The People Who Carry Things

I think I have always been quite good at reacting to other people’s problems.

That is not meant to sound impressive. It is probably just the way my brain works.

Give me somebody else’s problem and I become useful very quickly. I can listen, ask questions, remember some tiny detail they mentioned three weeks ago and convince myself there must be something practical I can do to make whatever is happening slightly less shit.

My own problems are different, although not because I ignore them. Quite the opposite.

I reflect on fucking everything.

I can make a decision quickly when I need to, but emotionally I like to understand things. What happened? Why did it bother me? What part did I play? Why am I reacting like this again? Occasionally I reach a perfectly sensible conclusion and then continue thinking about it for another six hours just to make absolutely certain.

Sometimes I discover that what I thought I was angry about was not actually the thing that hurt. Sometimes I realise I have been unfair, and occasionally I conclude that somebody has simply behaved like a knobhead and no further psychological investigation is required.

All useful outcomes.

I have been thinking about this lately because I have realised there are very different ways people try to support somebody they care about.

Some people are brilliant at simply sitting alongside it. They do not immediately charge in with answers or disappear because things have become uncomfortable. They listen, stay reasonably calm and somehow manage to be present without taking ownership of the whole situation.

I can do that sometimes.

Other times I am much closer to a Labrador that has noticed something is wrong and is now following you around the house carrying every emotional tennis ball it can find.

Are you okay? Do you need this? What about this one? I have found another ball.

At some point the Labrador is standing there looking slightly offended because despite all of this excellent ball-related support, you are still not feeling better.

It comes from a good place.

Mostly.

I have spent a large part of my adult life believing that caring about somebody means doing something. If there is a problem, surely there must be a useful action attached to it.

That is probably partly because of the world I have worked in. I have spent years around construction and operational environments where problems generally come with plans. Something goes wrong, you understand what happened, work out what needs changing and get on with fixing it.

I once worked with somebody who would announce that we were “going into solution mode” as though this was somehow a problem.

I used to look at him thinking, that is literally the fucking point.

At work, solution mode is useful.

With people, things are considerably less cooperative.

You can understand the problem perfectly and still be completely unable to solve it.

Years ago I read about different caring styles and one image stayed with me more than the others: a kangaroo. The basic idea was that when somebody you love is struggling, there can be a temptation to scoop them into the pouch and start carrying them.

I understood that immediately.

I have definitely owned a metaphorical pouch.

A fucking enormous one.

I still occasionally try to put my ten-year-old in it, although he is becoming increasingly resistant to the arrangement.

The problem with carrying people is that eventually you stop knowing which weight belongs to you.

It usually starts innocently enough. Somebody you care about is having a difficult time, so you listen. You check in, remember the thing they told you mattered and make yourself available because you know they are struggling.

None of that is wrong. In fact, I think the world could probably do with more people who genuinely give a shit about each other.

The difficulty is that support can quietly become responsibility without you noticing the moment it happens.

There is no ceremony and nobody hands you a badge. You simply realise one day that somebody else’s mood is occupying space in your head while they are not even there. You find yourself wondering whether they are okay, whether you should check in, whether something you said helped or whether you somehow made things worse.

Before long, somebody else’s emotional luggage is sitting beside your own.

And because you are reasonably strong, you pick that up too.

I think I have always assumed that is what good people do.

Sometimes helping somebody makes the helplessness easier for us.

That is the uncomfortable bit.

Doing something feels better than standing there watching somebody struggle. If I can find the right words, make the right suggestion, answer the phone, stay available or somehow make their day slightly easier, then I get to feel useful instead of powerless.

From the outside that can look exactly like compassion.

Sometimes it is compassion.

Sometimes it is anxiety with very good manners.

I like being dependable. There are people I have not worked with for years who still ring me, call me a dickhead for leaving and then tell me whatever disaster is currently unfolding in their life.

I genuinely like that.

There is something lovely about knowing somebody trusts you enough to ring when things are difficult.

The problem is not being there. The problem starts when being there becomes your default position and you stop noticing whether there is anything left of you afterwards.

I think a lot of men are particularly shit at that bit.

We can spend an hour helping somebody else untangle their entire life and then somebody asks how we are doing and we say, “Yeah, sound mate.”

Conversation complete.

Then we go home, put the bins out, make something vaguely edible, watch half a programme without taking any of it in and wonder why our head feels like somebody has left seventeen radios playing at once.

We are incredibly sophisticated creatures.

I have had plenty of periods where I have been dealing with my own stuff while still being perfectly capable of listening to everybody else’s. That does not mean I have ignored my own problems. I probably do the opposite.

I think about them. I write about them. I go over what happened, what I did, what I could have done differently and whether I am being fair.

The thing I have realised is that reflection and carrying are not the same thing.

I can reflect on my own life and still spend far too much energy holding somebody else’s.

That is where I sometimes come unstuck.

I am also much better with things that are said than things that are left hanging.

Give me a difficult conversation and I will probably be fine. I would rather somebody tell me they are pissed off, disappointed, angry or simply fed up than leave me sitting in a vacuum trying to work out what changed.

Silence does something different to my brain.

A difficult conversation at least gives you something real to deal with. Silence gives you nothing, so an overthinking brain does what overthinking brains do best and starts manufacturing the missing information.

Was it something I said? Did something change? Are they annoyed? Have I completely misunderstood the situation?

Before long, you are not just carrying your own feelings and somebody else’s problems. You are carrying everything they have chosen not to say as well.

That is fucking exhausting.

Communication is one of the most basic human skills we have, yet we remain remarkably talented at making a mess of it. We avoid conversations because they feel uncomfortable and then somehow create ten times more discomfort in the space where the conversation should have been.

I have always preferred facing things head-on. Not because I particularly enjoy confrontation, but because I find truth easier to carry than ambiguity.

Even an answer I do not particularly like usually settles me more than silence.

That probably tells me something useful about myself.

It has also made me think differently about support, because we talk endlessly about what support looks like when somebody is struggling and much less about what happens to the person doing the supporting.

You can become so dependable that everybody naturally assumes you are alright.

And to be fair to them, if every time somebody asks you say, “Yeah, all good,” you cannot then be completely outraged that nobody launched an investigation.

There is a strange arrogance sometimes in expecting people to know what we have not told them.

I can read body language reasonably well, so part of me has probably assumed everybody else should have the same fucking software installed.

They do not.

Some people will miss things completely. Some will notice but have no idea what to say, while others are so consumed by whatever they are carrying themselves that there is simply not much room left for yours.

Then there are people who just support differently.

That can still hurt when you have given a lot.

There is something particularly deflating about realising you have spent a huge amount of time considering somebody else’s wellbeing and discovering that your own may not occupy the same amount of space in their head.

I do not think that automatically makes them a bad person, nor does it necessarily mean you have been used. Sometimes two people simply understand the relationship differently.

That is still allowed to hurt.

For somebody who tends to go all in with people, reciprocity can become a difficult subject because I am not interested in keeping score.

I do not want a spreadsheet with one supportive phone call provided, please return before month end.

That is not how relationships work.

Life changes the balance all the time. Sometimes somebody you care about needs far more from you than they can give back, and eventually the position reverses. That is part of being close to people.

The problem comes when the imbalance stops being temporary and quietly becomes the structure.

If you are consistently the person who notices, remembers, listens and makes space, eventually there is a moment where you wonder who does that for you.

I have had that thought, and then immediately felt slightly guilty for having it because caring is not supposed to come with terms and conditions.

But wanting reciprocity is not the same as demanding repayment.

Sometimes it is simply wanting to feel considered.

To know that somebody occasionally stopped and wondered how something might feel for you, rather than your value being entirely attached to how useful you can be when something goes wrong.

That distinction matters.

And if I am being completely honest, I have probably made this harder for myself by being too willing to carry things in the first place.

If you repeatedly arrive with the kangaroo pouch wide open, eventually people may assume that is simply where the luggage goes.

At some point the kangaroo has to develop a fucking weight limit.

I am learning that without wanting to become colder.

I still want to be somebody people can rely on, and I have no desire to discover the word boundaries and immediately start treating every minor inconvenience like a violation of international law.

I care about people.

That is staying.

What I am beginning to understand is that supporting somebody does not always mean climbing into whatever they are going through. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is stand beside it, listen properly and resist the urge to turn another human being into a problem that requires your solution.

That is surprisingly difficult when usefulness has become part of how you show people you care.

But perhaps that is exactly why it matters.

Because if you become very good at cracking on while carrying everything that gets handed to you, eventually everybody gets used to watching you do it.

Including you.

Then one day you realise you are exhausted, not because your own life is necessarily unbearable, but because you have spent months carrying your own bag while casually collecting pieces of everybody else’s along the way.

Lately I have started noticing how different life feels when I put some of that down.

I have more room for ordinary things: time with my son, training, swimming, writing something because I genuinely enjoy writing it, drawing and losing an hour without noticing, or getting ridiculously excited about some little idea and building it simply because it makes me happy.

None of those things are particularly profound.

That might be why they work.

They belong to my life.

There is a surprising amount of peace in returning your attention to it.

I do not think I will ever completely stop being the Labrador. Somebody I love will look upset and there is every chance I will still arrive carrying three emotional tennis balls and an unnecessary amount of concern.

That part is probably built in now.

The difference I am trying to learn is between being there for somebody and carrying them.

One leaves room for both people.

The other eventually leaves one person knackered.

Perhaps that is where the kangaroo image makes more sense to me now than it did when I first read about it.

The pouch feels safe.

It feels protective.

It feels like love.

But nobody is supposed to live in there forever.

People eventually have to climb out and walk on their own legs, and the person doing the carrying has to remember they have somewhere of their own to go.

I still want to show up when it matters. I still want the people I care about to know that difficult things do not scare me away.

If there is a hard conversation to have, I would rather have it. If something needs facing, I would rather face it. I am quite capable of putting the metaphorical Braveheart paint on and going into battle when something genuinely matters.

What I am learning is that strength is not the same thing as staying in every fight.

Sometimes the braver thing is knowing which battles are actually yours.

I do not want to measure love, loyalty or friendship by how much weight I can survive carrying, or how long I can keep standing in something simply because I am capable of enduring it.

Maybe being supportive was never supposed to mean holding everything.

Maybe it is knowing when to reach out a hand, when to walk beside someone, when to have the difficult conversation and when to trust them enough to carry their own bag.

I am still learning the difference.

The pouch is getting lighter.

And, if I am honest, so am I.

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