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.