17/01/2026
When most people are counting down to a weekend reset, there are others who don’t stop.
Self-employed. Rescue workers. People whose work doesn’t politely pause because the calendar says so. Rescue doesn’t take weekends off.
I’ll park the irritation about self-entitlement for a moment.
I scroll through messages and responses, and I want to laugh — but I can’t. I genuinely can’t.
What I see isn’t connection; it feels more like desperation dressed up as sharing.
One person wants me to come and help them never wake up.
Another needs therapy.
Another wants power.
Another is depressed.
And the list keeps going.
So here’s an honest question — one that actually deserves an answer:
What exactly do you want the person reading your message to do?
Before anyone reaches for the soft-focus sympathy speech — stop. Think again.
This isn’t Hogwarts.
This is life.
Life hits hard, often, and without warning. Everyone is trying to get to tomorrow a little less tired, a little less bruised than today. No one is sitting around with spare emotional bandwidth waiting to fix strangers.
The idea that another human is responsible for making you feel better is, frankly, ridiculous.
If that’s how this works, someone please send the memo — I clearly missed that class.
And then comes the line I hear most often:
“But you chose to help people.”
Yes. Help.
Not carry.
Not fix.
Not do the work for you.
Help, in my world, means holding up a mirror — an uncomfortable one. Reflecting behaviour back exactly as it is. Pressing where it’s tender. Including the places you don’t want to look, especially those.
Because lying to yourself is still lying.
No cupcake version.
No watered-down feelings.
No spine-free language pretending to be kindness.
If I can sit with a thirteen-year-old, listen calmly, and ask:
“What would you like me to do?”
Then give options — and let her take responsibility for her choice — surely adults can manage the same.
Because here’s the truth no one likes:
You’ll be held accountable whether you like it or not.
But we seem to live in a Hogwarts fantasy, where everyone believes they’re Harry, and a wand will make reality behave.
It won’t.
And that’s where I stop.
URGH.
© The Velvet Hammer