Photophobia

'Before I was ill, I was unemployed', the poet says. '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 I became ill through 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 kept notes for a time. I jotted down the symptoms of my condition for the in-house specialist at the surgery.

'There was television, of course. It became the structure of my day, its frame. At 1.40, Neighbours – everything worked up to that. Morning TV – chatshows and magazine show; antique shows and the news – led to the plateau of Neighbours.

'And after Neighbours? That was difficult. There was the long stretch of the afternoon. The sag. What target audience were the programme makers trying to reach? Cop show repeats. Made for TV films. It was always a difficult time, the afternoon.

'Things picked up in the evening, after the kids' shows. 5.30 Neighbours (the repeat); the evening news. The trick was to cross the afternoon safely. It was hazardous, the afternoon.

'I didn't go out. I knew I shouldn't. The noise of the street frightened me. The light – above all, the light. I hadn't lied to my GP about my photophobia. It was quite real. It still is!', the poet says. 'The light, the light. Sometimes I thought I was sick from light, that that was the cause of my illness and its motor. Light, light …

'Sometimes Ann phoned me. She was getting iller still, she said. Her paranoia was worsening. Her fatigue. She wasn't doing anything, she said. She'd given it all up. I asked her how her friend Claire was. Ann didn't see Claire anymore, she said. She didn't see anyone. And now she wasn't going to talk on the phone, either. I could leave messages on her answerphone, but that was it. She wanted to be alone.

'Now there was nothing to keep illness from having its way with me', the poet says. 'There was nothing to divide us. My strength had failed; I accepted this. I lay beneath time; this, too, I understood. I slept a great deal. I kept the curtains closed against bright light. But otherwise my illness was gentle.

'I thought: this would be the way to die, as one might fall asleep in the snow. I was falling asleep, perhaps dying, but my suffering didn't seem to have much to do with me. True, I was tired, infinitely tired, but this tiredness didn't seem to be my own.

'Meanwhile, the city sprawled all around us. The city, and the pressure of regeneration. New jobs were being created. New opportunities. A bright, gleaming future. The ill had been cut some slack. We'd been given a few years before we had to become worthy of its transformation. How tired we were! How lost! But, for all, we were sheltered. Months could pass – years – but we'd be okay.

'Sometimes the inspectors would visit us. Sometimes, we'd have to go to our doctors to get new sicknotes. Sign us off!, we said to them. Sign us off for life! The inspectors called us clients, but we were really dependents. The city tolerated us; the city indulged us. Everywhere there was regeneration; everywhere the remaking of the city, except in our sheltered accommodation. Everywhere people property investing and buying their council houses, except for us, except for the ones who lived in half-darkness.

'I liked my flat. Was it mine? I liked the flat through which I was passing. When they showed it to me, I thought: here I will have time. Here is peace. And when they left me there and closed the door, I thought: I won't disturb its peace. I'll go about quietly. I'll leave no mark.

'This is a flat for the ill, I thought, and I am ill, just as others will succeed me who are also ill, one after another, in a long series. Just as there had been many before me, equally respectful of the peace, equally quiet.

'I will have my time here, I thought. Others will come, but this is my time. I thought: this is where I'll lie every day as my illness is lifted from me. Doubtless it will intensify at first, strengthen, but gradually it will leave me.

'The spaces of the flat will ache with suffering, I thought. Soon, the rooms will be empty of everything but suffering. The rooms will suffer as suffering is drawn out of me. I will have delegated suffering to this space, this time. I will have swapped places with this peaceful expanse.

'I knew there were others ill in their flats all around me. The agoraphobe, who liked Denton Welch. The depressive. We knew of one's another's presence; sometimes we passed by one another in the stairwell, or along the corridor. But I imagined each of us was busy making his or her exchange in the darkness of our flats. Suffering was elsewhere, as we were each to be inhabited by the expanses of space, by a time broken from the onrush of time. We lay in separate rooms, falling, falling through our lives.

'I felt tiredness, a great tiredness. My hands were not mine; I could barely lift my arms. What actions could I bring about? What could I do? I could hardly pour a glass of water. But tiredness freed me from the great questions: how was I to make my way in life? What was I to do? I need ask no questions, I thought. I would lie down, and the flat would draw my suffering from me like a sting.

'I lay slumped on the old sofa. I lay feverish in bed. I left messages on Ann's answering machine. For a time, I was determined, like the stranded Crusoe, to keep track of the passing of days. I thought to make marks on the walls of my flat.

'But then, as week fell into week, and whole months came to resemble one another, I saw there was no point, and I might as well drift, and that this time was the gift of my flat, and the gift of my illness. I have an alibi, I thought. I have a sicknote. Everywhere around me, the city is transforming, but I do not need to be transformed'.