“When I go to work in the morning, I see homeless people waiting for the bottle store to open,” I counter my lecturer in defense of people choosing not to give money to the houseless. It feels logical. You don’t want to give your hard-earned money to a person who is not going to use it for the intended purpose.
He gives me a baffled look, and replies “So?”. I can’t remember the name of the module, there were so many. However, I remember how my lecturer drew out a humanity in me that was slowly leaking, muddied by the world. He humanized people who I had been taught to look down on, like sex workers and my houseless neighbors.
Houseless people were definitely neighbors. I trusted them more than I trusted the security guards in my affluent suburb. One night, we had a houseless neighbor causing a disturbance in the gourmet frozen yogurt shop that I worked for. I phoned the neighborhood security, only for them to arrive an hour later. They then proceeded to flirt with my colleague and me while “keeping guard”.
I had never felt as unsafe in that neighborhood as I did at that moment. I decided to never call them again, it was not worth it. That houseless man was harmless and the next time he came into the shop, I decided to speak to him politely or ignore him unless he was causing a disturbance. He just wanted frozen yogurt and would leave when he got it. We sort of became friends afterward.
My houseless neighbors would constantly warn me to be safe when walking alone at night. I thought that I was fortunate that I only had a 5-minute walk home. I had colleagues who had long journeys home, in the middle of the night and in more dangerous neighborhoods. However, I truly believe that my neighbors were the reason why I never got robbed. My friends got robbed in daylight and our building got broken into every few months, but I could walk home from my work and arrive, unharmed and without incident.
One time a woman asked me for clothing and I made a care pack for her, adding extra unused toiletries. A week after I gave her the care pack, she thanked me again while sitting with her boyfriend. I don’t know why I was surprised that her boyfriend knew my name but it was very endearing. I think he was a gangster and that felt like street points for me. One success felt like a lifetime of reward.
I was not always at my best. I was sometimes too tired to be polite, too overworked to remember that I made an appointment with someone to give them food, and I sometimes had internal struggles that prevented me from caring to the best of my abilities. I sometimes made people angry and feel abandoned. Ofcause, they were living, breathing, feeling human beings, who possessed the ability to react, reason and advocate for themselves.
There is something dehumanising about dictating how a grown adult should accept help. We often expect people in crisis to grovel at the feet of those who offer them help. Is the purpose of the help not to assist with the person’s survival? Who decides how a person survives when you do not experience their life and challenges?
My lecturer was a social worker who assisted in a mobile clinic, his passion was HIV management and prevention. He worked with sex workers and fought to decriminalize sex work in the country (that has not been realized yet). He would share stories of his experiences at the mobile clinic. He once shared a story of a sex worker who was curious about the clinic but distrustful. She was extremely rude to them but my lecturer was an expert in deescalation. He used his skills to convince her to come to the clinic for a check-up.
I was confused about why they would put up with such behavior, but it was their duty to help anyone in need, regardless of their attitude, unless they posed a danger. Rudeness doesn’t necessarily mean that a person will be violent. The best way to help someone is to take the time to understand their plight, and then give them options so they can choose what is suited for them. You show concern for the whole person, not just the perceived need. It’s not about saving someone but rather empowering them to save themselves by giving them dignity and showing them humanity.
When I chose to enter the mental health field, I wanted to be more equipped to help people in crisis. I didn’t think about my houseless neighbors but, in my inner circle, quite a few people were experiencing mental health crises and, in some capacity, were failed by the people who they trusted. I hated the feelings of powerlessness that I felt, especially since I was in an organization that promised to help people and save them from their minds (unless they were “crazy”).
The first time I witnessed someone going through a crisis, her friend kicked her out in the middle of the night because she was “unpredictable and potentially dangerous”. It was two grown men afraid of a woman who had disassociated and was quietly sitting in a corner. I never took the potential implications seriously, like making a woman fend for themselves while in crisis, in the middle of the night, was potentially life-threatening.
When she came back a few months later, the lack of resources drove us to be harsh towards her again but this time we were more concerned for her safety. I remember asking another lecturer if there were any resources, like an organization or hospital to call and they told me to call the police because I was not equipped to handle it. We could not trust the police either, there are too many stories of women being exploited by the police. We could not take the risk. It felt like the most merciful action was to kick her out again, but this time during daylight. That was the first time that I felt extreme guilt and helplessness.
A year later a close friend went into a crisis and when I appealed to people in our inner circle to care, I felt like I was doing too much. I was made to feel guilty for caring but simultaneously placed on a pedestal for “saving him”. It was confusing. I felt like I was doing more harm than good and questioned whether I would ever be a good therapist. What if I harm people? That year, I quit my studies.
Unbeknownst to me, around the time of my friend’s crisis, I was slipping into autistic burnout. I was slipping into a mild crisis that lasted years. I had been experiencing executive dysfunction for quite some time but did not know how to put it into words. I was going to a therapist regularly and had been begging for answers that never came.
I felt stupid for my struggles with school and struggled to speak about it, I would speak about it to my friends who were just as clueless as I. I grew up in a community that stigmatized people with learning disabilities and I could not admit that I was struggling. I was perceived as smart “but not trying hard enough”, but I felt as though I was trying to walk up a hill while pushing a boulder.
My relationships were chaotic and I thought that I was borderline. 15 years of being in and out of therapy, including 4 years of regular therapy, and no one picked up that I was on the autistic spectrum. I spent years like a puzzle piece being forced into a space that it does not belong. It took my own research and advocating for myself to a therapist, for someone to listen to me. It felt like such relief to finally give myself permission to exist.
Lately, I have been questioning why I wanted to add my voice to the already loud and oversaturated social commentary on the internet. Why do I not stick to Facebook? I barely get likes on Facebook, am I looking for likes? No. This is not about likes but this is a need to scream into a void because I am angry and scared. I am exhausted. I need to feel like I am doing something tangible to change the world.
I wish I could live in a world where politics does not matter, but then in my every action, I experience and witness systematic failures. Everything is political. Sex is political. Housing is political. Food and water are political. Your ability to be a functioning member of society is political.
I write to find my people. I keep finding myself in radical spaces, whether it is radical feminists or radical leftists. However, I’m not happy in radical spaces. I find that there is a focus on the system to the point of losing empathy for those who are caught in the system. I need to find those who can see the intersections and have a healthy dose of realism in their desire for change.
It seems logical that if there is a problem, you fix it. However, fixing a problem is not always straightforward. Being able to see how different issues intersect and having empathy for those caught at a crossroads is important. How do you help someone if you don’t see them as a whole complex person? How do you enact change when you ignore the key issues that complicate the road to change? Are you committed to the long haul? Change is such a slow process that requires constant hard work.
It starts with empathy.
