this is not your loss, this is your offering

1) What's one of the nicest things a friend has ever done for you?

diffrentcolours and mother_bones making it very clear to me that I had options, when my marriage felt too difficult to extract itself from, they just loved me and waited for me and made sure I never felt like I was alone.

They left me stay here without paying for much the first few months so I didn't have to worry about money (which I appreciated so much but also when I got money I appreciated that they let me pay it back because it was really important to me, father than to them, that I do that).

They took on me at my most messed-up and Gary just as he was starting to be a lot of work, and adjusted their lives repeatedly to meet our needs. And they've continued to provide a warm, safe, functional and pleasant house for me to live in ever since.

2) What's one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for you?

In 2018 I went to London with friends. The plan was to stay overnight, see Hamilton, and then one of them was taking me to Brussels on the Eurostar so I could make use of my less-than-a-year-old British passport to travel within the EU while the UK was still part of it.

By the time the play had finished, I had a Facebook message from a stranger. She said she was staff on the train we'd gotten to London, she'd found the little plastic wallet that I had my railcard and train tickets in which I'd apparently dropped on the floor rather than putting back in my bag after the tickets had been inspected, and that she'd handed it in at Euston so it'd be waiting for me on my return.

Without that ticket wallet, both me and my companion traveling on my disabled railcard would've had to buy new tickets from London to Manchester which is exorbitantly expensive especially at the last minute, and it would've been a cost that was utterly beyond me at that point. And I would have wanted to cover it since it would've been 100% my fault that I'd lost the tickets!

I am so grateful to that lady. So clever of her to look up the railcard name on Facebook to communicate with me, and thank goodness I didn't have a common name! (Also lucky for me it was the same name; since my railcard eligibility is my Certificate of Visual Impairment and since that's in my old name, my railcard is in my old name too; I've been calling it my "blind name" lately for this reason as a lot of things depend on that: so like at the gym I'm getting a discounted membership for being disabled and that means the other day when the gym staff asked my name as I was signing in, I had to think quickly to get it right! Anyway, this method wouldn't even work for finding me on Facebook these days but it did back in the days of Hamilton and Britain being in the EU.)

I got in touch with the train company to lavish compliments on her and I hope they gave her whatever treats or bonuses they offer. It was a small effort for her but it made a huge difference to me.

3) What is a trait in another person that you instantly admire, and that draws you to them?

Vulnerability and emotional fluency.

4) What is a trait in another person that instantly repels you, and prevents you from forming a close relationship with them?

Treating people as things, as Granny Weatherwax describes it.

5) Time to vent: tell us about something rotten someone has done to you.

Two of the three people I was with Answer 3 aren't in my life any more, both related to the same instigating incident where almost all my friends and my community fell for some DARVO, ghosted on me, and/or apparently still drastically misunderstand the circumstances in Answer 1. This being unrelated to but almost perfectly timed with the beginning of the pandemic was incredibly isolating. It's taken time to rebuild friendships and a sense of community, but good progress has been made over the last couple years.