I: Talk to me a little bit about the relationship that you talked about between loneliness and depression.

I think they go hand in hand in some ways.

I: Mm. How so?

I don’t think I’ve met anyone who’s, who hasn’t suffered loneliness and not been depressed about it or gone away with the scars of depression. Depression is evil in the sense that it can make you loneliness feel ten times worse. And it can warp it, but yeah I don’t think, I don’t think you can have one without the other really.

Well as I say the BPD makes you feel like that anyway, it makes you feel lonely, it makes you feel isolated you haven’t always got the connection with people you find, I find people very difficult and I always have, I don’t particularly enjoy being around a lot of people. In some cases yes I do because I’ve got to know them and I’ve allowed them into my life if you get what I mean.

I: Yeah

I don’t find it easy to allow people into my life but no it, the borderline feeds on the loneliness, it gives you the loneliness it’s one of two things really, it’s that, it just makes you feel like you’ve got a gaping hole and you can’t fill it.

Nothing, food or whatever I use to try to, to fill it I can’t, I can’t fill it and it’s, yeah it’s, it’s brought me to the point on several occasions of suicidal thoughts and feelings quite recently even it’s brought me to that because it’s just, you just can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, you’re locked in this dark room with no way out which then makes you feel lonely again and you can’t always describe it to people how you.

I: If, if you tried to describe it with, how, how would you describe that loneliness?

It’s crushing, crushing and it’s frightening to not see a light at the end of the tunnel, a light in the room that you’re locked in it’s frightening.

Yeah, there’s a sense of loneliness that people can’t experience the same things that I’m experiencing, and people say to me, if I’m talking to somebody that other people can’t see, it can be quite frustrating when people are saying, “But I can’t see that,” when it’s very real to me. And that makes you feel lonely, because people aren’t experiencing the same world that you’re experiencing.

I’ve been to like social gatherings and I’ve had to take Diazepam beforehand to try and relax me, but I’ve still felt like those people in that room may as well not exist because I feel so alone. And it’s a really hard place to be. You feel like you stick out like a sore thumb, and that people are staring at you because you can’t do that social interaction, you can’t do that small talk for whatever reason, normally down to my mental health.

Even like going out for meals with family. Like, my family know pretty much everything about what my… they know pretty much everything. And like, I wouldn’t even go out for meals with them because I just didn’t like being around food. So, that’s why, like, loneliness comes in as well because it kind of restricted me from doing stuff and going out for meals with, like, friends as well. I didn’t go out with friends if there was a certain friend who didn’t know. They just thought, like, because they never saw me, they just thought I was somewhere else.

Well what it was when I’d had numerous admissions to psychiatric care I came home from one admission and my wife had packed my bags so she threw me out so I basically had nowhere to live.

I: And this was, this was during the ten years?

During the ten years yeah, well it was about. I got my diagnosis it was about 18 months later that she threw me out. I eventually found a flat to live in but there was nothing there was no furniture no bed nothing, I was just living in an empty flat and sleeping on the floor and I was so embarrassed to tell people what had happened in my life, I was too embarrassed to tell my parents that I’d now become a failure and I just lived a very, very lonesome, lonesome life locked away for many, many months, many, many months not speaking to anyone or interacting or anything.

I: So during that time you were by yourself in a room?

Yeah, the only, well the only company I had were my voices

I: So tell me about the company of the voices do, do they make you more lonely or do they keep you company?

Initially at first because it was all threatening I didn’t want them there I wanted just to be on my own but after a while as the loneliness grew they became a colleague really like a very, some of the things they said weren’t very nice but at least someone could see me, someone was taking an interest in me so it broke down some of the isolation, so it became, even though the content was negative it became a positive in my mind.

I: And, and you preferred to be, yeah lonely then?

Yeah I wanted to be on my own because I thought, I thought I was letting everybody down, it was a misconception I don’t think my family ever thought I was a failure but I did and I thought, you know, I’m not the person that they wanted me to be and that was wrong, I was still their son but it was, I just thought no I’m, I’m, I need to be away on my own and just, just get on with whatever’s gonna happen. Because I know, according to the voices they were one day gonna kill me which I thought if I’m on my own nobody has to witness the death.