I think it's a hangover from being the oldest child in a huge unstable family and looking after everyone, but in most groups of friends I seem to quickly become 'the problem solver', or like 'the calm voice in a terrible emergency who you can always turn to for help'. I think in some ways I'm proud that people see me this way, but it's also (!) very tiring? Or not even that, it's just become very unhealthy and unequal in the past few years, and it's really snowballed. It's hard to know what to do. Sometimes I think I need to be better at setting boundaries, but I actually think the deeper problem isn't so much that I will always help people (I don't think that's a default response I need to challenge?) but more that in the past few years I've become surrounded by people who just can't be there for me in the same/equal way.
I've become the friend who helps people with their benefits/council tax/business expenditure and tax returns, with accessing healthcare, with relationship advice, with navigating complex trauma, with providing a safe bed to sleep in and meals to eat and cleaning up after people (multiple people multiple times a week for the past few years) - and that on it's own isn't necessarily bad! Like hell yeah I'm intrinsically a carer?
But I'm also a trans woman with a disabled partner (who can't help me very often, or look after me despite how much she wants to!) and with no family/wider support network either, beyond my younger siblings who also can't help. It's just that if I'm going through my own stuff nobody around me really has the capacity to help me with it, I'm sort of like a surrogate parent to a lot of people and it's just ! a lot - especially because these people are actually profoundly more secure and stable than I am financially or housing and healthwise?
Idk, no smart conclusions. Continuing my 'I'm emerging slowly from a very bad time' vibe, I've just spent nearly 5 years straight (!) running constantly from one terrible emergency to the next that I'm asked to fix, and I'm just so so tired and I keep thinking 'surely people will recognise how exhausted I am soon? They'll stop asking me for help for a bit?' or like... daydreaming of moving away suddenly :') but I think I just have to be firm and recognise that even if it's not their fault, none of the people around me atm are ever going to spotaneously say 'hey, can I help you with anything?'. I keep thinking about how amazing my fundraiser was in the middle of all of this, but that only came about because one day I just couldn't get out of bed anymore with the combination of all of this + dysphoria, and I haven't even been able to see or talk to a lot of the friends who worked so hard to make that happen because I came right out of surgery and straight back into firefighting! (My surgeons were literally like 'you MUST rest and be cared for for at least 6 weeks', but literally 2 weeks later I was helping multiple people move house, moving my own house and managing 2 PIP applications, a PIP appeal, a tax problem and helping someone set themselves up as self-employed AND caring for Holly with no help like??????) No wonder my healing got fucked up?
Grr my chest is getting tight just typing all of this out! Exasperated! Woe for my me! I just need to start saying 'I can't help' sometimes. I think I do have a conclusion: the care just isn't reciprocal at all. There's no balance? Or even without blame or bitterness, there's absolutely no return of care/help my way. I think I need to distance myself from these unequal relationships and reconnect to friends I haven't spoken to properly in a while because of it. Feeling very I CAN do this anymore, but I still dream of someone miraculously stepping in and being like 'girl I'm taking you away somewhere for a week'. Yearning and TIRED, BOSS. Goal for rest of 2026: reset these boundaries and somehow relearn how to take breaks. AND FIX ALL THE OUTSTANDING THINGS. AAH. Oh and fuck the government for taking away all of the social care resources that could alleviate so much of this for everyone.
