Asking for help again, because life keeps happening.
Earlier this week I found myself in the position of explaining to the company that manages my carer hours that I wasn’t actually taking the piss, no it wasn’t because I’m not happy with the regular day we arranged together, I’ve had to ask to rearrange two weeks on the run because things really do keep happening to me. It felt like a moment in a few years full of moments, if I’m honest. Like, I don’t even blame them for thinking that maybe I’m taking the piss because after all the past few years has brought unrelentingly, even I’m not sure anymore.
Mind you, I thought similar a month or so back when I opened the door into the kitchen and it literally fell off. This isn’t even the worst of my past few years but it just felt like the universe was having me on right about then. My door just … fell off. At least it had the decency to do it in a comedy fashion so you know, it could have been worse.
I am definitely at the point where I’m wondering precisely what I need to do to get some peace, health and respite. I’ve struggled before! I’ve been skint beyond skint, I’ve been homeless, I’ve lost people I love… I’m a pretty old man and I’ve done a lot of life. But as I’ve said before and really would like to stop saying now, I’ve never known anything go this long and, just so much, so many different things accumulating over the period. I’ve been tired for so long now. I’m surprised I haven’t joined my door in becoming completely unhinged and just falling over. There hasn’t been so much as a full week in years where I haven’t had my face pressed to the grindstone trying to just keep things going for me and the kids somehow and trying to rustle up some help with it all. This country is fucked though. Beyond fucked.
When then house flooded again earlier in the year, I was told to make myself homeless. Put myself on the housing list. I’ve obviously mentioned that before but it has stuck with me how that’s just 2025’s idea of help for most of us now. Make it worse and it might get better. Thankfully people were kind enough to help us avoid that outcome.
And that just seems to be a running theme. The kids have been struggling for so long now, it’s absurd. Thanks to folk’s help, they got a nice Xmas last year. We’re all still so made up with that and the enormous goose (if you know, you know…) has become a fixture in the house. But for reasons entirely out of their control and mine, they’ve been lurching from their own crisis to crisis. Losing their mum kinda broke them and we’ve all been fighting to keep our heads above water here and with every successive thing happening, well… it has not made things better, lets put it that way.
Most of my mornings for the past few months are spent trying to get the youngest calm enough just to even go to school at all because they’re broken and their anxiety is off the scale. The school have been fab about it and really helpful but that’s, again, sort of where we are. There’s only so much a school can do and they’ve been doing it all and then some and it can’t touch the sides.
Very little is good or right and all our health is in the toilet. Everything is a knock on effect. I’m physically knackered as well because there’s only me to deal with all this so I’m the one up all hours and then up early because someone has to be there. I have long forgotten what rested even is.
The biggest stressor has, continually, been that like many right now, we have no money. So if shit breaks, it stays broken for ages. I’ve had to get help from the school to buy uniform for the youngest because buying just the uniform I could afford both was not enough and left us without money for food. Again, like many right now, I’m getting very used to having no money for food fairly often and if it weren’t for kindness and help from folks there’s be long stretches where I’d be struggling to feed the kids at all. Last week our notoriously fucked plumbing went again when the heavy rains started, the hall flooded and … it took me three days just to scrape the money together to get the stuff I needed to clear up properly. Partly because I didn’t want to ask for extra help on top of the extra help knowing I’d need extra help again soon and eating was more important.
You can see why people might think I’m taking the piss here when I recount the latest incident of many because come the fuck on, surely that’s more than enough now. Over the past four years or so I’ve lost my partner, three cats, the house is falling apart (the door fell off! Wtf!), I am bouncing from crisis to crisis, my health is crap and I’m keeping the kids going, I can barely afford to eat at all and prices keep going up, things keep getting smaller and the stocks of just about anything useful round here are at lottery levels of “will I be able to get enough things together from this”. Fucking hell.
I’d say I wonder why I’m tired but I got past that stage a long while back, not I’m just how could anyone not be tired. If I listed stuff from just this week alone, you’d think I was having you on. Finding out someone had broke my Switch and there was a huge crack in the screen and the charger cable won’t stay in place anymore near sent me over. Not because it’s the Switch but come on now, I liked that device. No need. I’ve got alternatives to fall back on but you know how it gets you after a while. Another thing on the list.
So yeah, it’s an unbelievable time and instead of anything getting easier, there’s just one thing after another and I have no idea when things will calm down. And I’m at the stage where pan handling for food on the regular has got me depressed beyond tablets (as HMHB would put it, I’m not going to do anything daft, it’s just a fair description) and we desperately need a bit more help than that can manage to sort. Mainly just so we can scrape the next few weeks eating. Anything else would be really nice but that’s my priority.
I’m continuing to chase up local stuff, had a few hopes that something might pick up and maybe but even just making any progress pushing for help is measured in weeks between responses. Not really anyone’s fault. Well, not anyone personally involved in it anyway. Everyone’s just doing what they can.
But in the meantime, I need to get some clothes for me and the kids - the eldest is currently having to use my boots even, I need to make sure we can eat, I need to get a whole bunch of house stuff done so that I can look round after what’s been happening and not feel resigned and I urgently need another skip to get shit out of the house too. I’d also really like a week where I can say to the youngest that yeah, I can buy them that thing because having to say no to something like a CD or a fluffy because things are that tough is no fun. But I’ll take being able to not worry about food for a week or so instead. Again.
So much of this I’ve been fighting consistently to get concrete and lasting help with but yeah, 2025 is so 2025. I know I’m just a comedy example of what so many others are enduring and that’s partly why so little is getting sorted. I am beyond grateful for the overwhelming help and kindness folks have shown us so far. Things are really bad right now. So that’s why I’m once again asking for some help. There’s only so far trash films and doodling can go. The grim truth is I need a bit of money to, well - not fix things at this point, just get by because despite my best efforts and with the help so far, we can barely manage it most of the time and some days and weeks we just aren’t.
If you can help, I’d be grateful. The kids would be grateful. We could eat! The cat who is not mine but visits every day for naps and pets might be grateful, I don’t know, she just likes to sit on my laptop and watch cartoons for the most part. I’ve never known a cat who willingly watches Magilla Gorilla before, let alone puts the effort in to putting it on herself. They’re not even my cat.
My kofi: https://ko-fi.com/robfearon
My PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/retroremakes
I’ll be honest, I feel a right dick having to ask again and I am genuinely both grateful for everything that’s helped get us this far - it has been a lot, in every sense, and really sorry to have to be here yet again having tried to keep things going whilst things crash around me.
So again, thank you. And sorry.