I thought I’d be safe when I first met you. You were a guy, unlike all the other mental health workers I’d had. How wrong was I. You held a knife behind your back, and now the same person who built me up is tearing me down, stabbing me and just watching me bleed. I didn’t think it’s possible to break somebody who’s already broken. But you stamp your foot over the shards of glass that lie before you. Shards of me, maybe even shards of your office window I imagine breaking. You rub them into the floor, break them into more and more pieces… crumbs, like the love you strung me along with. You and your clinic were a death sentence. I wish I’d never stepped foot in the door now.

I don’t know when I got attached exactly. Sometimes it hits you straight away like a train. Other times it’s insidious like a cancer growing slowly inside of us, and by the time we discover it, it’s too late. You were a constant in my life for years. I saw you every fortnight and you sat with me in every appointment with the doctors. You became a part of me, like my shadow. You were the highlight of my fortnight. The centre of my universe. The reason I got dressed. A safe haven. Now this safe haven’s walls are collapsing, and I am left alone in the warzone my life is, smoke and destruction all around me. I cry like a child, reach for you, look for you everywhere, but you have vanished in the dust. You leave me here to die. I wonder if you ever really existed or you were an imaginary friend I conjured up in my head to feel less alone.