Maintenance Loan - Help!

As someone who stresses increasingly frequently over the past couple of years, I have come to the motherload of all stresses. Maintenance Loans.
My predicament is as follows. I receive no support from my Mother or Father in terms of financial aid, I pay my own way as much as possible but have been living between homes for the past year. I currently live with my girlfriend, but it seems as though that isn't taken into consideration on the forms I'm filling out.
So why on earth do they need my parents annual income if I receive next to no financial support from them? I plan on calling up SFL in order to iron out the details and get a better grasp of what I should do, but I wanted a students perspective and how they approached the issues presented when applying.