Warning signs appear, but it’s easy to ignore them, at least to start with. Especially when life gets busy; moving jobs, moving house, everything’s changing all at once. Feelings are easy to squish for a while. You can push them down and push them down, ignore them, distract from them, pretend they don’t exist. But after a while they build up and you can’t ignore them anymore.

Suddenly you can’t get up on a morning. You’re stuck to your bed. You wake up crying, go to sleep crying, drop something and cry. You’re leaving the house half in your pyjamas (if you stick a jumper over them nobody will notice). Talking becomes difficult because words stick in your throat and attempt to choke you. The world is spinning too quickly and you can’t catch up, can’t catch your breath, can’t get off.

Your body decides now would be a good time to go a bit wrong. A blood pressure drop (lack of fluids does that to a person and drinking can be hard when you’re stuck to your bed). An asthma flare up. Another prescription to add to the ever increasing pile. A tablet to stop you falling further into the pit of whateverthisis. Another to help you leave the house. A couple to let you breathe and another to help you sleep. The list goes on.

The further you fall, the more you miss your Mum. The more you miss your Mum, the further you fall.

Emails stack up, unanswered. Sometimes read, sometimes not even opened. Other messages go unread, the longer you leave them, the more appear, until you’re faced with hours-worth of responding, a daunting prospect for even the healthiest of minds.

There are good days, there are happy moments, it’s not all bleak and bad. Hope comes and goes, when it’s there you fight, when it’s not you survive. You’ve been here before, this isn’t new, it’s a new room, a new bed, but similar symptoms. You’ve spoken to people, you’re doing what you can, but for now you just have to ride it out and hold onto the little bit of hope you have left.