This is a story about Tower Hamlets...

Where I live, Muslims aren't 0.9% of the population like in the USA. Where I live, Muslims aren't 5% of the population, like in the whole of England. Where I live, the Muslim population is 46%. What do you think that's like?

Tower Hamlets is a place of huge socioeconomic divide. The council that governs this particular part of the UK, houses some of the poorest members of society, yet it is also the home to the headquarters of HSBC: the biggest bank in Europe, along with massive tower blocks for the likes of Citigroup, JPMorgan, Barclays, Fitch & Moody's, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and giant accountancy & legal firms like KPMG and Clifford Chance.

While I sit on the banks of the River Thames penning essays like this one, slightly inland there are deprived council estates that are the modern equivalent of the Victorian slums. This is London. While I go to the dry cleaners to collect my freshly laundered shirts for the working week, or do some food shopping in Waitrose, my neighbours - certainly those who you would recognise as 'English' - are in the betting shops or buying lottery tickets at the convenience store.

If you think I've wandered into snobbery, you're wrong. I'm simply an observer. It's true that I occupy a priviledged position, but anybody is capable of making similar observations.

You know, I don't feel at all safe, boarding an underground train in a sea of white faces at 6pm on a weekday evening. Canary Wharf is crawling with rich middle-class people, and the station is packed to the rafters. Often times, the escalator is carrying so many office workers down to the packed concourse that people start to pile up at the bottom, in a rather comic way.

But when I head away from the glistening tower blocks filled with middle and back office drones, I start to feel safe again. London never feels like real London when it divides itself. The private estate of Canary Wharf, and the protected enclave of the City of London, with its 'Ring of Steel' are just crying out to be attacked, because they are sending out a message of "no poor people welcome here".

It feels like no atrocity is ever going to be committed in the markets of Brick Lane, where hipsters flock because of East London's famous Asian community. It feels like no atrocity is ever going to be committed on the Commercial Road or on Petticoat Lane, where large courtyards are filled with people praying towards Mecca.

London's great advantage is not integration, but tolerance. Everybody knows that the Edgware Road is somewhere to go and drink tea and smoke shisha. Everybody knows that all the Aussies and Kiwis have colonised Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush. Everybody knows that Clapham and North London are the places that young wealthy white professionals frequent, whilst Camden is for dope smokers and tourists. Curry on Brick Lane. Chinatown. Little Venice. The cultural divisions are manifest.

London is not in the least bit integrated, but that's its great strength. Rather than relegating the poor entirely into the undesirable suburbs, like with Paris, social housing has brought otherwise 'undesirable' people into the very heart of the city.

The scariest places are Canary Wharf and the City because they have no residential housing, so therefore, they are almost 100% white middle class, filled with guffawing hooray Henries who have absolutely zero idea about the life of an underpriviledged person.

I used to live a stone's throw from the UK's Foreign Secretary - Boris Johnson - but not in a multimillion pound Georgian town house. My landlady was illegally subletting her council flat while she lived a life of idle luxury in Spain. On the towpath of the canal that the back of my apartment used to overlook, I would be verbally abused by Islington and Hackney's less fortunate residents, for being a yuppie. That sort of shit keeps you humble.

Now, 'right to buy' has gifted wealth to a few social housing tenants, but the gentrification of London is a terrible thing.

There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, so it's right that I should live in a community where nearly 50% subscribe to the Islamic doctrine. My life is certainly none the poorer for being mindful of important religious events, like Ramadan.

Britain and London's great victory was in diplomacy and tolerance. Our American-style anti-immigration and anti-Islamic rhetoric is only going to fuel tensions that were entirely imperceptible, until the USA decided to involve itself in Gulf conflicts in the early 1990s. We are paying a greater and greater price for the 'special relationship' with the US that affects our long-standing good relations with our Middle Eastern friends and allies.

Citizens of the United Kingdom would be well advised to remind themselves that Iraq, Iran and Syria had a thriving middle class, before their countries were torn apart by war, sanctions and CIA destabilisation.

You reap what you sow, and this anti-Islamic sentiment is completely undermining everything that I stand for as a diplomatic British Londoner.

Tags: #politics #london

This is a story about perspectives...

Relativity. The difference between different observers, for a given frame of reference. Who can say that the reality that I experience is more 'real' than that which you experience?

As if by chance, a friend of mine who I used to be homeless with - sleeping rough - in the London parks, visited me this evening. Now, instead of living destitute in a bush, I was able to entertain him in a luxury Thameside apartment.

Do you think that this disparity, this clear 'upswing' in my social status and prospects, makes me think "ooh! how terribly fortunate I am!"?

In actual fact, when the Government had ignored my doctor and psychiatrist's imploring letters to support me during a particularly vulnerable period in my life, and I had been denied welfare and housing, I felt liberated. I lived within a stone's throw of a Royal Palace and was relinquished of the responsibilities of attending demeaning ATOS assessments, completing form upon form of personal information, and digging through vast archives of paperwork to find bullshit documents to satisfy some blank-faced bureaucratic drone.

Do you think I'm glad not to be homeless? Don't be so ridiculous. Everything comes with a cost.

I'm really in no position to be working at the moment. I feel like I'm going through one of the most prolonged periods of depression that I have ever experienced, and the stress and anxiety of my situation is so unbearable that I am closer to taking my own life than I have ever been before.

The fact that I am working is very different from being able to work. The cost to me is virtually immeasurable. If this brief period of stuffing cash in a mattress appears to be a success for those who believe that work will set us free at bayonet point, they are probably ignoring the historical precedent and likely long-term outcomes.

I note that those who criticise me for being ungrateful for my position may be doing so whilst on holiday in Barcelona, or perhaps on a yacht in La Rochelle. This seems to be the ultimate in ignorant hypocrisy, when these people have probably never known the hardships of homelessness and destitution.

If you imagine that a homeless person should be grateful when they are finally off the streets and into a stable housing situation, you are a buffoon. Housing, food, hygiene and an opportunity to put your skills to productive use, are the bare minimum for human dignity. These are human rights.

Instead, I feel like a prostitute. I have sold my mind to the highest bidder. My analogy is probably insulting to those who are genuinely compelled to sell sex, but in this way, you might understand the lack of empathy that my wealthy friends have shown towards my own situation.

Get rich or die trying. It's not even that simple. There are so few ways to dig yourself out of a desperate situation. Prostitution of the body or prostitution of the mind. If somebody wishes to shoot me down for such a melodramatic analogy, go right ahead, I probably deserve it and I'm an easy target, but this is how I feel.

I have made a bitter choice: work for three times as long, and have a somewhat easier time of it, but know the whole time that I'm being underpaid for my skills. Or, to be highly paid but accept the very worst work. The most soul-destroying and de-skilling work that is wholly unsatisfying and only the hardest, meanest, most desperate mercenaries would tolerate in the interests of getting rich quick.

My days are a completely calculated gamble. I put my mental health on the chopping block, hoping that I can struggle by for long enough to put a few dollars in the bank before I explode with stress, frustration, depression and having been completely exploited by a ruthless industry intent on burning people out in pursuit of pure profit.

It's hard to express how hard it is to do something that you mastered nearly 20 years ago, and has now become excruciating mental agony, but also an extremely well paid profession. I'm paid to be professionally bored, stressed, anxious and unfulfilled. I'm paid to put up with stuff that would have most sane people running out of the office saying "fuck this shit".

Yes, the majority of people hate their jobs. Yes, the majority of us would not work given the choice. This is different. I can compare and contrast. I can tell you what the difference is being an electrician from being the manager of an IT project. I can tell you which one destroys your soul and your mind more.

You know the best job I've ever had? Delivering newspapers on Monday to Saturday for £10 a week.

Tags: #homeless #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #career

This is a story about what people do when they think nobody is watching...

Integrity. What does it mean to have integrity? Let's explore a hypothetical example.

The year is 2011. I'm running a profitable tech startup called Hubflow, and we have just been through a 13-week TechStars network technology accelerator program in Cambridge, run by Jon Bradford and Jess Williamson. We have a bunch of investors who are ready to help us raise a seed round. Mike Butcher has written about us in TechCrunch. We are kicking arse.

The sticking point that is stressing me out is that my partner won't support me. My company needs to relocate to London, Cambridge or somewhere on the M4 corridor so that I can hire the talent I need and get to my customers and investors whenever I need to see them. My partner is a teacher. She can literally work anywhere in the country.

***

I financially supported my partner through her retraining to be a teacher. She had a huge income drop, when she left the investment bank where we both worked, but I made sure that she still enjoyed the 5-star luxury lifestyle that she had gotten used to with me.

Even when I quit my salaried job so that I could build my startup, I had substantial savings and profits, to allow us to maintain the same standard of living. I had bankrolled her when she wanted to make a career change, and she'd never had to tighten her belt or compromise.

This was now my turn to shine. I had done it. I had built a profitable company with a good valuation that was ready for investment to take it to the next stage. It was now time to leave the sleepy little seaside town where we lived and move things closer to the action.

My co-founder had left his pregnant partner behind in his home town, to come and live with me in Cambridge for several months, while we built our business together and got ourselves ready for investment. He had made sacrifices and compromises with his growing family. Now it was the turn of my partner to step up and make a small compromise herself.

However, she wouldn't budge an inch.

I could have left her. And perhaps - in hindsight - that's what I should have done. She had never been very kind or supportive. In fact, she was pretty mean spirited and selfish. I don't know why I stayed loyal to her. I'd had opportunities to fool around while I was working away from home, in Boulder, Colorado, in London or in Cambridge, but I stayed faithful. I stayed faithful because I have integrity.

I then got very depressed. She had refused any kind of compromise. I had to leave her, or my business was screwed. There was no way that me and my co-founder could make it work over such a geographical hurdle. We needed to be together, on the ground, raising money and winning more customers. And we were so close. It was heartbreaking.

By the time Christmas rolled around that year, I had gotten so depressed and suicidal that I was hospitalised. My unsupportive mean ex had instructed my parents to come and take me away, and had involved my doctor, all against my wishes. This was an incredible betrayal. Now she wanted me removed from my own home, that I had bought and paid for. This was a horrible act of selfishness.

Before I was literally dragged away by my Dad, I decided to install a keystroke logger on my personal laptop, which was running my personal account & password. This was clearly an act of paranoia, due to the fact that I was extremely mentally unwell, having recently been released from a mental hospital. Clearly I was out of my mind.

I was driven away from my home, my business, my friends, my possessions, to a village where I had never lived since the age of 4, where I have no friends. Miles away from any cities where I had business contacts, investors, customers. I had just been totally fucked over. This was not in my best interests. I didn't even have a doctor or a psychiatrist nearby.

So then, was my partner interested in my wellbeing? Did she call to see how I was? Was she concerned about me getting better?

I thought it rather strange that she wasn't at all involved in trying to 'help' me, now that I was out of the way. In fact, it was rather strange that all the 'help' was simply to tell people to remove me from my own home. Must have been more paranoia though, right? I was mentally ill, remember?

I levelled my accusations about being dumped like this, and dragged away from everything I held dear. My partner and parents conspired to keep me trapped in this shitty village in the middle of nowhere. They even involved the police "for my welfare".

Anyway, after about a week of this shit, I decided to see if anybody had been using my laptop with my username and password. Strangely enough, and totally co-incidentally, they had been.

On examination of the logs, it looked like somebody had used my laptop and username to set themselves up an online dating profile and start messaging men. How strange. How curious.

Surely this could not have been my partner, for if she was using a computer at all, I'm sure it would have been to research the best possible treatment available for me, or to better understand what had happened to me, so that she could be as loving and supportive as possible, no?

My partner continued to treat me like utter shit and told me that any suggestion I made that she was not acting in my best interests, was purely in my imagination and fuelled by mental illness, paranoia.

Finally, I showed my hand, and she back-pedalled rapidly, begging my forgiveness and swearing that it was all a misguided mistake. She suddenly became nice as pie and started treating me with a tiny fraction of the respect and decency that I deserved.

I then had a brief taste of how I should have been treated all along, and it was nice. My stupid mistake was to then marry the evil *****. A leopard never changes its spots.

Be careful if you get mentally ill with a vindictive, selfish, mean-spirited little **** of a partner, because they might just try to chuck you out of your own house and replace you.

Tags: #divorce #mentalillness #startups #career #suicide #computing

This is a story about helping each other...

How does one go about putting Humpty Dumpty back together again? The idea of some patriarchal figure - e.g. a king - has largely failed. Instead, we see that complex psycho-social problems are better solved by a community that is filled with mutual support and respect.

In order to get me to the point I am at today, it's taken a social worker. But not a social worker who was employed to help me, but instead a loveable Kiwi who was sleeping on my couch, who took it upon himself to think about my welfare.

It's taken a psychologist. Not a psychologist who I pay to sit on the couch of, while I pour my little heart out, but actually my beloved flatmate, who listened to me while I brain dumped in the small hours of the morning, or coaxed me out of whichever corner I was backed into, suffering almost PTSD-like symptoms.

It's taken a bunch of fellow people with mental-health problems, who "get it". They know that a "positive mental attitude" is just utter bullshit, and you can't just snap out of a severe depression or whatever ails you, when you already know that what you think and feel is irrational, and you would really rather not be feeling the way that you do, if it was a simple choice.

It's taken a bunch of addicts. Not necessarily needle-wielding junkies in the throes of active addiction, but people who aren't so holier-than-thou that they don't admit to their own fallibilities and judge you, lest they acknowledge the demons within themselves. Non-judgemental support is essential, for any way forward.

It's taken all my friends, from all corners of the globe. You might not think that a simple 'like' on social media would mean much, but the implied support has been my lifeblood. To say that I've been attention seeking is plain wrong. Everybody needs to feel that they have people that like them, support them, wish them well.

It would be massively premature to declare things a done deal. I need to make it through a winter somehow, without incident. Current thinking is simply to take off for the Southern Hemisphere for a while... follow the sun.

The plan has always been the same, since I decided to cut and run from my ex wife and Bournemouth: get back into IT contracting for the banks, go kitesurfing. Obviously, you also need a place to live and be on top of your finances. Obviously, you still need the occasional bit of midweek socialising to get you through to the weekend.

Am I some Goldilocks type character, who demands that everything is "just right"? No. I don't think that's true at all.

I accept that there is going to be loneliness, boredom, stress. I accept that things are going to take time. I accept that things are going to go wrong. I accept that it's highly improbable that everything will be going OK all at the same time. However, my basic life formula is pretty simple: work & play.

I tried to take direct action in somebody's life - Frank - when I returned to London. That was a relatively short burst of time & effort, and I can't tell you precisely how things worked out there, although I did see Frank about 18 months later and he was doing really well.

To round off my own story in a satisfactory way, I need to show that things are sustainable, I need to show that I'm not just mooching off people in order to continue on a reckless and irresponsible path through life. I need to close things out neatly: with integrity.

I know people are rooting for me, and it's nice to say that presently, I have a great place to live, a well paid job, and I'm getting back into the hobby I'm passionate about. I'm also increasingly getting back in contact with long-lost friends, as well as hopefully improving the tone of my communication: from bitter and negative, to philosophical, positive & hopeful.

My friend who drove me to the coast today, and has consistently been a pillar of support for me this year, always reminds me that recovery is nonlinear. I know that bad days and setbacks will follow an amazing day at the beach. Monday morning will be miserable, and life has a fully stocked arsenal of slings & arrows... but things seem a little bit better when your skin is salty from the sea and glowing from the sun and the wind.

It's oh-so clichéd, but that Beatles lyric seems apt:

I get by with a little help from my friends 

If it doesn't seem like I've acknowledged your help & support here, I apologise. Every little message, text, email, comment... it all adds up. I do appreciate it. I do appreciate, respect and love every one of my peers. Thank you.

Tags: #friends #kitesurfing #frank #mentalhealth

This is a story about natural remedies...

Sweat, tears and the sea: salt water is the cure for many of life's ailments, especially an aching of the soul. Sports that are powered by nature - gravity, waves or the wind - are often called freeride. The feeling of freedom is important for every human. We can't live entirely in the concrete jungle.

I've been talking about getting back into kitesurfing for 3 years now, but it's not been a symptom of my poor mental health that I haven't. In actual fact, I needed incredibly favourable conditions to get back in the game.

With 8 year old kites, no car, no wetsuit and an incredibly stressful home and work life, there was little chance that I was going to find the time & money to think about leisure pursuits, let alone the effort involved in re-equipping myself.

The fact that I'm hoping to ride the ocean waves once again, tomorrow, is symptomatic of an improved situation... hope. I'm not looking for kitesurfing to cure my ills, but the fact that I'm going to be doing it again shows that things have substantially improved in my life.

I still need to dig through my stuff to find my harness, pump, board, fins. I still need to pack my bag and drag my gear across London, to a friend's house, who has a car and has kindly offered to chauffeur me to the coast.

However, I am now buoyant with anticipation. I have elevated energy levels and enthusiasm. I will have no problem springing out of bed early tomorrow, in order to get to the beach. I know that I will be inflating my kite and setting my gear up with every bit of speed and determination that I ever used to put into the preparation for getting out onto the water.

I've had a hellishly boring week, which has been surprisingly stressful. The boredom has been punctuated with being given a hard time by both my boss, and my end-client. The rest of the week, I've just been trying to look busy, killing time. I've struggled to make it to work on time. I've considered phoning in sick. I've considered quitting and running away. I've felt suicidally desperate at times.

Now, tonight, I want to live. I want to stay alive so I can go kitesurfing tomorrow. I have my patio doors open and a steady breeze is blowing through my lounge. I know that the South-Westerly wind that's forecast for tomorrow is likely to be reliable. I know what the tide times are. I know which beach I'm going to, where we should park, where I'm going to set my kite up, where I'm going to launch. I'm visualising every step in anticipation, so I'm prepared and not a moment is lost.

It might be as much as 4 years since I kitesurfed here in the UK, but there's something very special about our murky choppy water, with its dangerous tides, overcrowded beaches and built-up foreshore.

So, tomorrow's not going to be some sun-kissed white sand beach in an exotic location, with warm water and a fresh coconut waiting for me when I've finished kitesurfing. However, I'm almost more excited about it. Sure, it's the weekend, here in the UK when the whole of London seems to head for the coast, and I'm sure every kook will be barrage-ballooning the popular kite spots. Just so long as I get a little taste of salt water again though, I'll be happy.

This is a watershed moment, for me.

Tags: #kitesurfing

This is a story about terrorism...

Do we take stability for granted? In actual fact, I think we do a remarkable job of Keeping Calm and Carrying On, in the face of the threat of violence.

I often think about Britain's role in my lifetime, as a diplomatic and tolerant nation. We made great strides in the Northern Irish peace process, and IRA bombings and bomb scares had almost faded from memory. We managed to protect Salman Rushdie, when he published the The Satanic Verses, while at the same time maintaining a good relationship with the Islamic world. Acts of terrorism, like the Pan Am bombing, were committed on British soil, but yet our nation never stumbled as a respected statesman in foreign affairs.

However, perhaps our politicians took our position for granted.

Entering into an illegal war against Iraq was just downright arrogant and stupid, on the basis of supposed intelligence that was never questioned within the corridors of power, despite the fact that the public were obviously not convinced by the outlandish claims.

Surely nobody can deny the fact that Britain's recent foreign policy has made our nation a target, rather than a safer place for our citizens. The war in Iraq was cited by the 7/7 bombers, as the reason for their attack. Our MPs voted to bomb Syria, further compounding a refugee crisis, and angering the Arab world. Then we held a referendum on leaving the EU, which threatens to derail the Northern Irish peace process as well as unleashing a tidal wave of racist hatred & intolerance.

London needs to remember that Britain is a European nation, and Europe has land borders with the Middle East. We are not the USA, with a massive body of water - The Atlantic Ocean - that separates us from those who want to kill us.

It's OK for the USA to meddle in the affairs of Ireland, Europe and the Middle East, because they are the best part of 4,000 miles away. So long as the Arab parts of the Middle East don't get intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, they're more than happy for Britain to idiotically make itself unsafe in the process of protecting American interests.

Our Irish neighbours who believe in the re-unification of their island under a single republic, can quite easily take a short ride on a car ferry and come and blow us up. Have we forgotten that? I can't really tell you how my fellow Brits in Belfast feel, but I certainly don't want to offend my friends in The Republic of Ireland, by making them feel like Britain is yet again becoming a viciously violent imperialist, at the expense of European peace.

Britain has long had a tradition of multiculturalism, and offending our Muslim population seems unwise. We can't deport people based on their religion. Many Muslims are second or third generation. They're as British as you or I.

The USA can send Israel guns, bombs, tanks and warplanes, in order to illegally occupy Palestine and oppress the Arab people. The USA can do this, because they are thousands of miles away, across vast oceans, from the vast swathe of the planet that they are committing atrocities against. Muslims are just 0.9% of the population of the USA. However, in England, 5% of the population follow the Muslim faith.

Britain is in no position to act like the USA, in terms of foreign policy. Britain is in no position to make itself an enemy with its neighbours and its own citizens.

Horrible racists like Donald Trump might talk about "the ban" on people of the Muslim faith, and this might even be sadly workable, because of the popularity of the policies in a predominantly isolated nation. However, Britain is an island trading nation, a multicultural society, and close to the great landmass of Europe, which borders Asia and the Middle East. We don't have a Panama Canal to the south, and an Arctic wilderness to the North. People quite regularly swim across the English Channel.

To use the language of the USA is ridiculous. We can't talk of imposing our own brand of freedom on people, and riding around the world in war machines, blowing up whoever we like, and then acting all surprised and upset when a few people fight back.

The UK has increased and increased its reckless stupidity with foreign policy that threatens the safety of every peaceful law-abiding citizen. I don't want to live in a country where I have to be mistrustful of the Muslim community, the Irish community. I don't want to go back to the days of bomb scares and terrorist attacks.

Britain and London's great success has been in welcoming visitors to our shores. I feel safer in a multicultural London, than I would in a sea of angry white faces, all chanting jingoistic racist nationalistic tosh, at the expense of national security.

You can't use violence and aggression to bring peace. All that warmongering foreign policy, and racist domestic policy, will accomplish, is to alienate the many cultures who had previously felt at home in Britain, and turn ourselves into a proxy target for those who seek to hurt the imperialists that oppress them.

Having Tony Blair as Middle East peace envoy was a dreadful insult to the Arab world. What on earth is Britain doing, other than painting a big target on its back?

Tags: #terrorism #politics #london

This is a story about my family...

What better example can I give you of the way I've been treated by my family, than the one from last night. At 2:15am - the wee hours of Monday morning - when I have to get up before 7am, to catch the train to work, I receive a phonecall from my drunk mother:

"You look fucking shit"

Yeah, thanks for the continued abuse. Because that's what it is. There's no beating about the bush here. When drunk drug addicts beat up on their kids, physically or verbally, that's child abuse. Your offspring are your children, and as a parent, rule #1 is don't fucking abuse your kids, OK?

My sister didn't arrive in this world until I was 10 years old, and my Dad was in too much of a drugged up haze to realise that I wasn't like his pet dog. You don't obedience train a child. A child is not a subservient pack animal, that can be taught to roll over, play dead, beg. You haven't got a bad kid, if you find that your human child can't be trained to perform tricks. You've got idiot parents who think they're training a fucking animal, not raising an infant.

Was I badly behaved? Was I fuck. Ask my teachers. Ask my work colleagues. I'm polite and well mannered. I'm courteous and considerate. That's why I got good exam grades and always had top jobs. That's why I was successful enough to buy my own home, pay for a lavish wedding & honeymoon, enjoy a playboy lifestyle with all the luxury trimmings, while my own misbehaving parents have amounted to nothing: not even able to support their children, and with inadequate pension provisions for themselves. In short: they fucked up.

What could be worse, than having failed your children?

If you offer your children worse opportunities than you yourself enjoyed, you have failed. If you expect your children to miss out on school trips and accept a worse education than you yourself enjoyed, you have failed. If you have prioritised your own alcohol and drug abuse, above your child's welfare, you have failed. If you expect your children to go without, because you can't be bothered to get a proper job and work hard to give your children the life that you and your peers enjoyed, you are a selfish failure. If you take out your frustrations on your children - abusing them - then you have failed.

This is what I look like, right now. I just went out onto my balcony and took a photograph of myself, so you know exactly what I look like, right now. This hasn't been Photoshopped, airbrushed or anything. This is me. Warts 'n' all.

Do I "look fucking shit"? Do I deserve to be phoned up and drunkenly abused, in the middle of the night? What did I ever do to you, other than interrupt your fucking drug binge?

It's fucking hard going, being abused throughout your childhood. You start to doubt your self-worth. You start to feel like you deserve the bullying and abuse. You start to comply with the victim-blaming. You start to think it's OK to be used as a convenient scapegoat for your family's problems and shortcomings.

But you know what? I came to London, and I escaped from the horrible household where I was always to fucking blame for something. I was always the bad kid. I was always in the wrong. Nothing was ever good enough.

And you know what else? I forgave myself for all the shit my parents never said sorry for. They never said sorry for treating me like shit, for being abused in their drunken, drugged up rages that they don't even fucking remember. They never said sorry, and they never will, because they're a lost fucking cause.

I forgave myself, and now I don't think that I "look fucking shit". I'm not shit. I'm not a bad kid. I'm not badly behaved and I'm not to blame for all the things that have been pinned on me.

I'm just me, and I try hard, and I work hard, and I take chances on people, and I try to improve the lives of others, rather than just pointing the finger of blame and abusing those around me. I certainly don't phone people up in the middle of the night and tell them that they "look fucking shit".

You want to know what looks fucking shit?

Yeah, that's right. The injury you did to me looks fucking shit. I have to look at this scar every day, and it looks fucking shit. Maybe this is what you're referring to? You're right. It does look fucking shit. It's fucking shit that parents would injure their child like this. It's fucking shit.

You did this injury to me, because you're abusive parents, rather than people who treat their children with the respect that they deserve. Rather than treat another human being with the respect that they deserve. That's fucking shit.

So, like a cancer, I have cut my parents out of my life. I have blocked their phone numbers. I have set their emails to go directly to the trash can. I have unfriended them on social media. It's goodbye and good riddance.

I've tried for long enough to be the peacemaker and leave the door open, but if this "you look fucking shit" abuse is the result, then it's over.

It may sound harsh, but I think it's more than fair.

Tags: #parents #childhood #injury

This is a story about deja vu...

What the fuck am I still doing here? This is the endgame, surely ?

Around the year 2000, I moved to the Angel Islington, and lived right next door to where Boris Johnson now lives on Colebrooke Row, just by Upper Street. I revere my time there as the best time of my life. I had a pretty girlfriend, lived with two strippers in an achingly trendy area of London, had a red sports car, went kitesurfing every weekend and generally lived the high life. What the actual fuck went wrong?

It had always been the plan to live and work in London, and I'd pretty much lived and worked in the Big Smoke since the late 1990s. I had fallen in love with glamorous West London on cultural museum trips with my mother, to the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum, like all well mannered little boys who are supposedly destined for great things, in the eyes of their pushy parents.

What was attractive about London, in my mind, was the tube. The tube epitomised freedom for me. I just wanted to ride the metropolitan transportation system all over town, on my own.

There's something about an A to Z map of London that's wonderful. The colour of it, with all the intricate streets. The index is an impenetrable list of roads and lanes. There are pages and pages of brightly illustrated street maps, and it seems like you could never truly know every nook and cranny of London. The very complexity of London is its entire draw, its appeal.

Having discovered drugs in my late teens - namely Ecstasy - London was clearly the place to rave. Under the grubby railway arches, and in grim venues in dingy suburbs. There was always some unlikely place that was attracting the best DJs, despite the fact that everywhere looks largely the same when it's dark and you're off your head on pills.

Of course I went to the superclubs. The Ministry of Sound was the first club I ever went to, as a friend was able to get me on the guest-list. Seeing DJs Sasha and Pete Tong play in The Box was a precious moment, and I hadn't even discovered the joys of MDMA at that point. I just liked the music, the atmosphere.

I saw DJ Paul Oakenfold play a set where he was paid a record-breaking fee, at an ill-fated club on Leicester Square, that had none of the character or charm of the grimy places that were in otherwise unusable parts of London, due to the noise pollution of nearby rail or tube trains.

The goods yard, out the back of King's Cross was one particular mecca for the clubbers of the 90s. Bagley's Studios and The Cross were legendary, and The Scala wasn't far away.

I can remember the opening of clubs like Fabric, as if they were the new kids on the block. I still think of the East London clubs as the newer challengers to the well-established set of clubs in North London, the railway arches of Vauxhall, and Brixton.

I remember when the Ministry of Sound chucked out all the drug dealers, and it became a tourist attraction, bereft of any heart & soul.

Here's the tablet that launched more brilliant nights than I care to remember. Reminiscing about drug taking experiences is probably not healthy or useful, but there we go. There's no denying the past. This was a formative period, and perhaps defined my entire adult existence.

It's a strange Catch 22. I could never live anywhere outside London. I just can't survive, thrive. However, London is brutal. The crowds are relentless. The stimulation of your senses is overwhelming. There is nothing ordered, clean, predictable. It's not in the least bit relaxing.

But, there is the very essence of the city: in the place where you can never quite be off-guard, and fully relaxed, how would you ever re-adjust to a slower pace of life? How can you sleep at night without the sirens, horns and dull rumble of traffic and aeroplanes overhead? How could you feel alive, without humanity all around you, at all times?

When you go clubbing, you are crammed into an overcrowded venue, pressed together with other sweaty bodies. There is no personal space. You literally have to barge people out of the way to get to the toilets or to the bar. You are bumping into people all the time, for hours and hours of dancing. Nobody loses their cool. In fact quite the opposite. You flash smiles to hundreds, maybe thousands of strangers. You hug. You share your energy with strangers and together you build a crescendo of frenzied dancing.

I've arrived at this weekend, feeling exhausted and depressed, and like I just want to sleep for the whole time.

I travel on the tube every day, and there is all the invasion of personal space but none of the celebration of the brilliant experience that is dance, trance and magic plants. People are silent, unsmiling. It must be hard to understand why anybody would subject themselves to the daily onslaught that you experience in London's brutal rat race.

I forgot...

I used to live for the weekends. I could put up with any amount of boredom, because there was always going to be another weekend of smiles, of pure ecstasy. Yes, I was tired, my feet hurt and I wanted to cry around the middle of the week, but the cycle carried me along. There was anticipation that started to build on Thursday, and on the Friday I was happy because it was nearly the weekend.

This is how so many people live - living for the weekends - and it's all I've known all my adult life. I'm not built for consistency. I'm not built for Monday to Friday. I'm built for Saturday & Sunday.

My life is unliveable, miserable, depressing. Without my weekend fix of dancing & drugs, I'm absolutely fucked.

I flipped my addiction to clubbing over into an addiction to kitesurfing at weekends, in my mid twenties, but it was exactly the same kind of rhythm and routine. The pursuit of adrenalin neatly slotted into my life and replaced the pursuit of MDMA and pounding techno music.

My life is incomplete at the moment, and it's leading me to drink to numb the pain, boredom, lack of purpose, lack of direction, loneliness.

I'm not sure whether I'm going to get those pieces of the puzzle back in place in time. I'm writing now - at 3am - because my soul is screaming out for something that it's been deprived of for so long. I'm crying now as I write this. I'm sobbing my eyes out, as the waves of emotion sweep over me, as I realise how unfulfilled and empty my life has been.

I need kites and I need a vehicle to get to the coast. These are simple practical considerations, but you have no idea how dysfunctional my life has been. It seems like I'm close, as money is now flooding in from my latest contract, but everything is so finely balanced, so fragile.

It's never too late to start over, but the more broken things become, the harder the journey back to the safe road. I don't even give a shit about trite platitudes, or other people's attempts to tell me that they've been through some rough times too. I know how close I've come to prematurely reaching the end of my rope, and if that sounds melodramatic, you can go fuck yourself.

What I know about hardship, fear, challenges and hard work, is that it all looks very different when you're looking back. "That wasn't as hard as I thought it would be" is something we often think. But, the truth is, it was fucking hard... it's just that once you've been through it you're flooded with the sense of relief. When you've pulled through, you're full of joy that you made it, and that colours your memories, so you don't remember just how fucked you were, and how awful things were.

I've got this problem, where I'm thinking "I've already overcome obstacles like this before". Getting an IT contract, finding a place to live, making friends, finding a passion, overcoming boredom and loneliness... these are problems I've already solved once in my life. It was awful when I was in my late teens and early twenties. I had forgotten. It's just as shit now I'm in my mid 30s, even though I have all the advantages of knowing how to do it all over again, and knowing that I can do it.

There's a temptation to re-live my youth. I wanted to go out dancing and take drugs, tonight.

There's no reason why it wouldn't work. Every time I've tried to re-apply the well proven formula to my life, it's worked just the same as it did nearly 20 years ago.

However, I don't have to repeat the steps. I know that kitesurfing brought me more happiness than clubbing and taking drugs, so I can skip that step. It's hard though... because I know that I can walk out of my front door and go dancing pretty much any night of the week, for the modest cost of the entry fee and a few cans of Red Bull.

Hopefully, I will choose to do something at least a bit positive - like going dancing - rather than killing myself, but life is tough as fuck at the moment. You might think "he's been working for months and he earns a buttload of cash" but you've failed to see the reality: my life is desperate, unsustainable.

Life's not all about pleasing your boss and earning heaps of cash. It's a good start, but that's the easy part, in actual fact. I'm employing strategies that I learned when I was 19 years old, when I first started IT contracting. Nothing's changed there. But do I want to go back to how I felt when I was 19? I was so lonely, so depressed, and didn't know how to express my feelings and solve my distress.

Where do we run to in times of great stress and need? We run to places of known sanctuary. For some people that might be their family home. For others it might be drink or a drug. For me, it's London and clubbing, IT contracting and the gentrified life of the yuppie.

I left the misery of parents who I could never please and schools where I was relentlessly bullied and re-invented myself. Ecstasy helped me to love myself and feel connected to humanity, in a way that transcended simple hedonism. I had an identity, and it was all mine. I was secure and happy for the first time in my miserable life.

The detail that's almost irrelevant here is how I was let down by my ex-wife and parents, who were supposedly decent human beings, but turned out to be more selfish and untrustworthy than many strangers who I've had the good fortune to receive assistance from during my eventful return to London.

So, what have we got now? Well, it's a clean slate. It's a chance to start agin. I know the moves to make. I know the magic formula. Everything seems to still work, but the instructions still have to be followed. There are no short-cuts.

I find myself dusting off my CV, contacting agents, putting on my suit, and going out into the world of work again. It's just the same as it ever was. I earn about 25% more than I did when I was 20 years old, which is actually still plenty of money, even though it's 16 years later.

But I'm not 20 years old, and I'm not fumbling my way through life anymore. I know where I'm headed. I'm no longer guessing or making things up as I go along. There's a master plan, and everything is falling into place. But I still can't make the hands of the clock move any faster.

I learned some new tricks. Like benzodiazepines are a good way to wake up one day and wonder what the fuck happened to a large chunk of time. Like supercrack is a good way to kill yourself if you don't have the guts to actually run a blade across your major blood vessels.

However, I can cherry-pick. I can point at times in my life and say "THERE! I want that back!". And why can't I have it back? Why can't I recapture that lost youth? There's no reason that I've found so far.

It just takes time and it's fucking unbearable in the 'short' term. It's fucking unbearable because I've been here before, and I know how bad it was then, but it's twice as bad now, because I know just how hard it was to climb up the greasy pole once already, and I know that there's no rushing things, no short-cut.

Very few people, perhaps even nobody, can follow my thought process. Until I present a fait accompli nobody can see and understand where I was headed all along. You think this is fucking luck, that I am where I am? You think that through all the ups and downs, dead ends and disruption, there isn't still a single thread that guides all this? You think there isn't a goal? You think there isn't a fucking plan?

Yes, it's lucky that I haven't sustained life-altering injuries, brain damage. It's lucky that I've escaped prison and a criminal record. It's lucky that I've avoided bankruptcy. It's lucky that I'm no longer homeless, drug addicted or unemployed. But those things were never part of the plan, so is it luck?

There's no arrogance here, only frustration that people and events have gotten in my way. Only frustration that promises have been broken, and people haven't gotten with the program and supported me. Only frustration that those who have sought to thwart me or try to ride my coat tails have had to be cut out of my life, like a cancer. Only frustration that a whole heap of unnecessary shit has delayed me from reaching the original goal I've had all along.

I'd say "don't get in my way" but I don't operate like that. If you share the risks, you share the rewards. I don't think it's delusional to say that I add value wherever I go. I build, I improve, I inspire, I share, I teach, I take whatever resources I'm given and make them into something greater than the sum of their parts. If I'm not doing this, then I have truly lost touch with reality and I don't deserve to be alive.

I've mentioned this, but we used to say "Peace, Love, Unity, Respect" when we were raving. We were loved up, and we knew how to wear our hearts on our sleeves and be kind to one another.

London and its inhabitants have done more to keep me alive and make me happy than my parents and 99% of the people who I went to school with, so why wouldn't I consider myself reborn into this great sprawling metropolis? I couldn't live anywhere else. I could never leave.

That's what the fuck I'm doing in London, and I'm so fucking close to making a breakthrough.

Tags: #london #career #divorce #parents #childhood #drugs #addiction #suicide #depression

This is a story about getting rich quick...

Don't get high on your own supply, they say. It's good advice, because weed seems to dull the wits of my friends, and to curb their enthusiasm for anything more than the getting of more weed, and the consumption of shit food and crap TV.

When I meet young people who feel like they're part of a counter-culture revolution, because they smoke a bit of marijuana, I think how easily they have been duped. How foolish you are, to think that you're fighting the establishment, through your choice of intoxicant.

Governments and the police are mightily pleased to have a stoned population, who are too doped up to be bothered to get off their arses and do anything about social issues, or involve themselves in politics. Chuckling at low-brow humour that is designed to appeal to the stoner brain, is never going to change the world.

The energy and passion of youth has been quashed by the dreaded weed. You're not cool or "fighting the power" by smoking dope. You're actually playing into the hands of the establishment. The cannabis leaf - that ubiquitous emblem - sells tons of merchandise. Camden Market is London's second most popular tourist attraction, and it's mostly because of drug culture.

But what hopes have young people got? They're never going to be able to afford a house, pay for a wedding and be able to support a family, without topping up their income somehow. For those kids with wealthy parents, they might be able to go with their begging bowl to Mum & Dad, but it's hardly the independent self-sufficient life that we should all be entitled to live, is it?

You bust your balls all through school, get some grades, and now what? You can get a massive student loan that will only cover your tuition fees, and you still have to figure out how to pay for accommodation, food & books for your 3 years of undergraduate studies.

Maybe you can save up money before you go to University, but under-18s will be paid £3.87 per hour. Do you think a 17 year old is less capable of stacking a supermarket's shelves than a 64 year old? Why on earth should a young person be paid just 54% of what an old person earns, for doing the same job?

While you're at University, you'll be paid slightly more for your bar work, waitressing or whatever part-time job you can get. You'll get a whopping £5.30. That's still 26% less than somebody with arthritic joints and early-onset dementia. Who would you want working behind a bar? The young attractive, energetic student, or the miserable old codger who shuffles around?

So, what do the most enterprising individuals do, to cope with the crippling debt burden that they face, with little hope of elevating themselves from a position of poverty? Well, some of them will sell their bodies, and sell drugs.

If you deny people a legal route to pay for a quality of life that they're entitled to, they will turn to a life of 'crime'.

The two bestselling commodities, in the history of humanity, are sex & drugs. Ugly people need to fuck, and people want to get high and forget about their shitty lives. The drive to get intoxicated is not even a uniquely human thing. There are plenty of examples from the animal kingdom of non-human species that get off their faces, using various substances.

You might think that demanding plenty of interest on your life savings and wanting a nice fat pension, is OK, because you're entitled to a cushy retirement. However, your young, beautiful and fresh faced daughter or grand-daughter might have few options to live independently, other than being a stripper, escort or 'flatmate with benefits'.

If you browse the London property adverts, you will see a shocking number of offers of free accommodation in return for sex. This is the society that has been created, by structuring everything around the pension funds, instead of investing in young people.

Can't get the job without the experience, can't get the experience without the job. That's the Catch 22 that entraps most young people into minimum wage jobs and living in shared rooms in atrocious quality housing in big cities. It's no fucking picnic being young at the moment, and weed is probably the only thing that allows people to forget the hopelessness of their situation.

A pint of beer in London is £5 or more. That means I can buy two pints for £10. For the same amount of money, I can buy a gram of super-strong skunk weed, and get dribblingly intoxicated for at least a day. Two pints would make me slightly tipsy, and because I'm well-off, I could then easily afford to have 3 or 4 more pints and get violent, abusive and urinate and vomit in the street. However, it's more economical - as a young person - to get stoned out of your mind and not do anything.

The girls who have sugar daddies, hustle for tips as waitresses and strippers or even sell their bodies - these aren't fallen angels, forced to prostitute themselves because they have a drug habit. Often times, the drug habit is a result of having to use what mother nature gave them, as a means to make money. These girls have a plan. They're smart. They've figured out that no amount of shelf stacking for a supermarket will allow them to ever escape poverty.

Our prettiest daughters and grand-daughters are living in luxury apartments in the city centre, taking taxis, eating in expensive restaurants and ordering cocktails at the bar... but how is that lifestyle funded? Every gorgeous pouting selfie you see on Facebook or Instagram... doesn't that say something about the sexualisation of an entire generation, through economic necessity, to you?

The boys will grow weed, or cut coke. The girls will strip or fuck. This is what we've wished for. The olds sit idle in their big empty houses, while their sons, daughters and grandchildren have no option but to pursue the most economically profitable path they can: drugs & prostitution.

I'm painting a bleak picture, but I don't think it's inaccurate.

"It's only a bit of harmless dope" right? Wrong. Can't you see that people's eyes are dulled. The fire has gone out of people's hearts when they're just sitting around stoned. Where is the energy and enthusiasm to change society for the better?

Tags: #drugs #addiction #society #politics #capitalism #sex #police

This is a story about speaking to the audience...

Acknowledging the reader is not a great literary device, when overused. I think I have pushed most people away, by writing with a very lecturing tone. When I address my readers as "you" I normally have somebody in mind. I tend to be using this blog as a passive-aggressive device, to attack those who have wronged or offended me.

When I write about "get a job" idiots, it's because I'm highly offended, when I've had a 20 year career and been in full time education or employment since age 4. When my hackles are raised because somebody says "everybody has to work" it's because I've probably put up with more shitty boring jobs than most people, and racked up more hours. Investment Banking is not known as a career for slackers. IT projects always demand you to pull some epic hours to get things over the line.

When I write about the hypocrisy of my parents, it's because they epitomise everything I would never want to become: lazy, underachieving, highly critical and negative people, who have always put their own selfish wants ahead of their children's needs. When I look at the general decline in living standards of the younger generation, it triggers my deep sense of having had an enjoyable time as a child and young adult robbed from me. And for what? So I can now have a miserable boring job?

There's a Frank Zappa quote that I like, though:

If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it

But, in the words of my Dad: "you've got to pay to play". Of course, he forgets that his Dad was a wealthy accountant who very much paid for him to play.

So, I'm working a job that I hate, because I needed money and I needed it fast. Here in London I can get an IT contract very quickly and easily, and earn 5 or 6 times more than the average wage. You might think it's ungrateful, spoilt, to take this for granted and to even be unhappy, but after 20 years of playing the same game, using the same tried-and-trusted formula, there is no novelty, no surprises.

When I was 20 years old, I was earning £400/day working for Lloyds TSB in Canary Wharf. I was doing exactly the same work that I do today. It might seem vulgar to talk about money, but maybe you need to know why I'm not exactly thrilled to get out of bed in the morning.

There's a high-water mark: an expectation, set by your experiences. I really don't live any kind of jet-set life. I shop in regular supermarkets, I rarely eat out, I drink wine that costs less than £10 a bottle. I don't pay for satellite television, luxury gym membership or in any way indulge expensive tastes. Even my suit is threadbare and worn out, and I wear cheap shoes.

Some people need the status symbols, the trappings of wealth. Sure, I could plough my income into having a Ferrari, a speedboat, but you're missing the point: I completely rejected the rat race, made myself destitute, and I loved it. The feeling of liberation from monthly downpayments on some material object, or mortgage payments on bricks & mortar, brought joy back to my soul.

The highlight of my week was talking to the guy who shone my shoes. Under the grand arches of Leadenhall Market, by the futuristic Lloyds building in the City, this chap told me that he had quit his job as an auditor for Ernst & Young, and had become an actor. Sure, he was poor - having to shine shoes for £5 a pop - but you could see he was clearly in love with his life again.

You might see pictures of my fancy apartment, with its river views and think "flash bastard" and "that must cost a pretty penny". However, you have simply been fooled by the image that I wish to project... in fact, I need to project. I get paid a lot of money because I'm successfully hiding the fact that I'm a desperate man on the ragged limit of control. Only the semicolon tattoo behind my ear slightly gives away the fact that I'm living a life of quiet desperation.

In actual fact, the rent on my apartment comes to roughly double what it cost me to live in a hostel. Instead of living in a 14-bed dormitory with people who are on the very bottom rung of society, and having to share a bathroom and protect my few possessions from theft and spoil, instead I have an ample sized ensuite bedroom, storage cupboard and expansive reception rooms in which to relax in comfort.

You would think that living in a hostel would be cheap, so paying twice as much does not sound unreasonable, correct? When you consider that I can safely keep my bicycle in my hallway, I have a central London parking space, and amazing views over the River Thames from my balcony, you must surely recognise the value for money that I'm getting.

My one threadbare suit I only use for interviews, and the rest of the time I wear £50 trousers from John Lewis, no jacket and no tie. Somebody complemented me on my sharp attire the other day, and asked if my clothes had been tailored to fit me. I could only chuckle to myself, knowing that my outfit is entirely cheap off the peg stuff.

My accountant must despair of me, as I always cut things mighty fine. There is no profligacy - every penny I spend is calculated, right down to the few bits of bling that are necessary to indicate that you have attained a certain social status. It's just going to look a bit weird if you're an IT professional with a cheap shit laptop.

The really frustrating thing is how easy it is to fool people. Everybody assumes that under the surface, everything is just fine. If you dress yourself up in the right clothes and pretend like everything is tickety-boo, people have no reason to suspect that you are one negative event away from killing yourself.

I have no idea how I'm going to sustain the charade. Just because you're settled into your little rut, and figured out a system to keep turning the pedals, doesn't mean that I can do it. Smile and take the money, right? But what if it's too easy? What if the formula has been so perfected, that life is a paint-by-numbers?

I tried to teach a friend how to blag and hustle. I tried to show him the magic formula. I busted my balls to transfer as much knowledge as possible about how to play the game. He's no fool, and knew a few of the tricks of the trade already. However, ultimately he let himself down, because of the subtle detail.

There must be something that sets people apart. What is it that shatters the illusion? It could be something as simple as not noticing that your suit has still got the slit in the back of the jacket held together by a stitch of thread that you are supposed to cut yourself. It could be as simple as a cheap pen, or umbrella. It could be a single moment of self-doubt, or an answer to a question that clearly betrays the fact you're blagging, because you fail to one-up the interviewer and blind them with things they don't understand.

It might sound like snobbery, but it's actually the very essence of how people get into positions of authority. Having a shirt monogrammed with your initials, wearing an expensive wristwatch, carrying a Moleskine notebook, writing with a Mont Blanc pen, wearing the correct style suit and shirt and shoes. It's all so shallow, but sadly it works.

I'm part of a boys club, and there's no way I can show my hand. There's no way that my colleagues would be able to process the fact that I'm barely coping with mental health problems, the threat of relapse into drug addiction, and a desire to return to a simpler life when I didn't have to grind just to pay taxes, rent and maintain a fake image of having my shit together.

If I address the audience, it's because I'm so lonely in the little stage-play of my daily life. From Monday to Friday, I'm putting on a poker face, and looking busy at my desk. I face the threat of being found out as a blagger, a hustler, at any moment. The homeless guy is not welcome in the club. There's no room for anybody with a weakness, in the corporate dog-eat-dog world.

My colleagues tell me I'm doing a good job, and they like working with me, but I feel like a fraud when I submit my invoice for the week, and I think about how much time I spent on Facebook, writing blog posts, tweeting, reading the news and hiding in the toilet. I look at my timesheet, and it doesn't reconcile with the amount of work I have actually done. Sure, I was present in the office. My bum was on the seat for the hours I declare, but I don't feel productive or even useful.

So, I cast out into the world, looking for a connection, desperate for somebody to acknowledge my existence. Even when I rub somebody up the wrong way, at least it means some of what I say is hitting home somewhere. Most of the time, I'm alone with my thoughts and lonely as hell.

Every time I address "you" it seems to fall on deaf ears. I quickly forget that people have reached out, gotten in contact, because the conversation is so sporadic, unpredictable. This is such an unusual mechanism of communication, but what would I do without it? Friends have literally threatened to unfriend me on Facebook, because of the disproportionate amount of space I have consumed on 'their' wall.

I'm rambling, but I don't want this to end. It feels like I'm talking to "you". It feels like "you're" listening. It feels like I have a human connection, an honest relationship, that I just don't get for all those lonely, lonely office hours, where my whole focus is on trying to hide my depression, anxiety, boredom and desperate lack of purpose.

Without this blog, I'd be stuffed. There's a temptation to adapt my writing to be more appealing again. There's a desire to drive up the number of readers, by writing things that I know will be like clickbait, and nice to read.

However, that's not my style, not my purpose. We're having an intimate conversation, you & I. You might not realise it, but I'm thinking about hundreds of different potential audience members, as I write... trying to engage you... trying to connect.

Even if this isn't being read by the people I intended, at least it's there. There's something comforting, knowing that a little piece of me has been captured somewhere, in my own words. It feels like I'm at least winning, in the battle to leave a true account of who I was, and not become a convenient dumping ground for those who seek to abstain from any blame, for the part they did, or did not play in somebody's life.

I live in London. I'm practically an expert in turning a blind eye: ignoring the Big Issue seller, the clipboard-wielding survey taker, the collection tin rattling charity worker, the beggar, the pavement evangelist, and every other undesirable member of society who has fallen on hard times. I know what it's like to have your head down because you're so wrapped up in your own struggle, and so fixated on the rat race.

I've considered the question many times: am I a melodramatic attention seeker? Are my cries for help completely unnecessary? Is my lot in life no worse than anybody else's?

Frankly, who gives a shit? I'm just about scraping through every day by the skin of my teeth. Not only walking out on a boring job, but potentially leaving this shitty life altogether. I know how decisive I am. I know how bold and brave I can be, once I have decided to do something. I know I could easily snuff out my life, in the blink of an eye.

Doth I protest too much? Why take the chance?

Isn't this somebody else's problem? Aren't there pills for this?

Yes, try clinging onto those pathetic get-out-of-jail-free cards, once the person has gone.

Perhaps I'm dredging up emotions that could be suppressed? Perhaps the very act of writing is prodding at raw nerves, and actually keeping feelings on the surface that could easily sink back into my subconscious. Am I, in the very act of writing this blog, talking myself into depression and suicide? Well, the journal charts my moods, so you have all the data you need for the postmortem.

I live for writing. I live for my browsing stats and my Twitter followers. I live for those few moments when somebody emails out of the blue, and acknowledges my existence. You would be surprised how few and far between those precious events are.

Moan, moan, moan, right? Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink?

Perhaps Alcoholics Anonymous is the place for this, even though I'm not an alcoholic? Dylan Thomas wrote that an alcoholic is somebody who drinks just as much as you, but you don't like them very much.

Why do we push people to the fringes, the periphery? Why do we want the people who wail in distress to just shut up and go away? Do you think it completely meaningless, when somebody goes to great effort to explain how they're feeling, and attempt to communicate with you, by whatever means they can?

How long have I been doing this for? Shut up! Give up! Go away! Right?

If something doesn't immediately work, just quit, right?

Hasn't the message been received from you, loud and clear? You don't care. You're busy with your own life.

Is it the bystander effect? Surely somebody else is going to do something? Not me, I'm not going to be first. I don't want to get involved!

What do you think's going to happen? Are you going to catch my mental illness? Are you going to be made responsible for my life? Are you going to be shackled to me, forced to live with me, with me stealing food from your children's mouths? Am I out to ruin you and your family?

I feel like a dirty leper. I feel contagious. I feel a huge amount of pressure to pretend like I'm capable of just conforming, complying... when the truth is that things are getting worse, not better. My patience is worn thin. My energy levels have been exhausted. I'm later and later getting to work. I can no longer even pretend to be busy, and keep up the charade.

Join a gym. Eat some kale. Go to a book club. Get a girlfriend.

Can I chase away the existential dread with trivial frivolities, when the bulk of my waking hours are filled with such utter bullshit? Having a taste of freedom has perhaps ruined me. Knowing how the game is rigged, and how to play the system has left me reeling, with the shocking revelation of the pointlessness of it all.

Even if - for the sake of argument - I'm a dimwitted fool, it still doesn't take away the fact that my brain is in overdrive. I'm bombarded with thoughts in the empty hours where I am so unchallenged, so bored.

You educate a person. You train them for a job. You stretch them and challenge them and titillate their interests, and then what? You put them into a corporate machine where independent thought is undesirable? You put them into a bland business environment where creativity is discouraged? You put them into the straightjacket of the working world, where innovation and ingenuity are unnecessary?

Yes, I'm compliant, because I had a tax bill to pay, and debts to pay down. But every day is a simple test of patience. What's going to win: am I going to commit suicide, run away from my pointless responsibilities, or simply sit mute in my chair trying not to scream for long enough that I have built up another nest egg to fritter away on more life-affirming pursuits?

Life's too fucking short for all this. The clock ticks down to the day I die, and what can I say I did with my life? I didn't tell the boss to go fuck himself? I didn't storm out of the office, yelling at the top of my voice that everyone is wasting their precious existence on pushing paper around their desk? I didn't let the bank, the landlord, repossess their precious property and go live somewhere off-grid, to get away from the constant pressure to run just to stand still.

I'm writing and writing, because there is no end until going home time. How do I fill these empty hours where I'm 'working'. Does anybody even care that I've churned out tens of thousands of words, at the expense of the companies I'm contracted to work for? Does anybody even notice, that it makes not a jot of difference, whether I'm fulfilling my job description or not?

You're going to look at the length of this essay and think "what the actual fuck, who has the time for this?". I could put a cork in my mouth. I could curtail this bout of verbal diarrhoea. But what else would I do with my time? At least this wall of words - this tidal wave - records for posterity, the angst that might drive me to my early grave. At least people can see the kind of torture that my soul was subjected to.

Suffer in silence? Fuck off.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #suicide #depression #mentalhealth