Illness festers; it churns beneath a great yawning chasm. It cannot be felt, because of an indifference to all emotion. To think that you turn your shoulder willingly is denial – it isn’t that you won’t feel, it is that you can’t; there grows a dull, all-consuming ache of an indefinable nothing. It feels much like delirium, with a light awareness of reality. Illness is like having a figurative cord restrict your lungs, whilst firmly believing it is really there; it affects you physically, psychologically and socially. You drown in it, you allow it to suffocate your mind and body; it feeds on the chemicals and cells we naturally produce, it wounds energy resources and rational thought until you are slave to the ache of it. The desire to self-inflict pain is like a steadfast hound mid-hunt, and beneath all of this is an unyielding truth: that you are not required, needed or wanted at all.