Yesterday was all about loss. I’m not talking about the loss you feel when someone dies. This is a different kind, it’s the loss of hopes, dreams, excitement and expectation. The loss of my life before all this.

I went to the yard where our old life is stored. It’s all boxed up in a shipping container. We’ve kept it there for months, partly because sorting out is a massive headache, but mostly because I don’t want to let go.

I thought it would be easy. After all, it is just household items and furniture. But it’s what’s attached to that. Our life before my breakdown. The excitement of having bought our first house and all that meant for our lives ahead. In those days I was looking forward to the future.

Now, our lives are so different. We’ve sold the house and moved into a rented place, so we just have no need for all that stuff. We haven’t got a house to fill anymore. So I need to let go. Those objects made a home that we don’t have now. And we might not for some time.

I also need to let go of who I was back then. She’s not who I am now. She was capable, dependable. She was there to look after everyone and make them laugh. I don’t know who I am now without her. I don’t even know what’s really me, and what is just medication. And if all of my past friendships are based on that old version of me, I wonder how I can sustain them now. It calls into question whether those people who were in my life back then are still really my friends now, or if they just pity me.

Plus, I found a load of old photos boxed up in there. Pictures of a smiling family that I just don’t recognise anymore. A family laughing together, enjoying holidays and birthdays together. We aren’t together anymore. We’re barely speaking to each other. And that feels like such a heavy loss to bear.

After talking about all of this in therapy yesterday, I came home and self-harmed for the first time in a few weeks. It felt like I have managed to accumulate a catalogue of failures, so one more felt OK. I was disappointed in myself, but I was so resigned to how much I’ve messed up my life, I felt like it wouldn’t make much difference to fail one more time.