It's February eleventh. I'm still twenty-five years old. Still going nowhere fast. It's a year since my ex-boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer. It's a year since he chose not to tell me. It's almost a year since he brought me on the cruellest of Valentine's dates. Not that I wanted to - but it felt like an ultimatum. I only say this now because I feel as though it needs to be said. Not because I think it's important. I don't know if anything's really all that important at all. I still work a job as a manager in a little shop. We're going south, and fast, me and my tiny team. It's through no fault of our own, it's just the way things are. Honestly, I wish it would happen sooner. I spend every damn day stressed out of my brain. Through December, I worked over eighteen twelve hour days in a row. I didn't really get any thanks. It was really tough and I didn't know what I was doing. I did it from day to day in the hopes that we would make it through. We did. I stopped taking my pills. I thought it was because I wanted to try to be happy again. But my brain's been playing tricks. I wanted to go back to feeling sad again. I'm here, by the way. It's not the worst. But the brain buzz is back and I have nobody to talk to. I was burgled over a month ago. I lived in a little place by myself in the middle of the city. Everything was mine. I worked it all out myself. I slept in a double bed by myself without my dogs, without silly men, I did it all on my own and for what? Somebody walked in the first night I wasn't there. They put a key in the front door, they walked in and they took most of everything I had and they walked back out again. They weren't caught. Of course they weren't. Thousands in value, and they got away with it. I moved out that night. The thought of being alone in my bed, while somebody, anybody had a key and knew that I was there alone. I had to leave. I felt unsafe and I feel as though it was my home and they took that from me more than anything. It's all just stuff but it's been so damn difficult to move back in with my parents. I've been hiding away in my old bedroom. Everything is working and eating and sleeping and working and eating and sleeping and I don't know what to do with myself. I'm stressed and I'm sad and my bank balance has been wiped out and things have gotten so backwards. Today my boss asked me if everything had been too much because I hadn't gotten around to sweeping the floor just yet. What does he expect? They left me to run a goddamn business after three weeks because it was easy for them and they pressured me to keep up with the sixteen other branches dotted across the country. I'm only a little girl. I have a chest infection and a throat infection and an ear infection and I'm riddled with anxiety right now. After he left, I cried in the back room and I came home early. Back to my little green room with my little dogs and my heart, unable to be still. If ever I needed a hand, just so I could lie down for even one silly day.