The Winter Project

4. Cleo

Cleo had a love-hate relationship with people. She was visibly popular and nobody had a bad word to say about her, and she loved all of her friends deeply. She had plenty of good friends who she could go out and drink with, and five who she considered to be the ones she could not live without. She treasured those friends deeply and would tell her closest friends every week how she would be crushed if she were to lose one of them, and how she lived in constant fear of being abandoned by those who she loved the most. However, sometimes she could not stand the idea of communicating with others and would need to lock herself away for a few days to recharge.

Her father had left Cleo and her three siblings when she was too young to remember the details. He had fathered several more children with various women, and she was desperately hurt by the fact that he did not keep in contact with her and love her the way that a father should. She was kept awake at night by the thought of him loving his other children more than her and by the vague memories of him shovelling verbal abuse towards her mother. Sometimes, she would remember cowering in the bathroom with the door locked as she listened to the sound of his fists crashing into objects, or possibly her mother's face. In the cold light of day she remembered that he was a repulsive person and how her older sister always reassured her that they were better off without him, and she truly believed it. Despite this, she would stay awake each night and could not help but feel painfully alone, plagued by thoughts of rejection and loneliness and heart wrenching despair.

On the outside, Cleo was outgoing, witty and exceptionally intelligent. She had moved into a house share in London after graduating from Cambridge University with relative ease, made all the more impressive by the fact she was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in her second year of studying. She was relieved to get the diagnosis, but after a few months of living with it she felt that she was shaping herself around a possibly incorrect diagnosis by a doctor who had not had the pleasure of knowing her for long enough to make a well-informed decision on her mental health. Sure, she would have highs and lows, experience periods of spontaneity and bad decisions and fear being left alone by people she held in incredibly high regard, but that could be typical of any personality accompanied by a number of mental health conditions. She was not sure that one label would be enough to encapsulate the complexities of anyone's personality.

She was, from an outsider's perspective, successful and accomplished in her career and in her social life, especially from the view of her housemate Isabel. Isabel was one of Cleo's Top Five; one of the ones that Cleo held in high regard and who would most certainly be responsible for Cleo's suicide if she were to turn around and abandon their friendship. Cleo knew that Isabel thought of her as successful and accomplished, because she would often tell Cleo this as she confided in Cleo that her life wasn't going in the right direction due to her ongoing anxiety that held her back in her career, social life and romantic life. Cleo, on the contrary, thought that Isabel was one of the bravest and most accomplished people she knew, and who was currently One out of Five on her Do Not Leave Me list.

Their friendship was integral to both of them, both to the more mundane aspects and the complex. Isabel would buy and cook food and was an incredible cook in Cleo's eyes. Cleo provided the fun; the alcohol, convincing Isabel to go to nearby bars and pubs and making jokes out of the negatives in their lives. They both provided ongoing emotional support to one another, be it Cleo talking Isabel out of a panic attack or Isabel pulling Cleo out from the pits of depression. They worked so well as a unit and were inseparable. Cleo would not allow anybody to talk negatively about any of her friends, but she was especially protective over Isabel.