Free Lunch

Unofficial Support

In the world of disability there are many terms for things you don’t know until you need to and that generally means you learn the hard way out of necessity. Out of your will to achieve something or your need to survive. You learn who your friends are. You work out who you can rely on.

If you don’t have family or friends who can help you do the most mundane things you might find you have a carer who can feed your cat when you go to your dad’s funeral, or you spend a night in hospital.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned but wait for it. Humble brag, Mika is not food orientated, but she still expects to be fed, every night.

Also, kind neighbours, even after I moved were lovely enough to drop into my new home to feed my fur baby and not expect to be paid to do so. That is officially an informal support.

When I moved late last year, yes, still so much trauma around that. The moving day left me with all my tech, TV, AMP, CD carousel, drying racks, lamps, mirrors, candlesticks. So much I valued and needed to be moved and every day I was reaching out to busy people to see what they could help me with.

Now, I’ve got friends, I love and respect their time, I have later discussed my need at that time and that they were not friends I felt should need to help me for things like that.

You would be surprised when you really need help how few of the people you know are not free and I would not have expected people to drop anything to assist me, so I started asking carers who I had no funding to book them and bit by bit over the last week I had friends come from two hours away who helped when they had barely slept going through a shitty break up. Who came and helped for literally me buying them lunch. Fuel to get them through.

A carer who literally treats me like family assisted me with a few car trips and when I tried to sneak some cash into her hand, she vehemently told me that “Anybody that took money from me, shouldn’t!”