After lunch I go back to the Benefits office, it takes most of the afternoon to sort out the benefits, and even when they agree to send a payment they send it to Glasgow by mistake, this is how it always is when I change adress!
By 4.20pm the payment arrives and I hurry across town to a post office, I get my money in time and a phone top up, I will now be able to reply to all my friends' messages over the last few weeks.
I am very very tired, all the benefits office stuff takes all my energy, I briefly look round a discount store and get a little compact pillow and blanket set that will fit on the back of my backpack for emergencies when my bedding is wet or nicked.
I go to Primark to see if I can get a decent pair of jeans, primark is full of schoolchildren and my scruffy state makes me self-conscious. I cannot find a decent pair of jeans in my size.
I am tired so I head to where I know there is a cheap bed and breakfast, I am lucky because for a reasonable price they have a self contained bedsit with a shower and toilet.
I put the television on, what heights of luxury, and I fall asleep, it is only 6.45pm when I fall asleep, I wake at just gone 8pm, I go out and find a shop and get milk and food, there is plenty of teabags and sugar, but I only have one more cup and a shower and then rub deep heat paste into my joints before I fall asleep again.
I wake when my alarm goes off at quarter to eight the next morning. I feel that I haven't made the most of the luxury of this place apart from sleeping well.
I am in pain when I wake up, my spine/back of skull problem is hurting me badly, I wonder if this is the heat of the room, the radiator is on but the window was open as well, I never thought to try and turn the radiator off, but I did take my clothes off to sleep, normally I have to put clothes on in order to sleep. It is nice to have been able to take my boots off for the night, and the bed was comfy and the pillow was nice and firm but I feel physically ill and I also wake up in deep distress from bad memories, the memories are there the instant I wake and are too clear, I know from experience that they will fade later, but I remain in torment for a few hours.
I go into town and to the daycentre, there are cakes there but I don't want cakes, the nice man there finishes filling in the paperwork, he seems to think I am a decent human being, I feel terrible when people treat me well because the church have told me that I am not a decent human being and if they find anyone who treats me as if I am, they soon change their minds, I remember very clearly how TS shouted at me for what he had heard about me, and I wonder how the church manages to go on behaving in such an unforgiving and harmful way while making themselves out to be Christians and 'follow Jesus' Example'.
Anyway, these people seem to think I am low risk and nice, I wish I could get the horrible, terrible words and actions of the church out of my head but I cannot, the extent of the damage is lethal and forever, in the end it will kill me, because physically and mentally it has ruined me.
I go back to the benefits office to fill in another form, then I go to the other daycentre, unfortunately because the other centre is a 'Christian' centre' a situation is sprung on me that leaves me in flashbacks, made worse by people coming after me and trapping me 'out of concern', the manager sorts things out though, and all is well, I leave my bags there and go to the church that does a free lunch on Fridays, that is ok apart from one lady hovering over me too much, I am in physical and emotional pain and I really need space.
I go to the library but on the way there is a training centre doing a roadshow, I talk to them but I don't know why and there isn't much hope that I can do anything.