Misery Mates (2010)

Being ill is no fun. 

And I know you can't expect it to be a barrel of laughs, but having a chronic long-term illness can mess up every part of your life.

Apart from dealing with the actual illness - and whatever symptoms, medication and fear it kicks up - you can also find yourself suddenly out of work and completely cut off from friends and relatives. 

It's a time when you realise that some of your friends are just people you once shared an office or a classroom with. 

One of my former teaching colleagues did send me a very polite e-mail. 'I don't like being around people with your sorts of problems. It's too scary' she wrote, 'so it's better if we just leave it there.'

I did keep in touch with one of my work-mates from local radio. He'd phone me now and again and we'd chat about the daft stuff we used to do: the crappy ads for crappy companies and having to deal with the even crappier sales people. 

Then he went through some problems. His partner left him and he was elbowed out of his job after having 'too much time off'. 

He didn't say it (and neither did I) but I thought he was depressed. He wasn't just a bit under-the-weather or fed up - he was depressed. He might have been going through some sort of breakdown. 

I don't know if he phoned me because he knew I'd had similar problems and wanted some advice or if he just needed someone to talk to. Either way, I always picked up the call.

He was on the phone quite a bit. 

I listened. He poured his heart out. I said things like; 'that's shite', 'your old boss sounds like a twat' and 'that's bloody awful, you shouldn't have to put up with that!' 

I also tried to talk about some of the help he could get. I told him he should probably speak to a Doctor and tell them about how he was feeling. 

He was also worried about paying his bills. I said he should speak to Citizens Advice. Maybe he could find out about ill-health benefits. He'd been working for about 30 years, so he'd probably paid more into the system than he'd ever take out. 

At this point, the whole tone of the conversation changed. 'Fuck that,' he said, 'that's not for me. I'm not a scrounger. I don't care what I do - I'll work on the bins if I have to'. 

He also said he wouldn't see a Doctor because they'd probably want him to take tablets. He didn't 'want to end up like some fucking zombie'.

I felt like I'd been kicked in the bollocks.

But - as usual - I didn't say anything. I let it go. I've never been any good at arguments. 

And then he stopped calling.

I was concerned because he stopped picking up the phone and replying to texts. 

Had I offended him? 

Had my attempts to offer some advice (the sort of advice I could have done with when I was first ill) upset him?

Fucking hell.

I used facebook to reach out to a mutual acquaintance. I wanted to know if he was OK. 

As it turned out, my friend seemed to be doing just fine. He'd found a new job and he was working with new people. 

I was relieved. But also a bit pissed off. 

Had I just been his Misery Mate?

He'd called me over and over again when his life was shitty... but he didn't keep in touch when things got better.

This has been something of a pattern in recent years. There are people who only seem to get in touch when their relationships or careers are circling the drain. I don't hear from them when they've got something to celebrate - or even when they're just coasting along. They don't answer texts or messages for months on end but as soon as something bad happens, they suddenly remember I'm alive.

Do some of us need Misery Mates? Do we have people we call when we're down - and somehow they make us feel better just by being even more miserable and hopeless than we are?

Being ill can leave you isolated. People are busy. People have work and families and cars and holidays.

Once you're not part of the same world it's easy to lose touch.

But maybe losing touch is better than being a Misery Mate.