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[Vent, Advice Wanted] If all you do is take, something's gotta give (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For the last two months, I been putting up an old friend from a punk house since I moved into my house and couldn't leave out my lease. This friend has a lot of energy and motivation issues, and generally needs a lot of support. Beyond putting him up, I helped him leave out the punk house we used to live in that was getting evicted, got him a storage unit, and have helped out with about an errand a week.

I asked him if he would help me clean out the apartment since I had been putting him up and he basically shrugged me off. On top of that, now he's trying to change the timeline for getting out, but I need to do it this weekend when I am off work otherwise it will never get done. He knows this and we discussed it weeks ago.

Thankfully, some friends have agreed to put him up for a week as an 'off ramp' but it still feels like I am evicting him sort of.

I feel shitty because he don't have a real place to go in the city. At the same time, I have done as much as I can with the energy and time I have available. It also feels shitty that we would probably be better friends right now if I had just left him on the street.

Some help sensemaking is appreciated right now.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thank you for taking the time and energy to write this out. Up until this point I have been pretty good about keeping the systemic line in mind. Which is to say, understanding that his position is the result of societal failing of needy people, and that I cannot create the degree of support he needs out of whole cloth by myself.

When I wrote my post, I was stuck in anxiety and the individualist/atomized line of 'I have a personal responsibility to do everything in my power for this person'.

In particular thank you for this thought: "Everything you spend playing defense is something you can't spend playing offense."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I often motivate myself with the reminder "I was not born to play defense".