't want to go back. Rather ashamed he asks me for money; ashamed because he knows I already do not have money.
But I give him the last tenner in my wallet and it's only when I give him a hug that he starts to cry, because at least he's ten quid closer to making an appeal to at least allow him to work for the next year. Because the law in all its wisdom makes it so that the appeals applications cost money, and the cost is borne on the applicant... The applicant who is not allowed to work... If he was just allowed to do things properly, he would have his whole life in order. He's doing everything properly though, even got himself a lawyer, and I told him if ever he gets things in order he can think of repaying me back. There's a lot of people I've had to help over the years, who'd have no one otherwise.
I worry one day I'll just be finished, and I'll have no more to give anyone, and my legs will just give way. I don't regret it, it's one of the few things I'm happy to have practised over the years; the more you do something good, the easier doing good becomes. It means the world to me when people write in to say I made them feel human again, or when people all too seriously say I am a good person. One of my doctor friends said he was ashamed that he wouldn't just throw himself into danger to help a stranger like I would. I told him it would be silly for a doctor to throw himself into danger - doctors are needed to patch up the reckless! I guess the reason why I'm so exhausted is because I'm surrounded by people who want to help me back, but can't. Or people who can help me, but don't care to help. Or the worst kind, who actively try to take as much from me whilst cursing my name and pushing me in the mud. It will probably kill me one day, but I am still standing, and I have never compromised on my morals, and most people don't have half as much. So today is a happy day despite everything else being unwarranted excoriation. No matter how many corporate shitpoles I've had to slide down to the pits of hell, no matter how many sacrifices I make for people who deserve mosquitoes, I remain the same - and I remain sane.