Forgetting

Another year, and I am still here. I did not imagine I would be, but I seem to just limp on, unable to do anything decisive either way.

A London friend just rang. I didn’t pick up. She leaves messages, but I don’t play them. I can’t speak to her because I am rubbish at spin and untruths, & I don’t have a socially acceptable answer to give when she asks me how I’m doing.

Messages drop off voicemail after a week or so I guess. My friend will stop calling, & I’ll fade from memory. The lockdowns loosened ties with friends that had already been stretched by my move to a new area. I don’t have any basis to rekindle those relationships now, with so little left of me.

My world, my life, my health, are so diminished now. Left to struggle alone for years without needed care, treatment or support, there’s so little of me left. What I could have been has gone. I’m ashamed to show them what’s left. It feels selfish to draw them in to my suffering.

I’m no good at putting on a show. Or putting people at their ease with fake assurances of how things are for me. It’s hard maintaining relationships when your life stays the same or slips back while theirs continues on. So much has changed for them. I’m happy for them. Sad for me.

I used to be able to rest lightly on many different things. As we all do. That’s as it should be. But, left with very little – with so much of society dismantled by austerity cuts, without care for SMI, knowing nobody in a new area, treated as a problem – I’ve inevitably withered.

There’s too big a gulf now, too great a distance between us, to restart those friendships almost from scratch. Our lives are so different now – our shared hobbies & locations no longer providing the bridge it once did. I’m not seeking witnesses to my decline & demise.

I’ve sunk so low. I’ve been left to sink so low. I need more than individuals can give – & there is no effective way to galvanise State support. I’ve tried all routes. So I’m not going to join my old friends in to my suffering so they feel the sadness & powerlessness too.

They’ll forget in time. And that’s fine.