Counselling

My first counselling session took place on December 5th, nine months to the day since my formal diagnosis. Just that fact alone makes my heart ache. I understand how tough these days are, and that so many people are in the same position I am - adrift in life and suffering as a result - but to make a person who considers suicide daily at least wait for professional help for such a long time seems risky to the point of counter-production. What if events had been worse than they were, and I had found myself unable to cope? How might I have coped without Leo to turn to? It seems that I am alive through sheer luck, and it scares me to think of the variables that might have led to a different situation.

Still, here I am and in the care of my counsellor. She is a very sweet and patient lady, and it is remarkable how much she reminds me of my previous counsellor, separated now by three hundred miles and ten years. They have the same hair colour, dress sense and glasses, and at first sight I felt completely comfortable talking to my current counsellor. She has a southern accent, which also helps - sometimes, even being surrounded by Mancunian voices makes me feel isolated. My previous counsellor was Scottish, but then I am always calmed by Scots voices. Perhaps that is a throwback to my ancient Scottish ancestry - something my new counsellor was very interested to hear about.

I have had three sessions with her so far, and I have surprised myself with the things I have spoken about. It seems as though my sense of self has evaporated amidst my worry for my nearest and dearest, Leo in particular. I love him as fiercely as ever, despite our mutual inability to love romantically rather than platonically, but I was shocked to discover how much his mood impacts upon my own. If Leo's mood is low, I worry about him. If I can do nothing to lift his spirits, I feel useless as a result. Without a job of my own or anyone else around me every moment, his happiness is my only purpose. My counsellor has told me that this is far from strange, as so many of my friends tell me. In the absence of any other job to do, this is good for me - although she tells me that balancing Leo's mood with my own must be hard work indeed.

Then there is the rest of our family to worry about. Both of our fathers are suffering with memory problems. Leo's mother has been diagnosed with Korsakov's syndrome, and does not know him. My parents continue to hang on the brink of divorce. Leo's sister has had awful financial difficulties. My grandmother battles through her health problems, but trying to imagine life without her fills me with dread. My sister Alba is the only one of the three of us siblings without a degree, yet has the best career and is about to buy a house with her partner. I keep having to borrow money from my mother's pension, which causes me great shame. Her poor relationship with Leo continues to put me in the middle of a strained, awkward situation. I have not slept through the night in over a year. There is no respite and no hope that I can see.

My counsellor has given me two sets of homework so far. First, she gave a me a mood diary to keep for a week. It turned out to be one of those rare "good" weeks, with only one bad day. With Christmas nearing, I had a lot to do, and it kept my mood level. My second assignment, however, has been less easy to maintain. She asked me to do one thing a day that I enjoy, which in theory should have been easy. Visiting my parents over the festive period made it almost impossible. Christmas for my family revolves around food and television, and there is often a sense not so much of togetherness as there is of claustrophobia - made all the worse this year by the cluttered and cramped state of the house my grandmother and aunt share, which is where I have spent every Christmas of my life. The gifts I worked so hard to make by hand seemed to disappoint their recipients, and by lunchtime of Christmas Day all I wanted was to run back home to Leo and his dad.

Luckily, Christmas comes but once a year, and home brings enough freedom to do the best I can do for myself. Leo has recently been referred to a psychiatrist himself - not a moment too soon - but he is still my greatest comfort and my best friend. Having someone that understands you completely, even if they cannot always lend you the best support, is a great gift. Having a neutral party to turn to for that support is even greater. It's too early to know whether I feel stronger for it, but the potential is there. I am lucky.

Assessment

On July 30th, two separate yet very revealing documentaries were shown on television regarding ESA, the Work Capability Assessment, and the company which carries them out: Atos. If you don't know much about the current incapacity system or the real impact it has on our lives, I can highly recommend that you watch them both.

Dispatches: Britain on the Sick

Panorama: Disabled or Faking It?

Unfortunately, these issues became all too relevant to Leo and I just a few days later. Leo had attended a WCA at the end of June, and received the results over the telephone. He had not been scored high enough on his WCA, and his ESA benefits were being withdrawn. The person he spoke to said that Leo had the right to appeal, and that if he managed to appeal within the next few days his benefits might be reinstated without a noticeable break in payments. As of writing, Leo is still waiting for the appeal paperwork to be delivered to our door.

Now, Leo and I deal with similar conditions. He doesn't have the agoraphobia that stops me from leaving the house on my own; my physical ailments are nowhere near as chronic as his. Yet the way our cases have been treated have been like chalk and cheese. I was never asked to attend a WCA. On my paperwork alone, the DWP assigned me to the support group. Leo, however, has had to provide countless sicknotes whilst his original paperwork was assessed, has had a very unpleasant person from the DWP come into our flat to make sure that we weren't living as a couple (we aren't), and has had to attend the WCA on top.

I was handed ESA straightaway, no further questions asked. Leo has been through the wringer trying to obtain his, only to be denied. Tell me the system isn't flawed, I dare you.

Leo is now more angry and depressed than ever. He and I both told the DWP that there was no way I could provide him with financial support should he be denied ESA, but how can I not? I have no legal obligation to support him, but I certainly have a moral obligation to him. He is my closest friend, and he has saved me from the brink more than once. What sort of monster would I be if I sat and watched him starve? I am putting myself at risk to help him, so instantly this decision affects not just Leo, but myself too. One person's ESA should not be stretched to two people, yet this is the outcome that Atos has forced us into, with their terrifyingly flawed system of scoring patients, meeting targets (or "statistical norms", as Benefit Scrounging Scum pointed out), and supposedly trying to save the government millions by weeding out fraudulent claims. There is just no way that Leo and I could manage long-term in this state. If he were to go back to the Jobcentre, what right-minded employer would hire him in the state he's in? Yet if he is unsuccessful in his appeal against Atos' decision, what choice does he have?

Atos care only for financial costs, not for human costs. The extent to which they ruin lives seems to suggest that they do their poisonous job with gleeful abandon. I can only conclude that the WCA guidelines were written by a group of people who have never been physically or mentally ill in their lives. There were clearly no healthcare professionals involved, just statisticians and bankers.

Shame on them all.

Guilt

A little after midnight, Leo and I were walking home from Pops' place when we were accosted by a homeless woman, asking for spare change. I was made redundant last year from a job helping the homeless, so my heart immediately went out to her.  My experiences have taught me that homeless people generally fall into two categories: good people who have suffered disastrously bad luck, and horrible people who have created their own situation and deserve nothing better. This lady certainly fell into the former. She was polite and sweet, and I felt awful as I rummaged in my wallet, knowing that I had no change to give her.

She thanked us anyway, and we started to walk again. My feet dragged. I couldn't leave this person out here with nothing while I was going home to my fridge and my cats and my bed. I could just as easily have been in her situation had it not been for meeting Leo. So I stopped.

"Can we invite her back to ours?" I asked Leo.

We both turned around and invited the lady to walk with us to our flat. She politely declined - she had somewhere to go but was having trouble getting there. Once again, she thanked us, and we wished her well as we went on our way again. I walked faster than before, my conscience clear. I had done the right thing.

Guilt is my constant watchman, my personal plague. I am convinced that whatever I say or do will hurt someone, and I cannot abide that thought. The slightest wrong-doing on my part causes sleepless nights and seemingly endless embarrassment. I apologise for every action, just in case. Leo tells me off for apologising too much and it makes me feel worse, knowing that I have offended him so.

It horrifies me to think of my family worrying over my state of mind. I sit in my flat,  unable to do anything with my life, afraid to go outside, draining the resources of others. My university degree is being wasted, along with all the investment I and my parents put into it. My talents gather cobwebs in corners, unused and all but forgotten. And poor Leo! He has to live with my doubts and fears along with all his own troubles. For all I want to help him, my fears of hurting him further prevent me from doing what I know I should.

Thus the cycle continues, the ouroboros of guilt feeding into itself. I have long since given up hope of freeing myself from its grip; there is no way out of it that I can see.

Click

Leo has stormed off into town after spending all morning on the phone with the DWP. In an uncharacteristic display of worry - usually that's my department - he called to find out when his ESA back payments are due to arrive. Their answer delivered no surprises, just the usual hopelessness: the Jobcentre "forgot" to close his JSA claim, so any ESA payments owed to him will not be released until this mistake is corrected.

Please note that this is the Jobcentre's mistake, yet Leo has to take responsibility for its correction.

I didn't expect an easy road when circumstances forced me into starting an ESA claim, closely followed by Leo a few weeks later. The initial lack of resistance surprised me, giving me a false sense of hope that this time, this time, everything would run smoothly. Yet the Jobcentre remained true to disappointing form, and failed at the bureaucratic stage.

These are not complex procedures at which they have failed. Operating a fax machine is not difficult, yet between the Jobcentre reception desk and the fax machine, my original medical certificates were lost. Clicking the "close claim" button on a computer screen seems pretty elementary to me, yet because someone didn't take the fraction of a second to do what they said they would, Leo's claim remains in limbo.

Perhaps I'm being too presumptuous. I have an NVQ in Business and Administration, so perhaps things like mouse clicks and fax machines would seem elementary to someone in my lofty, educated position. It makes you wonder why I spent almost a year on JSA whilst some Neanderthal in the Jobcentre was staring blankly at a computer screen, wondering how to make the "magic" happen.

Mistakes like these would never have been made on my watch - and you know why? I have the common sense to know that silly little errors like these have massive repercussions on other people's lives. Because that mouse click was never made, Leo and I now have to stretch an already difficult budget to another week - which means more late payment charges on our household bills, and less food in the cupboards. I have the sense of social responsibility to see how the ripples spread out from that single drop in the pond, how that one small failure becomes catastrophic further down the line.

The Jobcentre is the public face of a government department responsible for the welfare of those who find themselves in the position of being unable to provide for themselves. It is meant to be the hallmark of our advanced society and its responsibility to protect even the least of its members. So why does it constantly fail?

Fire

Leo is made of fire. He radiates, he smoulders. People are either drawn to him like moths to a flame, or scared of being burned. At his best, he is a storm candle, a lantern, a glowing fireplace from which to draw comfort. At his worst, he is a raging inferno, bent on fury and destruction until his energy is spent. Yet he is energy, composed of it and adept at manipulating it. He gives it freely to those he loves without a thought for himself. Those who love him in return wish he would direct his flow inward from time to time, but how do you tell a wildfire to change direction?

I saw all this in Leo when we first met, before we had spoken a word to each other. I couldn't articulate it then as I can now, but even on first meeting he was as magnetic as though he were the centre of the universe and I had no choice but to gravitate toward him. In crowds of strangers he becomes the centre of attention, the campfire that all the happy scouts sit and sing around and roast marshmallows over. He has an innate talent, of which I am certain that he is barely aware, in bringing out the best in others. He makes you feel cool, accepted and important. That was how he made me feel during our first conversation, and I see that feeling in the new friends he makes.

A counsellor once told me that people in social situations generally fall into two categories: givers and takers. Leo is a giver, first and foremost. There is no doubt that he revels in the attention he gets, but he feels rejection acutely, much as he feels shame when he lavishes his attentions on those undeserving of it. When all one's energy is directed outward, there can be nothing left to make sense of oneself - that is his downfall. Like me, Leo suffers from depression, but his springs from a source quite different to mine; in many respects, his comes from the opposite direction.

Sadness and anger are two sides of the same coin. Sadness is negative emotion internalised; anger is externalised negativity. My sadness fills me up inside, and the occasions that I burst or overflow are private affairs, whereas Leo has difficulty keeping his anger in check. His GP says that she has never known a patient so angry. To his credit, his anger has never turned into violence, but he finds it impossible not to express his emotions. He has never been able to lie to me about his moods. His demeanour, his posture, his tone all leave him an open book. I have learned over time how and when to approach him when his eyes are burning and his mouth is full of smoke, and I have learned when the flames are too high for me to come near. His state of mind suffuses him entirely; his flame may constantly change size but it is always visible.

For my part, I cannot say whether my presence in his life has pacified or enraged him. If Leo is fire then I am air, both the fuel to his flame and the gale to extinguish him entirely. In a lifetime of playing peacemaker, I have never been able to find the middle ground to his inner conflicts. Perhaps this is only right; only he can find peace, if that is indeed what he wants. He has often told me that he needs me more than I need him, to give him direction and control. If truth be told, I need him more than I could tell him. To be loved is a great responsibility, and Leo has never dealt with being loved very well. But he gives me warmth and courage. I am braver and better for knowing him. If not for him, I would have been more acutely depressed much longer ago. Perversely, he feels responsible for my depression. He is convinced that he has caused it by bringing his problems into our relationship, and I cannot change his mind. Leo's fire lends him a great deal of stubbornness; once the flame is lit, it cannot be changed - only extinguished.

I love and admire him immensely. He moves and frustrates me equally, but I could not be without him. Trying to instigate as big a change in our relationship as I did has taught me this. Nothing has changed except the terms by which we refer to each other; if anything, our break-up has merely been an exercise in balancing our inseparability with individual freedom. I needed to stop smothering him as much as he needed to burn ever more brightly. Leo is unpredictable and dangerous, but a life without him would be dark and cold.

Strands

One

I love my GP's surgery. It's a five-minute walk around the corner, tucked away inside a community centre, and always immensely peaceful. The most people I've seen in the waiting room at any one time is three - a far cry from the over-subscribed circus Leo and Alba attend.

The GP herself is marvellous. Her bedside manner has struck exactly the right balance between matter-of-fact and sympathetic; too much of either tends to intimidate me. I visited her yesterday for a duplicate medical certificate, an update on my counselling referral, and more medication. She gave me an extension on my certificate without my needing to ask, apologised for the long waiting list for counselling services, and corrected my repeat prescription to show my correct dosage. I was in the surgery less than five minutes. My GP seems to be the exception that proves the rule within the NHS.

I collected my medication from the awful pharmacist, who looked far from pleased to have a customer so close to closing time. Earlier today, the Jobcentre faxed my certificates to head office whilst I waited - taking no risks this time - and later sent me a text message to confirm that my back payments would be released within three working days. I won't feel a sense of relief until the money enters my account, but the promise is there.

Two

Truman has been over several times since I cleaned up his room. Unfortunately, my own hatred of conflict barred me from confronting him about the mess he left, but Leo conveyed the message for me. No apology has been forthcoming yet, but this comes as no surprise.

Meanwhile, Truman is already regretting his hasty decision. Both Poison Ivy and the person in whose flat they are staying - an old enemy of Leo's - are frustrating him to no end. I can happily report that Leo has told him to lie in the bed he's made for himself.

Three

Since writing that I neither have bad dreams nor recurring themes from night to night, I have experienced both. I dreamed that I had killed a monstrous person in self-defence, and was running from two things: the police, and the dark fog slowly covering the city. Despite my overwhelming guilt, the people I met all sympathised with me and hid me from the police, but the fog was awful. It moved slowly, mockingly, in that near-sentient way it does in horror movies. It was inescapable and evil.

The next night, I dreamed I was ill and unable to walk, so I had to be driven everywhere by my family. We left the house in the middle of the day only to confronted with the darkness and the fog again. More horrifying still, the fog was somehow refracting the moonlight so that there appeared to be three full moons overlapping each other in the sky. I've been disconcerted by dreams about planets appearing too large in the night sky before, but combined with the creeping fog from the night before, those three moons absolutely terrified me, even upon waking.

I am considering starting to write a dream diary to help with analysis. Perhaps it would be useful.

Sleep

Sleep has never come easy to me. I don't understand how or why it works (who does?) so the act of falling asleep is something I've always been uneasy with. Since my teens, I have had to talk myself to sleep - literally talk nonsense to myself until sleep takes over - unless I can listen to an audiobook, music or a movie in bed. This might suggest an insecurity with sleeping alone, but until I left the family home I shared a bedroom with my sister Alba, who was always asleep long before I even felt settled. It has been the same with every friend I have had stay the night in my room, and every partner with whom I have shared a bed - with the notable exception of Leo, when we shared a sleeping space. Perhaps under my influence, even he cannot sleep without an audiobook these days.

Yet here is what I find most odd about my need for auditory stimuli - I cannot
remain asleep without one. If I have company, which in most cases renders my usual sleep-finding techniques impossible, I will wake up frequently throughout the night. Sometimes my eyes will pop open for a minute or less before I doze again; other times I will stare into the dark until someone else wakes up.

Some nights I do not sleep at all. Roughly one week in six - again, true since I was a teenager - I enter that surreal, distant daze in which I lose depth perception and the world becomes an artwork by Takashi Murakami: "superflat". Tiredness becomes bodily irrelevant yet all-consuming. My actions become automatic, limbs moving on muscle memory alone. I am there, but not there; physically there but mentally far away, in a dense and foggy place.

For the other five weeks in the cycle, my sleep would be as normal, provided the absence of silence in which to sleep. Yet this too changed when I was first prescribed antidepressants. Now the cycle has become bipolar; I have weeks where I sleep too much. I have started to lose entire days to my bed, and once awake I am constantly weary - yet not in the insomniac superflat sense. All three dimensions remain present, but I cannot summon the energy to function. Where movement becomes automatic when not sleeping, it becomes impossible when I can do nothing but. Going to the bathroom becomes Herculean, feeding myself unfathomable. Hunger makes me weaker and wearier still, yet my mind goes into overdrive whilst my body refuses to cooperate - in true opposition to my insomniac phases.

Periods of hypersomnia are only one of two changes my medication has wrought upon my sleep. Previously, my phases of insomnia were preceded by several nights of very vivid dreams, from which I could recall details of people, conversations and surroundings for days afterward. Now, these dreams are constant. They are rarely unpleasant and almost never carry a theme from one night to the next - except for a few nights last month, in which I dreamed of being late for school each night, albeit in different circumstances and company in each one. I feel sorry for people who claim they do not dream, dislike to dream or cannot remember their dreams. I enjoy dreaming and deciphering their symbology upon awakening. On some occasions I have been capable of lucid dreaming, an experience as fascinating as it is amusing. Unlike the effect of hypersomnia, I have no complaints about my enhanced dreaming abilities.

One last observation: whatever I listen to as I sleep has no intrusion whatsoever on my dreams. One of my particular favourite "sleepytime stories" is the inimitable Stephen Fry reading the Harry Potter novels, yet I have never dreamed of so much as a single house elf.

I wonder, though, how common a cyclical sleep pattern like this is. I am trouble enough to my doctor already without raising an issue that truly only affects me two weeks of every six. There are bigger fish to fry first.

Cleanup

Leo and I cleaned up Truman's newly vacated room. Leo stacked the remainder of Truman's belongings on the bed, then fell over something and broke his toe, putting him out of action. He wouldn't put ice on the swelling, and spent the rest of the day alternating between swearing profusely and talking nonsense through a haze of codeine.

The vacuum cleaner broke down once and for all, pitiful specimen that it was, so it was me and my asthma against the carpet of dust, crumbs and cigarette ash Truman had so thoughtfully left behind. Thankfully our flat has laminate floors throughout, so all it took was a broom, a Swiffer, several inhaler breaks and a long string of curses.

With the hard work out of the way, I was able to set up my beloved Wii once more, complete with balance board and yoga mat. I rewarded myself with an evening of BBC shows via the Wii, with a pile of crochet in my lap and Lola, the youngest cat, asleep amid the stacks on the bed.

I despise feeling angry - I have never found a way to express it constructively - but Truman's actions have enraged me. I am used to people in this city being mercenary, being selfish, yet having that sort of behaviour in one's home feels like a violation. We took Truman in when he had nowhere to go, yet as soon as another opportunity came along, he dropped Leo and I like a hot potato. We still cannot contact him, yet his belongings are still in our home. If he ever paid us rent, as per our agreement when he moved in, I certainly haven't seen any of it. He left the flat with no warning, no thanks, and no thought to the trash he left behind him.

This is not the first time that Leo and I have offered hospitality, only for it to be abused. But coming from Truman, this hurts - Leo especially. He often defended Truman to me, particularly through the trauma we all went through when he first moved back in. They have been best friends for years; in his desire to create a family around himself, Leo often called him "brother". After the many betrayals and upheavals he has experienced since I have known him, Truman was his last remaining "brother".

Just this once, I am able to look past what I fear is a burgeoning addiction to painkillers in Leo. In his situation, I would want to shroud myself from reality too; from personal experience, codeine is a short and sure route to comforting illusion.

Crochet and television have put some time between myself and my anger, but I wish they were so effective at solving the underlying problem. This is the second time that Truman has made my home feel unsafe and unwelcoming to me. My home is my refuge from the outside world and all the people in it that scare me so much, and this sense of violation I now feel does all sorts of damage to my state of mind. Truman never considered the effect of his leaving on my depression, just as he never considered how the state he left his room in would affect my asthma. Having written about his tendency toward self-destruction, it deeply grieves me to have to write now about his destructivity toward the people that care about him. Neither Leo nor I can tolerate any more destruction than that which this year has already brought us.

Before medicating himself, Leo told me he was washing his hands of Truman. Knowing what that must have cost him to say proves how deeply Truman's offence runs. A few days ago, I feared for his future. Now, I only hope that he can lie in the bed he's made.

Certificate

If the British benefits system is broken, then my local Jobcentre is surely the San Andreas Fault. If you are unlucky enough to be within its catchment area, anything that can go wrong with your benefits claim most certainly will. Its staff seem to straddle the fence between having their hands tied by red tape and simply not caring anymore; several advisors there are quite openly hostile to their customers. So when my doctor first told me that I would need to be signed off, naturally I was quite concerned. Making the change from a Jobseekers' Allowance claim to an Employment and Support Allowance claim didn't sound remotely simple. I had heard horror stories about Work Capability Assessments and how stringent the system had become in order to kick spongers back into work.

Imagine my surprise, then, when my opening gambit was immediately accepted. I handed my doctor's medical certificate to the advisor I was due to sign on with that day, and he closed down my JSA claim there and then. I spent a merry 45 minutes on the phone opening an ESA claim, and the follow-up paperwork came through my letterbox the very next day. This unexpected efficiency is the exception that proves the rule: the Department for Work and Pensions knows not what it does.

When I was at a particularly low point last month, my doctor extended my sicknote and Leo collected the certificate from the surgery for me. He delivered it to the Jobcentre on my behalf, who promised to fax it to the regional head office dealing with my ESA claim. Meanwhile I filled in one of those long forms detailing my condition and how useless it renders me: the cyclical nature of my mental state, my fear of people and going anywhere alone, and what I call my "black letterbox" days. Leo posted that for me too, and that should have been that.

Except that the Jobcentre hasn't faxed my second certificate at all. Having wondered why no payments had been forthcoming six weeks after I opened my claim, I called head office today to make enquiries. Everything was in order, but for a current medical certificate that should already have been received. Until they get one, I am apparently expected to live on fresh air. I cannot speak to my doctor about the situation until next week; the Easter holidays are upon us. Whilst I do not celebrate Easter, I cannot complain about the disruption. If the working calendar were based upon my own faith, the world would be relegated to a three-day working week.

Yet I count myself blessed that my claim is at least underway. Leo, too, is trying to make the transition from JSA to ESA, but lightning never strikes twice. After the initial phonecall to open his claim last week, he is still waiting on the follow-up paperwork. Again, this could be down to Easter-related issues with Royal Mail, but my beloved Leo does not have the patience that I do. He is quicker to see injustice and personal vendettas, however unlikely. Perhaps I would feel the same had I been caught up in the system as long as he has.

Unfortunately, several points about our situation do count against us. Unemployment is well above the national average in this city, and our local Jobcentre is busier than most. There are also many whose sense of entitlement outweighs their actual need; the riots that took place here last summer are proof-positive of this, and recovery is still ongoing. Things are made that much more difficult for those with genuine issues to receive the support they need, whilst those who are playing the system to receive welfare for nothing laugh behind our backs. It is a culture that young adults in this area have been immersed in since birth. One wonders, if the system had been fairer in the first place, whether these pressures now placed upon it could have been avoided.

Looking at the city through a window and a computer screen, I hold out very little hope of seeing positive reform in the area. Like so many other individuals in my situation, all over the country, I am limited to hoping that, just for once, the system will do right by me - and knowing that it will only be a matter of time before it fails me again.

Truman

Truman is all heart and no head. Despite his shyness around strangers, he is sweet-natured and will do anything for anyone. In fact, his people-pleasing seems to know no bounds - to the point where he often does things completely out of character, or reckless to the point of life-endangering, just to gain the approval of others. When pressed, he will admit that he hates doing the things he does, but he knows no other way to behave. Logic, reason and common sense are not terms to be readily associated with Truman's personality.

In January, Truman moved in with Leo and I for a second time. He had lived in our spare bedroom for a few months over 2010, moving out the following January to live with his girlfriend of two weeks. A year later his relationship had quite predictably gone asunder, and the person he had been living with since - another former roommate of ours - evicted him under false pretences. Luckily for him, Leo and I had long since agreed that Truman would be the only person we would have live with us again, on account of his not being a thief, grossly unhygienic, or a violent racist.

Unfortunately, he was about to completely outdo himself with a series of catastrophic blunders.

Just after we had agreed that he could move in, he needed to speak to me on my own. There was someone, he said, that he had been in love with for quite some time - over this last relationship, and even through the end of the previous one. This was no great surprise to me, considering the speed at which he had moved out last time to be with a woman he barely knew. Still, I was curious to know the object of his affections, hoping against hope that his choice this time was a good match for him.

I was to be disappointed, of course. With great difficulty, he admitted that he had wanted to be with me since meeting me almost three years since. He knew that his confession would not change anything - I had met Truman shortly after Leo and I got together - but he wanted the relief of not having to hold in his secret anymore.

He was to be proved wrong. The changes that followed could not have been predicted by anyone, not by him and certainly not by me. I went into freefall, seeing longing stares from Truman every time Leo's back was turned, and hearing innuendoes in his conversation that might well have not been there. Playful insults that I could have laughed off had they come from Leo cut like daggers. Leo himself did not notice that anything was wrong until it was too late, when I tearfully announced that my discomfort in my own home and his indifference to the situation were forcing me to break up with him and temporarily move in with another friend of ours. Even now, Leo and Truman cannot agree which of them was most shocked at this.

Under circumstances that deserve a separate post to describe, I was forced to return only a week later and resolve the conflict that both Truman and I had both been avoiding, out of instinct. I mistook his awkwardness for being obtuse; he bristled when I pressed him for an apology for what he had put me through. The accord we reached was tense and unsatisfactory, but there was little choice available to either of us. He had nowhere else to live, and Leo would not have seen him anywhere else. Yet it was my home too, and I had a right to be there without being made to feel uncomfortable.

Still, after a few days he and I became friends again. He kept mostly to his bedroom as I did to mine (Leo's domain had been the living room for months before our split). Life became easier, even if living inside my head became increasingly difficult.

So it was a shock when Truman announced last Friday that he was moving out the next day. Leo and I were both aware that he had been visiting his ex-fiancée, a thoroughly toxic woman with severe mental health issues that she seems to be able to turn on and off at will. She and Truman have a child together, currently in foster care, as her other two children are. She is full of excuses regarding her way of life, and she is either incapable or unwilling to look after herself, yet she has no qualms about bringing innocent lives into the world  in order to destroy them.

To illustrate: Truman is HIV positive. When they first became a couple, he refused to sleep with her for fear of infecting her. She told him not to worry; she too was HIV positive. Yet when she fell pregnant with their child, it was discovered that she had not had the virus before sleeping with Truman. The child was taken into care shortly after birth for fear of further negligence.

So you can see why Leo and I were concerned for him. He still pined for his most recent ex-girlfriend, as he often told us at volume and length, so what could have possessed him to return to such an awful relationship? He could not answer this question for us, but what is clear is that his self-worth is so low that he believes he does not deserve anyone better. His ex-girlfriend moved away after their relationship ended, and Leo and I were - had been - together. His crippling need to be in a relationship with someone, his inability to live and function as an individual, the depression he suffers from and his slowly declining physical health all led in one direction - backward. The frustration she causes him and the utter lack of affection he feels for her are both secondary to his need for a partner. He is destroying himself because he cannot bear to be alone.

He left on Saturday with promises to visit the next day, but since then he has not been seen and cannot be reached. Whether out of shame or defiance, Leo and I cannot tell. It would be impossible to try and convince Truman to change his mind, simply because his mind never comes into the equation. He truly is all heart, and he wears it on his sleeve for all to take a piece and keep none for himself.

Asthma

I was born with eczema. The family photo albums are devoid of baby Cambria; future generations will probably be led to believe that I sprang into existence around my first birthday, once my skin and hair had grown back. My earliest childhood memories are of itching, itching and more itching; of teachers horrified by the state of my skin; of my baby sister getting into mortal trouble for painting the bedroom with handprints of my precious E45 emollient cream.

The summer I was seven, I developed hayfever. If I had been bored at school before, I was positively distracted now. I could scratch my itchy skin, but I couldn't itch behind my eyes or inside my nose. Every successive summer from then on brought its own brand of antihistamine - my body seemed to develop a resistance to each one as it came along.

Skip ahead a few years, and grown-up Cambria moves to the big city. Neither eczema (except on very cold days) nor hayfever (except in spring when tree pollen season begins) has plagued me with anything like the ferocity it did when I was small, and my skin and sinuses are grateful. Still, I've never shaken the habit of biting my fingernails. The decision to have either beautiful manicures or skin to hold oneself together makes itself, and to risk one for the other is something I'll probably never be able to do.

For those first few years in the city, I counted myself lucky. My health was better than it ever had been, and unlike several of my relatives, I showed no signs of developing "the full package" - the triple threat of eczema, hayfever and asthma. Then the coughing started. Then it persisted. Then the chest infections started and kept coming, one after the other, mere weeks apart, relentless and mysterious and exhausting. Finally, on Halloween 2010, I had my first trip to A&E with an asthma attack. Unfortunately it took another two attacks before I was officially diagnosed and treatment began, and by then the physical and psychological damage had been done.

It killed off my career before it started, you see.

*

Yesterday I wrote about my awful pharmacist. I admit: I was psyching myself up to collect my prescription, and a little expression of my frustrations was in order. However, it turned out to be a beautiful day, and I collected a list of errands together in order to go outside, but for as short a time as possible. (Sadly, sunshine alone does not cure anxiety.) One of these other errands was the booking of my bi-annual asthma review, so I visited the doctor to make my appointment on my way to the pharmacy.

Any therapeutic effect the writing of yesterday's entry had on me was obliterated for two reasons.

He asked if I would like to take a test to gauge how well my asthma is currently controlled, by measuring my inhalation with a sort of reverse version of a peak flow meter. Apparently I failed at this; he berated my technique at length, and made no attempt to explain how to improve. Having berated him myself at similar length not more than three hours earlier, I listened with a smirk on my face, before meekly responding:

"But my asthma nurse says my technique is perfect. In fact, my next asthma review is tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps she can speak to you about it afterwards?"

His shitty grin turned to fury. "You do that," he snarled.

This time, I didn't wait for the door to close behind me before loudly proclaiming "wanker."

So imagine my horror at his having the last laugh, when I discovered at home that he had only provided me with half my monthly dose of antidepressants.

*

"Ooh, aren't you easy!" said the nurse as she found a fresh filter for her peak flow meter. "We'll be done in no time!"

It's true that my asthma hasn't bothered me at all lately. With the unseasonably warm weather, I haven't needed to use my Ventolin inhaler. My BMI is normal (which I knew), my blood pressure is spot-on (which is a surprise, given how my mood has been lately) and I don't smoke (I was loath to inform her about the amount of secondary smoke I'm exposed to).

My peak flow was a consistent 400, which is below my target of 435 but pleased my asthma nurse to no end regardless.

"Have you brought your inhalers with you today?"

I produced both Ventolin and Qvar.

"Show me how you use your blue one, please."

I shook the inhaler and expelled all the air from my lungs, right down to my diaphragm, just as I was taught in singing classes. Then I removed the cap, held it to my mouth, and activated the spray simultaneously with a deep breath inward. I held my breath for five seconds, then exhaled slowly.

"Excellent," said the nurse. "Perfect technique. Your asthma is well under control."

Pharmacist

In a city full of unfriendly people, it's surprised me to discover that one of the least friendly is my local pharmacist. Besuited and obnoxious, smug and surly by turns, he regards the people that walk through his door as cows to be milked. If he can't drag you into a monetary transaction, he treats you with the same disdain as one might treat the soil found on one's shoes.

When I was first diagnosed, I visited the pharmacy to set up a repeat prescription service. If ever there were an ideal situation for a pharmacy in relation to a residence, this would be it - it lies just around the corner, five minutes' walk away, and directly opposite my doctor's surgery. This little convenience might only have meant one less thing to worry about, but in times like these you're thankful for every convenience you're given.

So there he was, in his too-crisp suit, with his ever-present glare and a badge bearing an oddly feminine name, giving me a lingering first impression that he might have been over-compensating for something. The surgery had already forwarded him details of my medication, so all we had to discuss was how often I would want each item and whether I paid for my prescriptions. My answer clearly disappointed him, and my wallet remained unopened.

Then he offered me a free diabetes test. Sure, why not? My family has a history of type 2 diabetes, so anything to keep it at bay before it has a chance to set in is always welcome. He handed me a form to fill in and asked if I needed help calculating my BMI. I said that I didn't; at this stage I was still playing Wii Fit Plus every day, and I knew that my BMI was within normal levels. He handed me a tape measure to take a waist measurement and headed back into the dispensary for a moment. With my usual lack of common sense, I measured not just around my waist, but around my sweaters and jacket too, thus adding a couple of inches to what is normally a very respectable waistline. My mistake.

The form completed, I handed it back and he looked it over. Scanning down to my waist measurement, I noticed his eyes light up. Alarm bells started to ring. When a disagreeable person gets a gleam in their eye, experience has taught me that the end result is most often an unpleasant mood for me.

He proceeded to try to sell me an entire range of weight-loss products.

I stared at him disbelievingly as he prattled on with his pitch, joyous at the prospect of making a sale and entirely oblivious to the offence he was causing. It's one thing to tell a woman that she's overweight, but what sort of self-respecting medical practitioner tries to convince a woman she's overweight when she's visibly and statistically not? Answer: a salesman. It dawned on me that I wasn't a patient to him; I was merely a punter.

I refused to be drawn, not bothering to disguise the steel in my voice. "I'll discuss it with my doctor before I commit to buying anything." The light in his eyes faded. "Am I at risk of developing diabetes, please?"

He mumbled "no", stood up and strode back into his dispensary, visibly disgusted by how impervious I was to his sales patter. Not for the last time, I left muttering curses under my breath. Whilst it is a sad fact that most marketing techniques rely on making women paranoid about their health and/or appearance, I can happily report that I have no such insecurities. Grimly I wondered whether he would have been so frustrated with his failure to impress had I been male.

*

Several months later, he made another attempt. After delivering my prescription, he ushered me into the interview room for a medication review, which I thought was a little presumptuous of him until I discovered it was standard practice. Choosing to ignore my "weight issues" this time, he zoned in on my other ailments.

"What are you taking codeine phosphate for?"

"I have an old knee injury that flares up in cold weather."

That light switched itself on again. "I see. We sell Tens machines for twelve pounds if you're looking for an alternative to painkillers. Now, your inhalers - do ever get a cold sensation on the back of your throat when you use them?"

"Very rarely," I replied icily.

"Hmm. A cold sensation means that your lungs might not be receiving the full dose when you're inhaling. You should consider using a breath-actuated spacer. They aren't available on prescription, I'm afraid."

"Not interested, sorry."

More peevish mumblings from him, more epithets through gritted teeth from me.

*

Pharmacists have different responsibilities from doctors, this is true. They have to run a business alongside fulfilling NHS prescriptions, and I have no problem with a little promotion here or a whispered recommendation there. But I'm living on benefits, and I haven't paid for a single prescription since Iosing my job last year. If my pharmacist had had anything resembling the bedside manner one expects from a medical professional, he would have realised that I am not in his target market. There are people in this city, increasingly fewer but still in abundance, who earn a wage, who can pay for prescriptions and who can afford to consider alternatives - lucky, lucky people leading normal lives and wielding disposable income, to whom he should be pitching. Marketing entities are, by definition, indiscriminate in their lack of social conscience, but a little common sense never hurt anyone.

Not to mention service with a smile. That's not too much to ask for, surely?

Depression

Every day I wake up without a plan, without a routine. I drift through the day, hour by hour, unable to see what lies beyond the next few minutes. There are things I should be doing - in the back of my mind, I know this - but they all seem unimportant, as if they belong to someone else. Yet when someone asks me to do something, I'll do it right away. Pleasing other people, you see, is my priority. And there are seven billion people on the planet, so it'll be a long time before I get around to pleasing myself.

Every day I remember how things used to be, and wonder when it went wrong. I look out of the window and imagine what it might feel like to be unafraid to go outside on my own. I hear parties going on in the houses around me and try to remember, unsuccessfully, the last gathering I attended at which I didn't feel frightened or claustrophobic. I see people getting on with their lives and smiling at each other, and I envy them. I am a drain on all of them, soaking up their hard-earned taxes, and I feel useless and guilty by turns.

Every day ends with the thought that I've wasted yet another one. The light goes out and I lie awake in bed, staring into the dark and willing sleep to come. Most nights it does, but never easily. I used to be scared to sleep without a light on, but lately being alone in the dark seems to be the only thing I get right about my day.

Some days I forget myself entirely. I forget to eat and I forget to sleep. My hair goes unbrushed and my toes are cold all day because I forget to wear socks. My roommates have conversations with me, and I forget them the instant we stop talking. I forget to answer questions. I forget to attend appointments. Worst of all, I forget to take my meds.

Some days I feel close to okay. Items on my to-do lists get checked off. I pay the bills without panicking. I can walk to the shop across the street or the pharmacy round the corner alone and with a smile on my face. My memory starts working, and living my life doesn't seem so difficult after all.

Some days I cannot face people at all. I do not pick up the telephone or answer the door to visitors or log into social networks. I dare not even look out of the window for fear of someone making eye contact with me. I close the blinds and draw the curtains and stay inside where I know it's safe.

Some days I stay in bed and cry all day for no reason.

Some days my head is filled with silence like cold water, and I want nothing more than to die and let everyone else be happy without me to ruin it for them.

I remember how it was to feel happy, to feel normal, but I can no longer summon up these feelings. I used to know what life was and to enjoy it whilst I could. Now, my existence seems like a slow, protracted death. There is only myself for company, and I do not like myself very much at all.