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Please note: Just because any of the below does not match your own experience or that of your nearest or dearest, doesn’t mean it’s okay to invalidate my or anyone else’s lived experience. You are not the default, and even if you were: yes, and? So?

Reproducing what I posted several weeks ago on Bluesky, as I posted it there, typos and other (glaring) errors included, because I don’t currently have the emotional or physical strength to re-tell this and find myself at best interrupted or at worst invalidated.

The unbearable load of good intentions
CONTENT WARNING (CW): mental health, mental illness, anxiety, depression, death, suicidal ideation, suicide — please consider not reading beyond this point if any of these topics tend to trigger you in a bad way Not for the first time in my life I find myself Going Through Things™. Every time that happens I write about it in my diaries and notes, and som…
@jojowiththeflowJo (@jojowiththeflow)

(Update added at the very end of the thread.)

Let's do another no-one-cares-about-this-but-I-will-post-a-thread-about-it: housing in England is weird. The shortage of social/public housing has been awful for decades, so every council or association will do *everything* in their power to not have to add people to their overly long waiting lists.
And even if you can afford to rent privately, the system can be quite scary to navigate, I find. Especially when a landlord needs or wants you to vacate their property, the way things work are so stressful. It starts fairly normal: The landlord gives you notice to leave by a particular date, so...2/
...you have to look for another home and start packing. Now here come the scary part: If you are unable to find another home, you have to stay put, because if you don't and do your landlord the favour of leaving by the date they've asked you but before you've found something else, you've just... 3/
...made yourself "voluntarily homeless" and given up any right to assistance of any kind. So you stay put. (And it's horrible.) Now your landlord has to go to court to apply for an order for repossession (I may have got the exact term wrong), there will be a hearing, and more often than not it... 4/
...will be nothing but maybe ten minutes of admin and formalities and a judge approves the court order and gives a date to vacate. But, as the tenant, you stay put, because if you leave by the date on the court order but before you have somewhere else to live, that is still classed as making... 5/
...yourself "voluntarily homeless" disqualifying you from access to assistance. So you stay put. (And if it wasn't horrible enough for everyone involved already – yes, I include the landlord in that – it's now worse.) The landlord now has to go back to court, decision/order in hand, and apply... 6/
...for an eviction notice, which by then is nothing but a formality but still the bureaucracy everyone involved has to go through. Only then do you qualify for public assistance—but this may not be until the very day of your eviction. It's nerveracking. Thankfully, I've only had to go through... 7/
...this process once before, because usually I managed to find somewhere else to live before it came to the worst. The one previous occasion it came to eviction day, I managed to get a last-minute crisis loan from social services to secure somewhere else to live, and to and on the day everyone... 8/
...involved (landlord, bailiff, etc.) was as helpful and compassionate as they could be. This time around... not so much. Every public body or system in England is overwhelmed, everything operates chaotically and with lots of errors made along the way—which then get waived/excused just to push... 9/
...things forward (because there is no alternative). And this time it looks like, unless by some miracle I find some reprief, I have to let it get to the actual involuntarily-homeless-after-eviction-stage because no one can do anything before that. Systems in place are so overwhelmed that... 10/
...websites are malfunctioning, phone lines are broken, emails return "mailbox full" and other errors... I'm finding it so scary. It's such a strange system. I've always been able to evade it, working two or three jobs to work my own way out of situations, but this time around I'm not that lucky.11/
So at the first signs of potential trouble, I got over my pride and general distrust and reached out to the "systems in place" for assistance and was effectively told "no, it's too soon, you're too early". For the increasing number of unlucky folks, the system is designed to drive them down... 12/
...into the depths of debt and despair first, hit absolute rock bottom, and then *that* qualifies them for (by then emergency) assistance. And it sucks. And it's scary. So I needed to post a thread. Wish me luck. While it's likely no one cares, and this thread only serves for me to vent, if... 13/
...you *do* feel tempted to reply with unsolicited advice or chronically online "no that's not how it works" hot takes, please DON'T. "Help is available" is a returning slogan. The internet and the world beyond is full of resources explaining "how [certain things] work" (I wrote some of them!).. 14/
...more often than not, that's *not* how things work. Those resources merely describe how, in an ideal world, things are *supposed* to work, but they rarely work out like that in practice. They also do not take into account the mental and emotional labour involved and how draining that is. 15/
Resources say "put tab A in slot B" but life makes you search for tab A, and if you're lucky enough to find it, it turns out to be heavier than the heaviest weight you've ever lifted in the gym and to even get it to slot B you may have to do the equivalent of a barefoot marathon over rocks... 16/
...and through cold mud, in blizzard conditions, with a "coach" by your side shouting dispiriting things at you throughout. So thanks, but no thanks. Please don't do that. If you have lived experience based on which you think you can give tips, ask consent, don't just spew. Thanks. 17/
/rant over (for now) 18/18

Update: Eventually I did qualify for and receive emergency support, and in the period in between qualifying and receiving I was kept safe thanks to people’s generosity. Words cannot express my immense gratitude for the support I received.

Some of you may read this and argue that I deserved none of the help I received. And, you know, you might be right in that assertion; I am very aware and very grateful.

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Lived experience: Housing crisis

Because there tends to be quite the gap between how things are supposed to work and how they actually work