Waiting for life to offer encouragement is a pathway to Hell. If, like me, you are sensitised to how other people feel, and if, like me, you live a fairly solitary life (over seven million people live on their own in these islands), then the outside world can become like a projection screen for your fantasies and fears. And the world is full of enough goodness and/or wickedness to support whatever mood you’re in. You do see what you look for. People you meet or talk to in your day can have an inordinate impact on your life, and the amplification of feeling and meaning can distort and blow your inner speakers, and leave you reeling.

It’s hard to get a relational balance, as it were, to lower your sensitivity to tolerable levels, to manage your feelings so that they don’t dominate or control you. It’s either pin drops or rock concerts. Neither are relaxing – the silence waiting for a phone to ring or an e-mail to arrive can be vast and seemingly eternal, a recipe for panic, as the vacuum of loneliness can seem intolerably near. On the other hand, the cacophony of stimuli when you are with someone else can be intoxicating, addictive – and, if it’s a sexual encounter, it can be like the most intense reality-distorting trip. And then, back to the silence, waiting for the pin to drop.

I’d like my life to be different. Where there is high-contrast, I’d like there to be a middle-ground, a blend. The trouble is, what I’d like involves other people, whom I’ve not yet met, which is tough, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my travels in psychotherapy it’s that you can’t change anyone else, only yourself. So: I’d like to be the sort of person who lives with lots of people, with dogs, kids, adults of various shapes and sizes. I’d like to live in messy raucous bonhomie with people who know about respect and creativity. I’d like to live, in other words, in Bohemia.

Another dream.

They say that when we cry, as adults, it’s over an idea, rather than a direct expression of pain. In other words, if I were to suffer serious pain through an accident, for example, it would not lead to me weeping. Crying seems to be more to do with the visceral processing of an idea, an emotional high tide that leaves a watermark of acceptance afterwards, and often relief and some peace. The idea may be truthful: you are bereaved, someone has died, you will never see them again. Or, the idea may be false: you are single, you are unsuccessful at making new friends, you will always be single. Or, of course, it may be a mixture of the two: I have been single for most of my thirties, I’m frightened my forties will be the same.

The trouble with this sort of mentality – my sort of mentality – is that it can lead to the most awful self-pity, a smell that reeks through the cheesiest of smiles, and perpetuates the very issue that is perceived to be the problem. And it can lead to blindness – a narcissistic belief that I’m the only one who feels like this, the only one who is struggling with isolation. Which is of course total bollocks, and I wonder if I’ve lost some friends along the way for not having seen that their struggle is similar to mine. I do my best.

This is all prompted by an extraordinarily moving letter I received this week. I occasionally get letters sent to me from readers – all of which are appreciated, and some of which I reply to. I wish I could say I respond to them all, but my nerve fails me sometimes. This week’s letter was unsigned, I do not know who sent it, but he had written to me once before, about eighteen months ago, and he sent me snowdrops and poetry.

I am lucky enough to have a stranger send me snowdrops and poetry. Let that be one of the top ten nicest things ever to have happened to me.

The sad thing is, this second letter was an apology. He was saying he was the “half-wit” who sent them to me, and that he was cringing about it ever since. He, like me, suffers from depression, and he was writing to explain away his extraordinary gift to me, as a manifestation of his depression. He had hit rock bottom, having recently lost a friend, and found himself in a churchyard full of snowdrops, and he thought he’d send them to me as a symbol of hope. He assured me he’d never write to me again.

Well, whoever you are, thank you. Symbol received and accepted, with thanks and love. To apologise for such kindness – well, that brings a tear to my eye. What we do to ourselves is often the cruelest thing.