“Debt was an anchor that held me down under the water, I was drowning.”
Mark* shares the difficult journey he has been on over the last few years, and how he found help through Crosslight to get back on his feet.
If it wasn’t for Crosslight, I don’t know where I would be today. It doesn’t even bear thinking about - I was heading to such a dark place, a really dark place. Crosslight were literally lifesavers. Their care, advice, and patience literally saved my life.
Things were really difficult, and I became homeless for about a year. It really knocked me for six, I was struggling day-to-day. I was living on under £7 a day, if I was lucky. I eventually managed to find housing, but I was only just keeping my head above water and the unpaid bills just piled up. It got to the point that every day was just so debilitating, I was like the walking dead.
I was connected to Crosslight through my GP. I went to my first appointment and broke down. The stress I had been carrying every day, debt really is such a heavy burden to carry. Everything is coloured by it. It felt like I was in jail. Through the kindness of Crosslight and their expertise, and logical approach, they helped guide me through how to get out of this situation.
The team are very clued up on how people can get by month to month and how you can start taking pressure off yourself. For example, medication that I must be on was costing me money each month, which I couldn’t really afford, and Crosslight helped organise for me to get my medication covered. I was terrified of becoming homeless again, but Crosslight showed me how to get Universal Credit so I could keep my home, which was a huge thing for me.
After some time, it was clear that I needed to apply for bankruptcy. The problem was that the bankruptcy itself cost over £600, which was way beyond any money I had. I will be forever grateful to them as they were able to raise this money for me. I’d been stressed for so long that whenever I heard sirens, I thought it was people coming to get me. But with the bankruptcy, the chasing ended.
For all the time I was struggling in debt, I couldn’t seem to make my life work. Debt was an anchor that held me down under the water, I was drowning. It’s all very physical. When you clear that anchor, you can swim to the surface and breathe again. This means that other things can happen, life can happen. Within the space of a week of the bankruptcy interview, I managed to get a full-time job. I don’t think it would have happened if I had not gone through the bankruptcy, it had to happen in that way.
There are so many aspects of my life that Crosslight helped with. When I think back to how I was before, constantly stressing about money every day, waking up in the middle of the night worrying. I compare this to how I am now, and it is chalk and cheese. Every single month I am getting stronger and stronger. Debt is such a cruel aspect to life, and it really hits the poorest the hardest.
As I am coming to the end of this dark period of my life and coming into the light, Crosslight have also helped with budgeting support. I am being helped with budgeting on my current wages as this is the first time I’ve had income that wasn’t going straight onto debt or other living costs. I always ended up short each month, which now no longer happens. I can now manage.
There is a lot of fear attached to debt. If I didn’t have people like my debt adviser, I wouldn’t have been able to navigate through it. I am a different person today. Before I wouldn’t talk to anyone. Now I’m talking to strangers, walking down the street and smiling. There are benefits to society when people come out of debt, relationships blossom when they couldn’t have before.
I wish that I could tell the world about Crosslight because they are amazing.
*Names have been changed