Yeah, this year has been really difficult, Covid obviously meant that I couldn’t go out, just like other people, but I haven’t got a big group of friends, partly cos of my mental health, partly cos of my physical health, so I was very alone in the house and that’s been a big struggle and it’s had an impact on my mental health and wellbeing. I’ve had to take; I’ve had to start extra medication to try and keep my depression at bay.  When my husband left me I went weeks without seeing people, unless it was a carer coming into the house, where I only saw carers coming into my house many many weeks, where that was the only contact I had with the outside world. And trying to, I get, what I do is I separate the day into fifteen-minute chunks. I can only manage to live in an okay way for fifteen minutes, and then I go to the next 15 minutes, and that’s the extent of my loneliness that I have to divide the day up into such small chunks, cos it’s so hard to manage.

After Covid, the main people since my husband’s left, in my life are carers, and they’re paid obviously through social care, direct payments, to come and help support me, and that makes me feel lonely that I have to, even though I need that support to get dressed and things like that, it makes me feel lonely that I have to pay people to be in my life.

And I think that’s when you experience loneliness. It’s just like when the weight of the world is just on your shoulders. It’s like every single decision is yours. I mean it also has to do with the fact of not being able to see people. It’s like the loneliness that I… during the first lockdown I literally spent two months on my own. Completely on my own. I don’t wish that to my worst enemy. It’s just like, it’s really, it can really harm your, your mind, you know? It just feels like that, it feels like ‘Ok, all the decisions fall on me’. If you’re sick, you know I have needed help with being sick. You just feel that, ‘Okay, it’s just me dealing with this’, you know. I have friends who have helped me, but you don’t have that… You know but you always feel like that it’s not their obligation, where if you’re with someone else you kind of expect it because, you know ‘I do it for you today and you do it for me tomorrow’ you know these kind of things.

Well with the lockdown and all these tiers and that, we often take for granted that we could just pop out and see someone or we could pop out and see family in the car or on the bus unless obviously you’re significantly disabled or any other circumstance but when this pandemic hit, we all became essential silos and while we can video chat thanks to technology and that, it just doesn’t seem to have that same personal touch like let’s say if me and my partner lived in separate houses, yes we could communicate like this like we did before we moved in together but it was never the same where I could physically hug her. I think that’s what contributes a lot to the loneliness in the pandemic because there’s that physical connection.

Yeah it is, for me it’s a routine I have to have a routine it was a stark reality recently when we first went onto Covid lockdown in, in April because I have a routine. I’m up early I work I come home and I do more work and I go to bed, I work seven days a week but I enjoy it. Then there was a big break we can’t travel what am I gonna do? And it was a stark reality, when you’re on a psychiatric ward you develop a routine it’s like being in prison you have to have a routine and keep, well I did anyway I had to keep doing, and I woke up in the middle, about 3 or 4 in the morning and I turned over and my wife wasn’t there it was my main abuser and she was in bed next to me grinning at me so that was the warning sign that something’s not right here, the feelings of loneliness are coming back because I can’t get out there and interact with people like I’ve been doing I need to develop a routine.

So that’s why I’m working from home I have to get up I have to do this, do this at a certain time and I work late, it’s different things each day but I have to have that, I have to have that structure because for me loneliness creates lack of control and if I don’t have control in my life then all the bad things start to happen again. See I’m a control freak I don’t ever want to control another human being but I have to control of my own life because if I lose it the loneliness comes in and it causes mental health problems again.

Recently, in lockdown, because not being able to see my friends is hard. Because I’m young still, I still want to go out and go to places with my friends but because of lockdown, it’s now restricted because they have, they have special needs as well and some needs that mean that they have to isolate. So, it’s harder because they have got [inaudible 0:00:58], it’s harder because we can’t see them. But the good thing is, the good think about it is the Zoom. So, we’re able to still talk to each other on Zoom, which is good.