Is it me?

So there I am circa 12.30pm, quietly drinking my coffee and smoking a cigarette on the front porch in the Fall sunshine. Along comes the stalker, still in his pyjamas, carrying out his green bin because it's garbage day.

As usual he invites himself up onto the porch and sits next to me. For once he doesn't ask for one of my cigarettes, and he's already co-smoked all my weed so there's none of that left for him to scrounge from me. We chat briefly, and I apologise for not returning his calls whilst in my downward spiral yesterday afternoon and evening. One thing I've learned about my disorders is that, despite the fact that I cannot always control how I behave, I do need to ensure I take responsibility for my actions. Hence the apology.

During the conversation I had to reveal I have the rest of the day off, but then I reeled off a list of chores I have to get done today and went inside to use the bathroom. I felt the need to ensure he understood that just because he and I happen to have the same period of time off work it doesn't mean that I am exclusively at his disposal for the next 12 fucking hours. He wanders back to his place.

By the time I get out of the bathroom, he's pulled on some clothes and walked into my house (I foolishly left the door unlocked) and switched on the PS2 in the lounge. I go into my bedroom to check e-mails on my laptop, and he wanders up the stairs into line-of-sight with the exclamation, "So will you be staying in your room all day?"

"Oh, come in," I say sarcastically, "make yourself at home - do you normally just stroll into people's houses?"

"Well the door was open so I took that as an invitation," he replies.

"Oh really? I thought I closed it?" I retort. And I did fucking well close it, but I didn't lock it.

In the mind of the stalker, this is apparently the equivalent of me sending him a written invitation and then throwing rose petals on the ground between his front door and wherever the fuck I am in the house. If the door isn't locked and barred, if I haven't dug a bear pit in the front lawn and lined it with hand-whittled wooden spikes, if I haven't booby-trapped the porch with a tripwire connected to a crossbow mounted behind the door then it must mean that he's my bestest friend forever. Apparently that also means that he should come and go as he pleases, and help himself to food, to drink, or to anything that catches his eye while he's here.

And I'm the one in therapy.

Experiences like this give me that "Truman Show" feeling that my life is scripted by a soap-opera author. That I'm on CCTV 24/7 and my pitiful excuse for a life is designed with the sole purpose of entertaining the millions of people who watch the show every week.

Is it me? Is this behaviour normal? Is this the best I can expect from all my nextdoor neighbours from now on? What the fuck?!

Hold on a sec, let me get this straight.

Despite friends telling me I'm reasonably attractive, stylish, funny, thoughtful, a "find", "one in a million" bla bla bla I've tried for nearly a year to get a date with a woman I hand-picked from hundreds of others who has already told me that she wants to live with me and have kids with me, and yet I've got nothing. Zip. Nada. Fuck-all. Not even a measly first date. At the same time, I have a housemate who has done the dishes less than half-a-dozen times since I've lived here, working out to be roughly once every two-and-a-half months on average. He's never mopped the floor. He's never cleaned the kitchen. The only time he cleans anything at all is when he knows his girlfriend is on her way over. And on top of all that, I have a next door neighbour who I'll probably find spooned up beside me in bed when I wake up tomorrow morning if I'm foolish enough to leave the doors and windows unlocked tonight.

And yet people look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them that sometimes my disorders make me feel like it's me versus the rest of the world and I'm losing on a minute-by-minute basis.

Christ on a fucking bike...is this as good as it gets?