There are two things that can happen when I get the brief opportunity to meet a dog I know and love. I can either:

1) Get enormous benefit from them. My anxiety and depression is temporarily cured. I sleep extremely well, instead of not at all. I feel content and valued, instead of worthless. Or:
2) I'm reminded of what a gaping whole there is in my life.

Recently, I met one of the support members of staff at my local college. Through some clever questioning, he got some interesting answers. It transpires that outside of my goal to live independantly, and with my own dog, there is actually nothing. I fill my time with targets, budgets, goals, progression, tests, exams, projects, coursework, meetings, ambitions, experience, appraisals, tasks, chores, maintenance...

It's a cover story. Actually, if the goal of getting a dog disappears, my entire life does. There is nothing else I am really capable of giving a real damn about. Outside of that one thing, so distant, but so powerful that it stops me going insane, there is nothing. I despise myself, I despise humanity, I have been abused by too many people in too many places. I believe fundamentally the human race is "a cancer, the plague of this planet." Including me. I would be the first to be shot. Preferably horribly, as an example to the rest of us of How Not To Be.

My only hope is a loving dog might given time repair a personality that should be considered abominable. Should that fail, it'd be in everyone's interest that some nutter (my city has no shortage of them) sticks some broken glass in my throat. It'd be one less drain on the damn planet.

My apologies to those who came here for a normal read. I also have to thank those who have been posting comments. I have not replied, but I have been reading them, and do appreciate the comments.

Some have commented that my work is good - well, perhaps insanity helps. Pity I have to pretend to be normal and absolutely fine every day. Thing is, I'm so good at this pretence I fool myself most of the time. I try to tell myself I'm fine.

I'm bleedin well not.