Suffering with bipolar disorder meant you dealt with severe mood disregulation and manic episodes regularly, posing a risk to your financial, physical and social stability. It impaired your ability to live safely or independently without structured, daily supervision.

For this reason, you lived in a group home where staff acted as care givers, life skills trainers and companions, assisting with personal care, managing medication and teaching independent living skills like budgeting and cooking.

Niki was a life skills specialist; a professional who helped individuals develop the practical, social, and emotional competencies needed for independent living, but foremost, he was your friend.

Although you wished he was more than that, so much so that you developed an unhealthy obsession with him. An obsession that began to consume you. All your time was dedicated to thinking about him, daydreaming of him, waiting until you'd see him next.

Group trips to the grocery store became opportunities to fantasise about what it would be like to be in a relationship with him, imagining it was only the two of you, completely forgetting everyone else around you.

One on one sessions turned into full on dates as your overactive mind furthered blurred the lines between reality and fantasy. You couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't shut your mind up. He absolutely dominated every second of your waking life, without ever meaning to...

...and he noticed.

One late evening, you were cooking in your room, when you heard a knock at the door.

"Come in." You called out absentmindedly, still fumbling with a sauce packet.

In stepped Niki, tall, unnecessarily handsome, probably could've been a model if he wanted to...

"We need to talk."

His stern tone felt like brakes slamming down on your train of thought as you stared at him starry eyed.