Before I was ill, I was unemployed. Or was it the other way around? Illness, unemployment: I switched from one kind of benefit to another. Lost in illness, I became unemployed. Or was I ill because of unemployment, because there were no jobs or because I never wanted one?
What did I do all day, every day? How did I occupy my time? But I didn't occupy it. I'd fallen; time passed me by; there was nothing to do. Days passed - weeks, and nothing. I think I once kept notes. I jotted down symptoms for my doctor. Today I feel A., today, B. But it was always the same; why write, unless it was to wear out writing as I had worn out life?
There was television, of course. The structure of my day, its frame. At 1.40 Neighbours; at 7.00, the news. But at other times? Antique shows and magazine shows. Was I part of the target audience? But if the programme makers knew of me, long term unemployed, long term sick, it was only as it is known in principle that the signals sent via our broadcast media on earth will reach one day a distant planet.
It was X. who got me diagnosed. I was tired, she saw that. She took me to a sympathetic doctor, who referred me to a specialist. I had to lie about my address to get the appointment, but my own doctor was no help. In the basement of the surgery, the specialist explained about by illness. She suffered from exactly the same, she said. She wanted our illness to be taken seriously. How long did I want to be signed off? For the rest of my life, I thought.
X., meanwhile, was becoming more ill. For a time, she went to a counsellor. She spoke about whatever she liked every week to a young man in the backroom of a church. He was supposed to keep silent, but one day, he said, I admire you so much. You're remarkable. He'd fallen in love with her. He told her she was a martyr. But in truth she was ill, and falling towards breakdown.
Her tiredness gave way to paranoia and panic attacks. She became violent, and after a time, she was committed. Then the diagnosis: she was bipolar. Bipolar! How had that happened? Now there was a rift between us. We had different illnesses, or rather, hers had taken her on another, serious course. She had a new life now, attending the hospital every day. And I knew again what I had suspected: I was ill from unemployment, and unemployed because I was ill: they were one and the same.
How can the weak help the weak? I thought X. was strong - she drove a grey Saab with a toolkit in the boot, she owned two houses and a recording studio. But then, in the weeks before her breakdown, she sold her car, and one of her houses. One day, we took hundreds of her CDs to the secondhand shop. She was getting rid of everything, but for what? For what was she preparing herself? I heard, in the end, she gave up her house for sheltered accommodation. She gave up everything for illness, to let illness be illness. She wanted to be alone.
Now there was nothing to keep illness from finishing with me. There was nothing to divide us. My strength had failed; I accepted this. I lay beneath time; this, too was welcome. I slept a great deal; I kept the curtains closed against bright light, but otherwise illness was gentle. I thought: this would be a way to die, like falling asleep in the snow. Even suffering seem to have little to do with me. True, I was tired, infinitely tired, but this tiredness did not seem my own.