Eight months after meeting S, during which time there had been very little communication, they messaged me to say they had been unable to fulfil their proposal. S later sent me the following text.

S

At the time I met Gideon, I was working full time as a civil servant and was also fostering homeless kittens for a local charity. I thought making our spare bedroom into a kitty paradise would be a fun and creative way to use the £100 from Gideon’s project. Unfortunately, not long after this my mental health deteriorated rapidly and I had to take some time out of work. I ended up getting fired from my job due to illness, and was offered only £34 a week from the government which was supposed to cover my rent, bills and living costs. Obviously this is not anywhere near enough to live on, so I had to use the £100 to buy food for myself and the cats instead of for the kitty paradise I wanted to make for the project. I am now in a new job (against medical advice) which I am enjoying, but the drain that working full time has on me both physically and mentally means that I can't foster kittens anymore, and my days off are spent recovering so that I can go to work for my next shift. I do little else other than work and sleep, but at least I'm not homeless or hungry. This is an awful position to be in, but sadly that is what current society dictates to me as what I have to do: get a full time job, even if my doctors tell me I'm too ill to work full time, so that I can afford to survive. Most days I struggle to see a point to all of this- it's all very well working 40 hours a week to earn the money needed to survive, but what am I surviving for? When do I get the time or the energy to spend my money on things I like, on creative things, on silly toys for my cats? All of my money goes into keeping myself alive long enough to go to work. I feel incredibly guilty about how this has all turned out, and that I've let Gideon down by not being able to do the project as I'd initially planned, but unfortunately under the current government I did what I had to do in order to survive to continue to sell my soul to capitalism. By the way, I have both bipolar and BPD, have been to A&E for these conditions 3 times in the last 6 months, and despite this I have not been able to get an appointment with a psychiatrist since November. My appointment is at the end of April. Let's hope I make it that far.