A quote that's hard to live by

‎"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way."
- Martin Luther King Jr


I'm trying to piece together what happened last night. I got drunk when I shouldn't have. I ended up going food shopping after getting really drunk. There was a guy who started a fight. The staff had called the police. I tried to calm him down and calm down the staff as well. He was angry and upset about something. I hadn't seen what happened but was told he punched one of the staff who thought he was stealing stuff which it turns out he wasn't. The accusation had set him off.


It turned out his wife had left him that week. I'm not sure if it was true or not. The police arrived and I hung around just in case they were going to arrest him or take him to a psychiatric ward. I have no idea why. I was really drunk and hungry too.


In the end they let him go. It surprised me but I hope the officers understood that the guy was just having a day night. I'd spoken to one of the officers briefly before they escorted the guy into a room in the store to speak to him. They may already have been mental health aware.


I walked him back to his house or what he told me was his house. He brought me in the back way which was odd. He broke a window at the back to get in. At that point I went to leave because I thought we were breaking into a place. He then took me round the front. The front door had already been broken through. He kicked the front door in. At that point I should have thought this is really fucked up but I wasn't really thinking. This is very stupid of me. I've never broken into a house apart from my own.


I wonder if he was going through a divorce and it was his old house or something?


Anyway, he poured a  glass of good wine for me and we shared a spliff. He needed to clam down and the weed I'm smoking is high in cannabinoids (the antipsychotic comoponenet of cannabis). The emotional onslaught he had that evening mixed with the alcohol and cannabis knocked him out pretty quickly. I hope he slept well and felt a bit better in the morning.


I trusted him when he told me it was his house and that he'd lost his wife or they'd gotten divorced. I should have used my better judgement and never gotten involved in the first place but I perceived someone who was going through something shit and it was externalising in unacceptable ways. I wasn't trying to live to that quote. Just trying to help someone out like I was helped out last Friday night by a random stranger who chatted to me about life.  He treated me like a human being and that's more than I can say for some of the mental health professionals I've met in my time.


I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that I'm not gutless. The value it has for my soul can cost a high price through society's punishments.