I really don't have to be responsible for every passing crazy person who floats through my life like a burning tyre floating down a river. Even if they know your name and number and send you plangent missives, replete with tall tales, veiled threats, a half-cooked porridge of suffering.
I’m not responsible for being the next person to fail to help them in a very long line of people who have failed to help them.
I do not have to accept the invitation to the dance.
Occasionally there is someone who wants help and is capable of receiving it, by way of example.
The point at which I became willing to mimic someone else’s attitudes and actions was when my chemistry set blew up so spectacularly that everything in the blast zone, as far as the horizon, was flattened.
Whilst I still had my toys (my plights, gripes, woes, resentments, grievances, stories, narratives, and pasts, pushed around in the rusty shopping trolley that accompanied me wherever I went), I could not see beyond the end of my nose.
When everything was gone, I could be helped, and, then, miraculously, there was someone there.