A Penny Returns

 I've written about the lad who walked into my office in Weardale (five years ago?) declaring he was homeless and asking for help. I ended up putting him up as I had two empty bedrooms. He contacted me a couple of days ago on the day I found out about the suicide of a friend.

No surprise that he needs help again. It is a bit sad that he is in a very similar situation to the one he was in when I first met him. He has a problem with a serious drug. He also has serious psoriasis, the two things are connected. He has been living with the woman who came with him to collect his things after he'd disappeared from my house three (?) years ago. She kicked him out.

Typically, the situation is insanely complicated and includes three autistic (and one other) children, four dogs and hostile neighbours who've been calling the police to the house regularly. He claims to have been completely off the drug- until recently... It is hard to accept everything he says in part because I have heard so much of it from him before. I don't think it is entirely possible for him to tell the truth at least initially; he spends a lot of time and energy trying to predict people's reactions to what he might say and will modify what he says accordingly. I realise that I was a last resort for him, but that is OK- it is nice to think that someone thinks of me in that way, I accept the responsibility. He described some of his partner's controlling behaviours but, I had to challenge him about how his drug use had contributed to the situation. -Having said that; the partner kicked him out, expecting him to sleep in the car which she can't drive but which belongs to her, but she was forbidding him to use the car to travel somewhere where he could find a bed. She also told him that she didn't want him to be with "some lass"... Why do people do that?: if you dump someone, how can you continue to expect to exert any control over them or question with whom they may consort? Further, whilst he says they've not spent a night apart in two years, he thinks he stumbled across text messages from someone called "Phil" which the partner deleted when he saw them. It seemed to me that they were both in need when they met: he needed a home and stability, she needed help with her children and pets. It "worked" for a while, (though social service visits, police call outs and aggressive neighbours aren't usually generated spontaneously), but perhaps they both just accepted what they had. Yesterday he said that she had been visited again by social services and given a week to get the house in acceptable order and twenty-eight days to get rid of the dogs. Of course he is concerned, but I reminded him that SHE kicked HIM out, perhaps if she had waited a week... In some ways; him getting emotionally involved in the problems in which she has now found herself is another excuse for him not to do his own 'work'. I have been blunt by asking him who he thought would think of him as a 'catch' in his current state- nealy disfigured with psoriasis, out of work and struggling with addiction. I said that not simply to be mean, but to try to help him with some positive goal setting.

I question my input and commitment to this guy- there MIGHT have been a teense of initial attraction, but finding out that a guy isn't gay and, moreover that they need help does kill those thoughts in me pretty rapidly- I think of Fabrice as the classic example of that and today class him my dearest friend. I know that I used to have a reputation as a bit of a "people fixer" until I realised that I was avoiding doing the work to "fix" problematic things in my own life. I believe that I am much better about that now, but if I am able to offer help, I will. I would like to help this guy to get off the drug to which he is addicted and knowing that his connections are where he was living means that to be away from there is to be away from his supply. The problem comes with the expected withdrawal which frightens and embarrasses him. On previous form, dealing with withdrawal- or even just approaching it will be enough to send him running again. I don't know what to do about that. Probably nothing.

I will try to give him practical, no strings support for as long as he will accept it. He has not had the best of starts in life and, coming from rural County Durham, has seen little of the world and has had few opportunities. In a lot of ways, his addiction was pretty inevitable. He is by no means an anomally, it is just that the problem is rarely even discussed. I get angry when I think about how young people are continually failed in this country: as more of them realise the con about what actually happens if you're a good boy or girl and toe the line but still end up unable to find fulfilling work, satisfactory accommodation and the kinds of opportunities their parents enjoyed, is it such a surprise that there is increasing violence among young people?