This is a story about three snapshots in time...

Here's a picture of what my life looks like tonight. That pile contains almost everything that I need each week. In a single holdall, I can transport my work clothes, my regular clothes, a few toiletries and a handful of other things that I use regularly. I live out of this bag. This is my mobile life.

This is what my life looked like 6 months ago. Here are my bags in the psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) where I was locked up for a week. I was discharged from my section at tribunal after 12 days. I stayed in the psychiatric hospital for about 3 weeks in total, most of it voluntarily. Note: it's the same black holdall as pictured at the top.

This is what I managed to reduce my life to so that I could leave my apartment in London, when I was forced to take a job in Manchester because I was close to destitution. This is everything that I took with me when I left the city I've lived in for most of my adult life - in fact longer than anywhere I've lived in my entire life - to go to a city I'd never visited before and a flat I'd never set foot inside.

Most people take a stable home for granted. Most people have friends or relatives who they could live with if they fell on hard times. Most people find moving house to be one of the most stressful things they ever do, and they don't do it very often.

I was no fixed abode. I slept rough and I slept in hostels. I slept in dorms with up to 13 other farting, snoring people, making noise around-the-clock. I've been either on the streets or on the verge of being back on the street for longer than I care to remember. I've either been homeless or had the threat of homelessness hanging over me for an unbearable amount of time.

I viewed an apartment this evening. That's the view from the lounge. Yes, it's really soon to be thinking about renting my own apartment, but I've been on a hell of a long journey. I was born in Wales. I've come home to Wales. I want to live here. I want to put down roots. I want to stop moving from place to place. I want to stop living out of a suitcase. I want to feel like I have a place I can call home that's mine.

I'm incredibly grateful to my friends for letting me live with them. Taking in a mentally ill homeless junkie alcoholic thief beggar bankrupt loser murderer baby-eater was a brave thing to do. It was so kind and generous of my friends to risking having a horrible monster like me in their family home. It shouldn't be understated how much of a big risk it is to take in a homeless person and give them a chance to get back on their feet. My friends have nursed me back to health.

The journey isn't over. I need to keep all the plates spinning. I need to continue to maintain my friendships, keep doing a good job at work, keep developing my fledgling romance, keep my car running and the money flowing... it's not easy. Theoretically, I have enough money to pay 12 months rent. In practice, cashflow is going to be really tight. It's going to be super stressful going through all the hassle of renting a place to live... like, how do I explain that I haven't got a reference from a previous landlord? Perhaps I can show them the excellent feedback that I've got on my AirBnB profile from all those different places I stayed in London during the last few months.

Oh my god it'll be so good to finally unpack. It'll be so good to have my own place. It'll be so good if I can get a bunch of the pieces of the puzzle all in place at the same time.

Tags: #homeless

This is a story about life in the provinces...

For four years I tried in vain to get back my old life where I was an eligible bachelor living in the Angel Islington, zone one, and I could walk to work in the City and all the trendy bars and restaurants on Upper Street or skateboard into the West End. I used to park my car right outside my flat and go kitesurfing on whichever beach tickled my fancy on any given weekend. I used to jet off to exotic locations for several holidays a year. I was living the dream, and I tried to recreate that dream but I failed.

The closest I ever got to being happy in London was when I was homeless. Sleeping rough in Kensington Palace Gardens will be a memory I'll treasure forever, as will the hostels where I made friends with heaps of junkies and alcoholics. I started to rebuild a social group amongst my fellow homeless, and that made me happy; secure.

Blending a 'normal' life with one of homelessness and fraternising with the homeless is not easy. Keeping regular office hours is hard when your friends work doing casual labour and as part of the gig economy. Living in a hostel dorm, but having to go to work suited and booted in a crisp shirt and sharp suit, is something that's quite difficult. In the end, I lost everything again.

I wouldn't opt for the high-risk, high-reward strategy again, in London. It's too much pressure to maintain a high-living lifestyle. It wasn't really my choice to rent a luxury riverside apartment... I asked a friend if he'd help me find a place to live - given that I was homeless - and he decided that 25% of my monthly salary didn't sound like too much of a big financial commitment.... except it was actually thousands of pounds a month that I *HAD* to keep earning after I signed the lease. I wouldn't do that again.

Everything's a little easier in the provinces. I can drive to work. I can park for free. The roads aren't congested as hell and I don't have to pay a congestion charge. People are more laid back and they work shorter hours. It's easier to impress the bosses and the work's really easy too. Things are less competitive. Things are less hectic; stressful.

I feel bad that my lifestyle's quite polluting, but I can drive into town and park to go shopping. I can drive to see my girlfriend and park outside her house. I can leave work at 4:30 and be home before 5pm. I can drive to the beach. It's not an energy-efficient global-warming conscious lifestyle at all, but it's a hell of a lot less stressful and exhausting than living in an overcrowded city.

I love the social aspect of London, where there are so many interesting people and fascinating cultural events, but I was always too stressed out and unwell to participate. I was barely surviving in London for most of those four years. I was able to hang out in my lovely apartment for two years, but I was completely withdrawn - I hardly ever left the apartment.

I never quite got back to having everything I needed in London - there was always one thing that was badly broken in my life. When I had the apartment, I lost my job. When I got a girlfriend, I ran out of money. When I had money, I lost my friends. It's really hard to get and keep the things you need in London, mostly because everything's really expensive and takes a lot of effort and energy. You need to run just to stand still in London.

I commuted home from work just now and I sat in a big queue of traffic, but it was moving slowly and it didn't take long before I got through it. The sun was shining and I was in my little car, which is actually thoroughly decent for the money I paid for it, and it was alright. I could've phoned somebody for a chat. You can't phone a friend for a chat when you're stuck on an underground train.

Life's a hell of a lot simpler outside London. Things are within the realms of possibility quite easily. It won't totally bankrupt me to rent a nice apartment locally. Buying, taxing and insuring a car hasn't completely bankrupted me. The cost of living is substantially cheaper than London, to the point where money should hopefully quickly accrue. Tomorrow I will have earned enough money to pay for 6 months rent, which is great because I'll soon get to the point where I have more financial security. I need to have more security. It's been too long that I've been hustling like hell, trying to get back into civilised society.

I wish I could've made it work in London because I'm a proud person and it feels like I failed, but I made a few wrong choices and mistakes are costly in London. Everything's costly in London. At least London's big enough that you can make some really big screw-ups and get away with it.

There's pressure in the provinces to not screw things up, because your nosey neighbour is gonna know about it and never let you forget if you make a mistake, but life's a hell of a lot easier. Yes, you might have to hide your face in shame; you might have people gossiping about you behind your back; you might become a 'known' face, rather than just an anonymous member of the seething masses, like you are in London. I'm glad I went through all my troubles in London, where nobody will ever remember me - in theory, I live my life without prejudice, because I've been able to leave that part of history behind. That's one of the reasons why I've not gone back to Bournemouth - because of my messy divorce and the fact my ex-wife still lives there... it's her place now.

My life's got the potential to be delightfully simple and straightforward. I can almost sense the possibility of having a work:life balance. Things might become sustainable - it's certainly within the realms of possibility. I earn bucketloads and the cost of living is so much less here in the provinces, there's a good chance I can quickly get back on my feet.

I've only worked a week in the new job, but I'm making good progress and I'm managing to cope with the early morning and the lack of sleeping pills. I've managed to get where I wanted - local friends, local girlfriend, local job, car, roof over my head, money in the bank. There are things that still need fixing, like having a place of my own and getting more job and financial security, but those things will come soon enough as long as I can keep turning the pedals; keep getting up in the morning and going to work.

The guy I work with works a snail's pace, but that's OK. It's a marathon not a sprint. It's good for me to learn to work at a slower pace - it's more sustainable. I can't believe that we've achieved so little in the best part of a week, but who cares? The pace of life is slower in the provinces. We'll get there in the end. No rush.

If things go wrong, I'll probably end up eating my words and rushing back to the capital, because there's bucketloads of easy money to be made there. Here in the provinces, there are fewer choices. Of course I'm going to go back to London, chasing girls and big money contracts if this provincial life doesn't work out for me. London has rich pickings, where the provinces have only a few options that you'd be really happy with. I'll try to make it work, but it'll be more heartbreaking out here in the sticks, where it's hard to be philosophical about things not working out - there are only a few companies that you'd want to work for, and there are fewer potential soulmates.

At the moment, I'm quietly optimistic. It's Friday tomorrow, and despite the dreadful Monday morning, the trajectory of the week has been one of steady improvement. It bodes well.

Tags: #homeless #london #career

This is a story about a sick man...

I didn't drink last night or tonight. I've stopped taking sleeping pills. I've stopped taking anxiety medication. I've stopped taking tranquillisers. I've stopped taking sedatives. I don't take antidepressants. I feel very unwell.

I woke up and I thought about getting some rope and going to find a tree to hang myself from. I've not really thought about hanging much, but it's been on my mind. I think about a last minute change of heart, where I might try to take the weight off the noose, but it would be futile - I would try and I would fail. I think about the uncomfortable final couple of minutes, where I'd be panicking as the hypercapnic alarm response would make me thrash around, trying to get air into my lungs. Hanging would be a brutal way to die, because I imagine that I'd be conscious for quite a lot of it, then I'd lose control of my bowels and some poor sod would find me strung up with soiled underwear. Somebody would have to cut down my lifeless body. Anyway, that seemed like one of the options this morning.

This should be a happy period of my life. I'm not homeless, I have friends, a girlfriend, money and a car. I'm not a drug addict. I'm highly employable. I have my physical health, mostly. I've got a local job which is very well paid.

What's going on? Why am I so depressed?

I'm trapped. I can't go backwards. I can't stay still. I can't go forwards. I need to keep moving forwards, but I've run out of rope; I'm at my wits end.

I should have taken some time off in-between the last job and the new one, but that's not the way things worked out. Make hay while the sun shines, they say. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, they say. Somebody opened a briefcase of money, tempting me with it, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. It is a good idea. It's a really good idea to have a really well paid job that's a short distance away from where you live. The problem is, I've got nothing left to give.

I can't fail. I can't falter. I have to succeed. I can't go back. I can't stand still.

I'm so desperate to feel better, but I know that the answer doesn't lie in pills. I know that to take antidepressants would send me manic. I know that pills aren't the answer. I'd love to feel a bit better though. My bank balance would love me to feel a bit better. It'd be nice if I didn't keep writing things that worry and upset my friends and girlfriend. Such is life. These are the cards I've been dealt.

What's important to me? It seems like it's all about work and money, but that's a good place to start. Without work and money there can be no future. Without a future there's nothing to hope for - I might as well just give up. This is the strange situation, where work is making me unwell, but without work I'll get unwell because I'll get into financial difficulties and I'll have nothing to look forward to except bankruptcy.

Just a little bit longer... if I can just work for a little bit longer...

How much money did I lose in January and February to ill health? Was it £10,000? What does it matter? I worked as hard as I could.

I've managed to buy a car. I've managed to get a local job. I've got a girlfriend. I've got some money in the bank. These are major milestones; major achievements. Things are looking up in my life.

I need to impress some new people; prove myself. I've got a new routine to get into. I've got a load of new stuff to learn, and not the fun kind of learning - this is stuff I'm expected to know already. I've got to give a good first impression - I can't turn up to work hours late every day; I can't let on that I'm not very well.

I'm sick but I can't afford to be. I'm sick but there's too much at stake. I'm sick but I don't want to lose the amazing opportunity that's fallen in my lap. I'm sick but my life looks perfect in a lot of ways - why am I sick?

I don't want to accept that I'm sick but the anxiety and depression are unbearable. It's enough to drive me to drink, drugs and/or suicide. I want to run away from the source of stress. I want to hide under the duvet for a couple of months. I need to recover but I can't - there's too much work to do. I need time off but I can't afford to lose everything.

I'm the epitome of functional. I'm getting up and doing the things I need to do, even though it's destroying me. Somehow I keep putting one foot in front of the other. Somehow the things that need to happen keep happening. I'm keeping the plates spinning even though I'm sick. At times, I'm quite happy and contented. At times I'm a picture of good health and carefree joy.

I've worked hard - even if you don't think I have - to give myself some easier times. I've put up with horrible situations because I knew they'd pay off in the end. There has to be some reward, otherwise it wouldn't have been worth the stress and aggravation at all. It would be a lie to say that my life is purely miserable. Misery kind of stalks me though - I know it lurks just around the corner at all times.

"Cheer up... it might never happen!" somebody might say, but I really wish it would happen, because I can't stand the constant anxiety. I can't stand the fact that it is happening, and I know exactly how long it's going to keep on happening for because it's not very difficult to work out such things. I know exactly what to expect. I know exactly the way things are going to go. I know exactly what has to be done. I know exactly how awful it's going to be.

My mood would be a lot better if I could abandon all responsibilities and follow my mood. I know that time passes incredibly slowly when I'm having to kill time and suffer horrible periods with nothing to do at work. I know that it's incredibly toxic to my mental health to be solving the same problems I've done a million times before, but with a load of constraints that artificially limit me from being able to work and occupy myself - to keep myself busy. I know that isolation - working alone - is really unbearable. The last place on earth I should be right now is twiddling my thumbs, bored but chained to a desk with nothing to do and nobody to talk to.

I'm going through a difficult transitionary period. I should have taken some time off. I'm emotionally exhausted. I'm trying to switch mindset, from the isolation of the last job to the possibilities of a new opportunity. I know that I need to give it a few days, or a couple of weeks, to get settled.

Everything's so stressful and unsettled. I've got a new commute to get used to. Somehow, I've got even less of a home than I did when I was living in AirBnBs. I can't get changed. I can't have a shower. I can't take a shit. I can't make myself something to eat. How did I end up like this, with a stressful job and no place to call my own... no bedroom; no privacy. It sounds ungrateful, but it's just a description of my current situation, at times. It could be worse, perhaps - I could be homeless; destitute. I could be additionally isolated and lonely, living alone. It could be worse... it could be worse... it could be worse. There is gratitude, but there is also a heap of stress and anxiety that's beyond what I can cope with. I am grateful, but I'm also struggling.

What do I want? Do I want everything to be perfect right now? Do I want easy solutions, like swallowing pills? Do I think somebody should gift me everything I need, all wrapped up with a bow? Do I expect somebody to just give me the keys to a place of my own and wave a magic wand to move all my stuff? What about friends? Should I just snap my fingers whenever I need them, and snap them again when I don't want them around?

I don't know about any of this stuff. All I know is that I woke up and I thought about finding some rope and a tree to hang myself. I thought about walking out of the perfect opportunity that's fallen in my lap. I thought about letting everything go to hell in a handcart, because I've reached the end of my tether. I don't know why I think this stuff. Maybe I'm a bad person. Maybe I'm an ungrateful little shit. Maybe I should just fuck off and die.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to have another alcohol and sleeping-pill free night and hope that these awful feelings subside. I'm going to hope for a better day tomorrow. I'm going to grab my black holdall and take the show on the road.

I'm sick, but do I have to be? I think I know where the problems are. I think I know the solutions. I know that nothing's going to be perfect. I know that life is full of compromises. All I can think to do is to keep trying to set things up so that the very least number of things are causing me distress. I keep reducing the number of things that are unpleasant and broken, in the hope that at some point things start becoming a bit easier, because at the moment there are too many times when life's unbearable.

Maybe I need to quit drinking. Maybe I need a drink. I don't know. Too much change and too much that's unsettling. I've lived out of a suitcase for far too long.

Yes, underlying mental health problems are the obvious thing to point to, but what's the solution? Of course the little bit of me that's got some survival instinct left thinks that being medicated up to the eyeballs, living in a council house, supported living or institution is preferable to death. Is being alive without dignity or hope preferable to this life that's a fate worse than death? Isn't it all the same anyway? If the rewards aren't there and the suffering is unbearable, why bother?

I managed half a day in my new local job, and I felt sick, sick, sick.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. If it's not, I don't know if I can carry on.

Tags: #suicide #career

This is a story about a boring and uninteresting life...

I hate writing with constraints. I hate having somebody looking over my shoulder while I write, commenting on my half-formed sentences - writing is not a spectator's sport. I hate rushing to finish a piece of writing; I hate trying to squeeze in the time to sit and write. I hate having to consider who's going to read what I write and to second-guess what they're going to think. I hate having to write with a filter and to write in anticipation of how people might interpret things if they were to take my words out of context.

The context is that writing has been my stable and secure companion - my trustworthy and reliable friend - during some very turbulent times. The context is that during the period which I have been writing almost every day, I've been on one hell of a journey. With writing as the only constant in my life, the progress that I've made becomes more apparent - if you read my earlier writing then you can dip into periods where my life was quite profoundly different, although the words on the page don't really give that away at first glance.

To me, sitting down in front of the keyboard feels the same today as it did at any time in the past. To me, I'm every bit as coherent and articulate and compos mentis as I ever was - I can't perceive any difference in myself between who I am today and who I was at any previous time when I was writing this blog. If there have been changes, they've been to subtle to perceive in myself, given I have to live inside my own head for 24 hours a day. "You're looking well" or "you sound well" my friends say to me - they have the benefit of dipping into my life periodically, so they can see the trends, but I can't do that.

I suppose there is a great deal of improvement in my life, even if a lot of it remains merely potential at the moment - there's still a lot of hard work to do. I suppose if I was to think back to where I was a year ago or so, things are a great deal better than they were.

I didn't write yesterday but it's rare that I skip a day. Two years ago I accidentally destroyed an iPhone and a Macbook, on this day. A year ago I didn't even write for a whole week and when I started writing again I told some random tale of historical events from my divorce, seemingly to nobody in particular. It looks as if I was wrestling with the feeling that I was letting my [ex-]girlfriend down. I know what was going wrong - every single winter for several years, I've struggled.

I can see from the archives that I was away skiing back in 2008. March used to be a great time to be kitesurfing in Venezuela. This would be the perfect time of year to spend a couple of weeks lying on a beach. I wonder how far I am from those better times, when the years fly by because my life has regular holidays to hot countries. I wonder how much more hard work it's gonna take before I get back into a sustainable pattern of work, which largely depends on being able to have nice holidays to look forward to. I've chosen a lifestyle that is mostly miserable during office hours, but does carry substantial rewards during leisure time.

I'm not sure what to write about. I'm pretty sure what not to write about, but it's hard. To not write anything that's personal and could make me identifiable is really hard. To not write any of the detail of recent years is difficult, when I'm still processing those events. To break the habits I've gotten into and to lose the catharsis of writing about what I went through, is a big change. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to be entirely forward-thinking and live in the future when it comes to this blog, because the future mostly holds anxiety for me. I'm anxious, for example, about the day when this blog is stumbled upon by somebody who I'd prefer not to read it.

This is a weird transitionary period. I presume I'm writing with reasonable clarity, except for the fact that I'm being cryptic and omitting any of the gory details that already exist in the archives. I presume that my life - which seems stable to all outward appearances - is now becoming something valuable that I don't want to damage. I'm getting the things I need quite quickly now - there has been a lot of very rapid change; improvement.

Potentially, I'm shifting from the intolerable and unsustainable, to a life that's liveable. Potentially, the destructive patterns of the past have been vanquished - I've overcome some pretty insurmountable obstacles and I'm beginning to get a whole load of things lined up in my favour. Life is getting easier.

Historically, I've done a lot of moaning. The archives contain a lot of complaining. I've whinged a great deal about how awful things have been, but now my luck appears to have changed. I'm terrified that something's going to go wrong, but at the moment things seem to be going right.

I could erase my written records. I could expunge my digital identity. When I think about what I've written, I'm glad that I have created some evidence that I existed; I'm proud that I've documented my struggles. If I re-read what I wrote in the past, it's difficult for me to re-live that experience... I struggle to relate. There's a lot of stuff in the past that wasn't exactly brilliant, but I don't think that the answer is to pretend it didn't happen. No good ever came of pretending that I've got a blemish-free past and I've not got any baggage.

I feel reasonably well-adjusted, because I've exhaustively documented what's been happening to me. I feel more secure knowing that I've attempted to capture a little bit of myself at regular intervals. I feel like I understand myself, and that I know who I am. I feel like I have an identity.

It's a difficult changeover period. I'm moving towards a more 'normal' life that you would recognise. I'm moving from a profoundly dysfunctional place to a functional one, even if it appears like I've been getting on with life just fine. I can still have a disproportionate reaction to the most ridiculously mundane stressors - having to buy a birthday present, have a haircut, get to work on time - but these things can leave me paralysed... without help I'd give up and refuse to leave the house.

I don't know what my life is now. My life is still taking shape in its new form; there are big changes that are happening. I need to learn my new routine. I need to prove myself all over again.

Suddenly, I have a girlfriend, a local job and a car. Suddenly, my life looks worth living, but it's also something that I could inadvertently damage. I have to be careful that I don't say anything that might prejudice my future. Before, I was writing urgently because I needed to get as much of myself down on paper before I died. Now, my big fear is how I'll react if something major goes wrong, but it might be me who precipitates my own downfall. I'm starting to have to pretend like I'm Mr Normal and my past is absolutely perfect, like everybody else does. I'm starting to feel the pressure to present a sanitised version of myself that's fit for corporate consumption. I'm starting to feel the pressure to put on the 'boyfriend material' mask that's suitable for introducing to parents and the like. My 'good' life carries with it a great deal of fear of failure.

There's a small part of me that wants to continue to make changes really rapidly, and to continue to fix up the broken things in my life. I want to rush out and rent myself a place of my own, and move out from my friends' place so that I'm living independently - standing on my own two feet. Part of me is in a big hurry to regain the self-esteem that's been lost due to my atypical living arrangements. Part of me is in a big hurry to encumber myself with societal obligations - such as paying rent and bills - that I've been lucky enough avoid for a while, because my life was so dysfunctional. There was no way that I could cope with much stress and responsibility, and my friends helped me... they continue to help me. It's embarrassing. I'm ashamed that I needed charity.

My past is not compatible with my present. My living arrangements are not compatible with forms that need to get filled in - I'm neither renting nor a homeowner - and middle-class dinner table chit-chat. There's a huge contradiction between the work I do and the difficult personal circumstances that I've been escaping from. Work colleagues, girlfriend, new people I meet... they're not going to understand. I don't fit neatly in a box. How can I be so successful in some areas, and have other parts of my life that are still undergoing repairs?

This is not a case of "fake it until you make it". I've already made it. I know the way - I've trodden this path before. However, there are undoubtably a whole load of things that got very messed up and I'm in the process of fixing. People don't really like the idea of recovery, improvement or otherwise escaping our fate - we're very keen to label and abandon so-called no-hopers; we're very keen to leap to the conclusion that somebody's of a certain 'type' and label them for life.

I'm changing. You've caught me on the hop. You're peeking behind the curtain. You're ruining the magic. This is the trick, you see: to fix the unfixable.

I can't write any more at the moment. I need to keep fumbling through this difficult transitionary period. I need to find a new voice, which acknowledges the past but doesn't drag me back there. I need to make sure that my identity doesn't depend on a certain amount of drama and destruction. I'm certain that my future depends on a return to more tranquil times.

Tags: #writing

This is a story about a functional nervous breakdown...

I'm sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day, yet I don't feel refreshed. I'm commuting and I'm working, but I'm spending less than half as much time in the office as I'm supposed to, and when I'm there I'm not productive. I reach the weekend and all I want to do is collapse in a heap. I get stressed out about seemingly trivial things - buying a train ticket, booking a hotel, buying some birthday presents, social engagements, the pressure to be a good friend, the need to stay in contact with people. I feel like I'm going to burst into tears when I'm in the shower, or just before I walk into the office. I'm a complete wreck, but to an outside observer I'm a picture of good health and a productive member of society. My colleagues seem to have been duped - they compliment me on the work I've done and they want me to stay longer; they want to give me another project to do.

I had prepared myself psychologically for 6 weeks work in London, but it's been 3 months. I had prepared myself psychologically to get to the end of the contract, but not a single day longer. I'm barely managing to cover up the fact I'm very sick - I arrive in the office at 1pm most days, and leave just after 5pm. I don't turn up for whole days. I sit at my desk endlessly skipping through music, trying to find a song that will lift my mood, but I can't. Life's pretty torturous, even if there doesn't seem any reason why it should be.

Everything feels like it's going to require the expenditure of more effort and energy than I could possibly muster. I get exhausted at the thought of speaking to agents, or challenging myself to do something "new and interesting". What sounds like fun to you, is something that makes me feel even more anxious and depressed. I just want to curl up in a ball.

Those who are happy and healthy say things like "you're only one gym workout away from a good mood" or they suggest things I could do with my spare time. It doesn't look like much of a life, working and sleeping... oh I do quite a lot of moaning and complaining too, but surely I must want to learn to weave baskets or dance salsa, mustn't I? The truth is that I'm 99% shut down - I'm in survival mode, clinging on by my fingernails as I attempt to earn as much money as I can, as quickly as I can, so that I can afford to have a nervous breakdown.

"Nervous breakdown" sounds really shocking and alarming, but I'm actually quietly having a breakdown. I've had persistent paralysing depression for more months than I care to remember, but I'm somehow forcing myself to keep going. "You can't be depressed if you're getting up and going to work" you might say, but you seem to have forgotten that I'm bunking off loads of days, and going in to work 4 hours late on the few days when I do make it. I'm working the very bare minimum I need to, in order not to lose my contract. If I just collapse in a heap and refuse to leave my pit of despair, I lose everything. If there was any way in the world I could just draw the curtains and convalesce, then I'd do it, but I'm trapped by circumstances beyond my control.

I have a week and a half left to go, and then I've finished my contract in London. I have to do 4 more 3.5 hour train journeys. I have to stay in two more AirBnbs. I have to suffer two more Mondays (although I'm planning on bunking off at least one of them). It might not sound like very long - just 3 months - to have been travelling all over the place and doing a job that's been mostly isolating and lonely, and has left me twiddling my thumbs a lot of the time, but the time has really dragged... the time continues to drag.

When you're not feeling good, it really takes an emotional toll. It's really not nice to spend weeks and months, hating your life; hating your circumstances. Yes, I'm very well paid and there's no such thing as a perfect job, but the money really has not been great compensation for the psychological suffering it's caused. I'm perfectly capable of making a mercenary decision to earn a lot of money doing things I don't like doing very much, but it's damaging to my mental health. I really am at my wits end with the London contract.

Who knows what'll happen next. Maybe I'll have been made too unwell by the present contract to even think about the next one, until I've had some rest and recuperation time. You might think that I should be very well rested, because I've been having 3-day weekends and only working half days, but those things are a symptom of just how exhausted I am. It's very hard to explain how I'm emotionally exhausted, even though I seem to be physically rested. It's hard to explain just how draining things have been this year. Seasonal affective disorder, depression and a bit of residual rebound anxiety from medication withdrawal, have conspired to create a viciously awful low mood and sense of despair, which has been hugely exacerbated by being bored at work, with no colleagues to talk to or project to keep me busy.

Finding a new client locally is going to be stressful. I need to meet a whole load of new work colleagues and impress them. It's going to be exhausting. It's going to be destabilising. At the moment, I just want the current contract to be over, so I can curl up in a ball and not leave the house. I want to draw the curtains and turn off my phone. I want to collapse in a heap and yell "ENOUGH!"

It sounds to me like it's some kind of breakdown, but I don't understand why I'm still apparently quite functional. I don't understand why I'm not stripping naked and running through the streets, before smearing jam all over myself in the supermarket and talking in tongues, or whatever other image "nervous breakdown" conjures up in your mind. Perhaps you think of me uncontrollably sobbing, or going mute. Instead, I'm just kind of hollow and empty - I've got nothing left to give; the petrol tank has run dry.

The challenge, of course, is what I do next. Do I collapse and become so dysfunctional that there was no point in exerting myself? Do I lose all the gains that I've managed to achieve, because it was so costly to my mental health to push myself so hard? Have I stored up some kind of almighty breakdown, by limping along for so long?

I've been offered a contract extension. There's no way on earth I can do it, of course. Don't you understand? The money might be incredible, but I don't get paid if I'm not in the office, and I'm already almost at breaking point. Money's not going to get me out of bed. Almost no amount of money is worth the emotional damage that's being done; the emotional exhaustion of the situation.

Of course, there's an argument that I should have just taken medication to prop myself up artificially - to allow myself to be doped up and carry on with a job and a situation that's intolerable. There's an argument to say that it's me that's faulty, for not enjoying living out of a suitcase, working a project that I finished ages ago and just having to look busy, in an office all on my own with nobody to talk to. There's an argument that says it's me being a silly billy, and I should just pop pills and shut the f**k up and get on with life. That's life, right? Life absolutely sucks and it makes us want to kill ourselves. Life destroys every single ounce of happiness and wellbeing, and the only way to put it back is with powerful psychoactive medications.

On the flip side, I've been glad that I've kept my mouth shut and limped along to the end of contracts before, without making too much of a fuss. I'm going to get a good reference and I've earned quite a lot of money. This is the strategy: short-term pain for medium-term gain. I've left jobs on good terms before, and then found it's immensely improved my mood to free... free to do what I want; free from the oppression of a horrible job. I very much expect that my mood will improve massively when this contract is over.

There it is: I need to keep venting and complaining and whinging, because I've got another week and a half of hell to get through. It sucks, and I bet you wouldn't put up with it if you were in my situation.

Tags: #career

This is a story about burnout...

There's a lie which we're all guilty of perpetuating: Work hard and you can improve your life; if you work hard enough you can achieve anything. It's not true and it's wicked to repeat the lie, because we end up blaming ourselves for our appalling living conditions. "If only I'd tried harder in school" so many of us wail, but "if only I worked harder" is not something that a dying person ever says on their deathbed.

It's obvious that there's a grotesque disparity between hard work, dedication, passion, productivity and personal wealth. If you're going to try and argue that the owner of a large property portfolio works harder than a nurse, then you deserve a punch in the face. If you believe that the beneficiary of a trust fund, who doesn't have to work at all, is somehow more deserving than the person who cleans toilets for a living, then you must be suffering from psychosis.

I've heard it said that life is fair, because it's unfair to everybody. Human afflictions don't care whether you're rich or poor - a billionaire still needs an ambulance and a cardiac surgeon if they have a heart problem, and money can't buy them immortality. However, this does not seem to consider the great injustice of the world: that our efforts and actions will make virtually no difference at all. It doesn't matter how badly you want to study at Oxbridge and enter a lucrative profession - if you were born into the wrong socioeconomic circumstances, you're not going to be able to achieve your potential. It doesn't matter how badly you want to elevate yourself from poverty, and how hard you work - you're trapped and you'll never escape.

The media love to shove folklore heroes in our face. The media work very hard to assist our willing suspension of disbelief. Little girls think they're going to be like Kate Middleton and marry a prince - the tale that we're told is that she's an ordinary girl and that any one of us could be plucked out of poverty, but it's bullshit... she went to a very expensive private school. Little boys think they're going to become 'self-made' men, and there are plenty of examples of entrepreneurs who claim to have not received any assistance in building their business empires, except that close scrutiny reveals that they had their risk underwritten by friends and family; they have access to wealth and connections that ordinary people don't.

You show me the success story and I'll show you the unfair advantages that the person enjoyed. Nobody got to the top on merit. Nobody gets anywhere by working hard - it's a lie.

In fact, to work hard and assume that it's going to lead to pay rises and promotions is a kind of mental illness: it's called "Tiara Syndrome". It's a bit like the fantasy of a knight in shining armour coming to rescue us - a person who has Tiara Syndrome is expecting that somebody will come along and put a tiara on their head, just because they work really hard and they're good at their job. Sadly, it doesn't happen.

Behind every fortune is a great crime. The only way to get ahead in life is to lie, cheat and steal.

"The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land"

A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England (1649)

So, if we've been writing about this problem for the best part of 400 years, things must be alright, mustn't they? Don't fix what ain't broke and all that. Why rock the boat?

Life expectancies are starting to fall - people are dying younger. There's a mental health epidemic. There's an opioid epidemic. Living standards are declining. Billions of people live in poverty, and within our lifetime we'll witness a Malthusian catastrophe that will dwarf any other mass extinction event seen on planet earth. If you thought the Ethiopian famine was bad, wait until you see what the next few decades have got in store for us. With high-yield modern mechanised farming techniques, we have plenty of food, but we are staggeringly bad at sharing things fairly. If you believe that the present situation of wealth disparity is acceptable, then you're signing the death warrant for billions of people - a holocaust knowingly perpetrated on the human race, for no better reason than sheer unadulterated greed.

Remember that none of the Nazis were allowed to say "I was just following orders" as any kind of defence. To fail to act and to say that you're just doing what everyone else is doing, is immoral. To be passive and turn a blind eye, or to throw up your hands and say "there's nothing I can do" is not acceptable. Yes, it's our instinct to look after our own families, but the day is coming when that selfishness will backfire. Your kids are going to need a place to live. Your kids are going to end up in debt. Your kids are facing a shitty future, and your grandkids are going to inherit a completely hopelessly screwed situation - do you think they'll agree with you, that it was right that you sat back and did nothing?

If you think you're helping your kids by instilling some kind of 'work ethic' in them and getting them to study hard, you're making a mistake. Remember: nobody ever got anywhere by working hard. Hard work can be a useful thing, but we must consider what our labour is being used for - if it's making weapons and oppressing people, then hard work is immoral when it contributes to the war on humanity. Sometimes the best thing to do is to withhold labour - to deprive the tyrants of the manpower they need to conquer and achieve world domination. Sometimes the best thing to do is conscientiously object; to nonviolently protest.

I've thought long and hard about how I can make a difference. I thought about medicine. I thought about law. I thought about politics. I thought about science and engineering. I find myself in technology, and I'm desperately disappointed. No amount of smartphone apps and websites is going to address the problems at the root cause, which appears to be competition. Why must there be competition? Why do we have to measure and grade people, and declare that some of us are not worthy of consideration? Why do we have artificial scarcity and force people to fight over an artificially limited amount of so-called 'money'? Why do we put artificial limits on the numbers of people who can pursue a certain professional discipline? Why do we want to have elitism? Why do 99% have to be told they're shit and they don't matter and they're expendable, so that the 1% can feel special?

I was on the fast-track. I was made unconditional university offers and allowed to skip entire academic years. I got onto a graduate training program 3 years sooner than any of my peers. I got pay rises and promotions so quickly that I was earning six-figures by the age of 20. I'm an example of one of those success stories that you might read about, that are supposed to make you believe that with enough hard work anyone can reach the top of the pyramid - be a CEO or a prime minister or a president, or a king or queen. It's bullshit. Why would I turn on the system that's given me everything I've ever wanted? Why would I bite the hand that feeds me?

No amount of houses, sports cars, yachts, speed boats, luxury holidays and all the other trimmings of a wealthy life can ever make you quite feel like you're content with the way things are, because you can never fully insulate yourself from the suffering and poverty that surrounds us. The fact that you're reading this on a PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone, means that you're one of the lucky ones - you're somewhere that has electricity and the internet, which means there's probably clean drinking water too. If you think about those less fortunate than yourself, they're probably considerably well below your standard of living. Wherever you are in the pecking order, there's always some unfortunate who's desperately in need of help, because we've set up society to fail people - the very process of succeeding ourselves means trampling others underfoot to get ahead in life. It's a zero sum game - for somebody to win, there has to be a loser.

Life doesn't have to be like this - so adversarial. There's no limit on the number of "A" grades we can give out, or the amount of money we can print. There's no limit on the number of doctors we can have. We live in a world that's been artificially constrained to create winners and losers. There's no need to have competition so inbuilt to society. Yes, we might see that nature is full of competition - survival of the fittest - but we're not beasts. We've become super-intelligent and capable of producing vast surpluses of everything we need. With high-yield farming techniques and agricultural mechanisation, we can feed ourselves until we burst. With mass production and factories, we can have a virtually unlimited amount of goods - clothes and shoes and building materials, as well as pointless consumer crap that we arguably don't need.

Like the many utopians who I studied while doing the research for my second novel, I can see a world that's jam-packed with all the technology that we need to improve the human condition, and elevate half the planet out of poverty. I can see that we already possess everything we need - we don't need nuclear fusion or flying cars or any other sci-fi fantasies... we already have the means at our disposal, to improve our lives.

As a person who wants to make a positive difference - to effect meaningful change - I find it very distressing that those who are working very hard to improve the world are being thwarted. Imagine all the effort put in by doctors, nurses, politicians, charity workers and myriad others who do what they do because they want to make the world a better place... but it's not working, is it? The world is getting steadily more and more fucked up.

If you think I'm seeing the world through a 'blue filter' and my depression tinges my perceptions, we only need to look at the hard data - homelessness, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty, crime and all the other indicators we have of the health of our society are telling the same story: Things are getting worse, not better. Your kids will have to get into heaps of debt to obtain their education, and then they won't be able to afford to buy a house. Your kids are going to struggle to find work. Your kids are going to struggle, full stop. Your grandkids are absolutely fucked. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate from the data and see where we're headed. Things aren't just going to magically improve without anybody doing anything. Don't look to politicians to cure society's problems. Don't look to charity to cure society's problems. Don't look to the church to cure society's problems. If any of the existing status quo members were going to do something to fix things, they'd have done it at some point in the last 400 years, wouldn't they?

I haven't figured out what I'm going to do yet, but the best "not in my name" protest I can think of is to kill myself. The best way I can think of to register my objection with the status quo, is to end my life.

Maybe I have a lemming-like instinct to kill myself because of overpopulation. Perhaps my genes are telling me to kill myself for the good of the species. Certainly the self-preservation instinct feels much weaker than the powerful emotions that tear through me, thinking about the futility of the oft-tried ways of making a difference.

If there's no opportunity to make a meaningful contribution, why go on?

Tags: #career #banking #capitalism #politics

This is a story about copycat suicides...

I took this photo on the 10th of August 2017. I had three boxes just like this, each containing 112 capsules of tramadol. I had deliberately stockpiled these capsules over the course of a 3-month period. A month later I wrote a blog called The Closest I've Come to Suicide. Only a matter of hours later I very nearly did succeed in killing myself.

I'm repeating myself. Why?

I've kept the photos. I've kept the blog posts. Why?

Why am I thinking about this stuff? Aren't I deliberately triggering myself? Am I not tempting fate? Shouldn't I try to forget; pretend it never happened? Shouldn't I think positive thoughts, abandon my blog and decide that I'm going to be cured and happy? Am I not deliberately keeping myself depressed and suicidal, by continuing to have this link to the past?

People kill themselves all the time. Suicide kills a lot of men like me. In fact, suicide is the thing that's most likely to kill me. I'm not unique - if you're a man under the age of 45, suicide's the thing that's most likely to kill you too. Suicide's more likely to kill you than a car crash, cancer, a heart attack, a brain tumour, a drug overdose, a freak accident or anything else you can think of. You should be worried about suicide - it's the #1 risk to your health.

Technically, I'm not really allowed to write this. It's too soon - there's been a recent event. I can't talk about the event, but it happened. It's not about me. I shouldn't write about me. I shouldn't write about how it affects me. I'm not allowed to do those things - to write about it; to feel things. It's not me who's been affected. I'm impossible to affect.

My thoughts are with some other people who are more directly affected, but there's something else. I can't talk about it.

I'm safe, but if ever there was an example of a trigger, this would be it. I can't explain what the trigger is, which is part of what makes it so dangerously triggering - when people can't talk about stuff, that's when they're in danger. When people stop talking, that's when they're in danger.

Arguably, you might say that my blog didn't help me to stop following through with my plans to kill myself. However, it was also through my Twitter followers that the emergency services were able to get to me in time and save my life. My blog was never really supposed to be a cure - it's a suicide note. I started writing this because I didn't want to die misunderstood. I think it's had therapeutic benefit, but it's clearly not been curative, because I still tried to kill myself and very nearly succeeded.

The more I have to self-censor and worry about who's reading and how they're going to react, the harder it is for me to use my blog therapeutically. The best thing for me is to write without a filter, but that has consequences. There are things I want to write about, so that I'm fully publicly accountable and I've stayed true to my mission to document absolutely everything that's happening to me in unflinching detail, but I've got to balance that with the need to tell the story in the right sequence, otherwise people will leap to the wrong conclusions. I also jeopardise relationships and my job when I write so openly. I need to write with pure honesty, but human lives are complicated - there's no synopsis that allows anybody to effortlessly understand who I am.

My mood was dangerously unstable last week. This week I'm exhausted and stressed, but my mood is not so low. I was going to skip work today, but I didn't, and more importantly I didn't feel suicidally desperate about it. I felt like hiding under the duvet and never leaving the house, but that's completely different from feeling suicidal. There's a whole load of stuff that's hit me all at once at the start of the week - good and bad - but I'm feeling considerably better than I was this time last week, when I wrote Cry for Help.

I've had a week where there have been a number of 'triggering' things, most of which I'm not prepared to write about at the moment. I've had a week where there were at least 3 disastrous courses of action I could've embarked upon, but I got through it.

It feels horrible to be going through a period where I'm constrained in what I can write about. It feels dangerous to be living with things that are distressing, but are too difficult to tackle without compromising decisions I made about privacy and things that I don't want to share [yet].

I'm not a keeper of secrets. I don't want to be a man of mystery. I don't like having things that are off-limits to write about. I think it's dangerous - I don't want to have things that are bothering me, that I haven't alerted anybody about. I'm a lot happier - and safer - when I'm allowing pressure to escape from the safety release valve. I need to blow off steam; to vent.

Clearly, I'm being antagonised. Some of it is me, some of it is circumstances beyond anybody's control, some of it is other people. As a coping mechanism, I'm trying to write about it without making things personal; I'm trying to write about stuff that affects me personally, and also be some kind of superhuman who always thinks about how everyone else is feeling too, and attempts to put my own feelings into perspective.

I'm compromised. My blog serves a purpose. My blog is mine. I'm in a weird situation where I've got to watch what I say. How do I deal with something that's triggering, while also being mindful of other people at all times? This isn't supposed to be like a regular social situation, where I have to be mindful of other people's feelings. This is supposed to be my place where I come and deal with the thing that's most upsetting - triggering - to me.

Should I switch to a private journal, I wonder to myself. But, then I lose my all-important public scrutiny. If I write about my most desperate struggles in private, I won't be discovered until it's too late, if there was a repeat of what happened last time I tried to kill myself. I'm not planning on killing myself, but it's something to bear in mind - my social media friends are there for me when it's life-or-death. If nothing else, this blog has plucked me out of some very sorry situations. I can't really abandon it, just because I get too much earache from a handful of people who think they've read enough already.

I feel like I've got to write a caveat: that my thoughts are with somebody I really care about, arguably more affected than me by an event. It's not a competition, but I can't pretend like what's happened is not 'triggering' for me though, for reasons I can't go into. It's such a damn pain when I can't speak freely because I'm boxed in by a whole load of considerations about other people. It's stopping me from being raw and honest, which is stopping me from being able to cope in the usual way: to write without a filter; without self-censorship.

I'm sorry this is so repetitive and cryptic.

I don't know how to proceed. I think I'm going to have to continue my story. I'm going to have to be selfish and self-centred and get what I need out of writing. I'm going to have to be true to my mission, which is to be authentic and honest. I'm going to have to be brave and put everything out there, because the alternative will lead me to being isolated and alone with my terrible thoughts and feelings which could drive me to attempt suicide again.

Half tempted to scrub this and write about what's really going on, but I'm not going to. I'm going to see how I feel about things after I've had some more time to think.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about intolerable pressure...

I have to start this piece with a lengthy preamble. To write about the difficulties faced by men in modern society could be misconstrued as sexist, chauvinistic, misogynistic and unsympathetic towards the suffering and struggles of women. To breathe a word about the struggles that men face, could be seen as a slap in the face to women who receive unequal pay, or suffer sexual discrimination, sexual harassment and far greater rates of rape, murder and assault perpetrated against them by men, than by women. In short: I am not writing in any way to perpetuate the inequality and suffering that women have to deal with every day. My piece is simply about the pressures that modern men are dealing with.

Further to my list of caveats, I write from the point of view of the experiences and knowledge I've been able to gather up to this point in my life. I accept that I will never know the agony of childbirth. I'll never know what it's like to be pregnant. I'll never know what it's like to be a woman. This isn't a piece about women. I'm not seeking to address ANY of the difficulties faced by women. I know nothing about being a woman, and I'm not going to write about it. I'm not depriving anybody - man or woman - of their opportunity to share THEIR story and have equal airtime and consideration. I'm not shouting anybody down. I'm not shutting anybody up. I'm not offering a viewpoint that says that what I think is more valid than what anybody else thinks. These are my thoughts and my thoughts alone, shaped by my experiences as a white, middle-class, hetero man, in no way intended to compete with the experiences of any non-white, poor, LGBTQ+ women, who are obviously going to have a remarkably different set of views from me.

I am sympathetic to the plight of women. I'm unlikely to be equally sympathetic, because I have an inbuilt bias towards being able to empathise with those who've had broadly similar experiences to me, because they're also white, middle-class hetero men. I don't choose to feel less gut-wrenching sympathy when I hear about - for example - unequal pay in the workplace... it's just not as emotive for me, because perhaps I haven't been affected by it. If I'm not part of the solution, I must be part of the problem, but my writing is not about how guilty I feel for the circumstances I was born into; my writing is about things I can directly relate to. I do not seek to discredit, devalue or otherwise detract from some very real issues faced by women. I mean only to comment in an area in which I feel qualified to do so.

So, 500 words of preamble. Now I can write with a little more precision on the topic that concerns me.

I decided that I wanted to write a bullet-pointed list of all the things that a guy - someone like me - faces during their life, presenting significant problems. I'm trying to add up all the little things that whirr away in a man's psyche, driving his behaviour and causing him distress. I'm just going to write these things down in the most succinct way, because I want to explore everything I can possibly think of.

Here we go:

• "Boys don't cry" / "man up"
• Inheriting the family name. Following in your father's footsteps
• Mummy's boy / suffocating
• "You're the man of the house" - expectation of maturity
• Boys develop more slowly than girls, both physically and academically
• Oldest & biggest boys in school year bully and physically dominate
• Societal obsession with sports and sporting achievement
• "Get married and start a family" is not a career choice
• Breadwinner
• Provide for the family
• Protector
• Boys can't hit girls, even in self defence / retaliation
• Encouragement of violence - bullying, boxing, fighting, sport
• Discouragement of sensitivity - "soft", "wimpy", "homosexual", "effeminate"
• Hypocrisy and contradiction - violence is both heroic (e.g. war) and vilified
• Hooligans / vandals / gangs - provide fraternity, but demonised
• Lack of sporting ability = social exclusion
• Interest in sport a necessity for social bonding
• "Make the first move" - guys do the chasing - "ask her out"
• Knock-backs / rejection / misread signals
• Assertiveness, persistence - important to "pull" a girl
• Sexual conquest is seen as adversarial - a game
• Impotence concerns - "can I get hard?" / "will I stay hard?"
• Premature ejaculation concerns - "can I last long enough?"
• Bedroom performance concerns - "can I make her cum?"
• "Treat 'em mean" - appearing aloof and unattainable
• Neediness and vulnerability - insecurity and need for security
• Peer approval - bragging and bravado
• Status symbols - the car, the house, the job
• Professional identity - coveted job titles, doctor/lawyer etc.
• Fear of failure - bankruptcy, homelessness, joblessness, redundancy
• Fear of rejection - loneliness
• Doing stupid things to show off / impressing others
• "All men are rapists"
• Suspicion / trial by media / allegations
• "Men are violent"
• "Men are dangerous"
• "Men are paedophiles"
• Get rich, or die trying
• Risk of homelessness
• Low-priority for help - considered not vulnerable
• Identity issues; body dysmorphia - use of steroids, huge muscles
• Need to look masculine, avoid gender ambiguity
• Weight of expectation. Assumption that advantages will lead to great success
• "It's a long way down" - falling from grace; loss of status
• Hide pain. Don't talk about problems
• Self reliance
• Isolation - man is an island
• Most idolised and revered men are athletes - worship of physique
• "Loser" - no job, no money, no career, no skills
• Thief / junkie / criminal / bankrupt / dosser / tramp - always a man
• "It's all your own fault" / personal responsibility; accountability
• Passivity = homosexuality
• House-husband = not an option
• Succeed or kill yourself

That's all I can think of for now. The list is all over the place, but I wanted to cover as many different things as I could think of in a short space of time. To see it written down like that is somewhat alarming, because it doesn't seem to convey the struggle that I believe men face, and that causes so many men to end their own lives. It's strange that I can write a single word like "provider" and that succinctly sums up a whole heap of pressures and responsibilities that a man shoulders, but it's just one word.

So, I'm going to leave it there. Half words of caveat and half words that are powerfully charged for me, as a man. I leave it to you, dear reader, to expand each bullet point and decide whether it's all a lot of fuss about nothing. I had to write this today, because of an event today that I can't write about. It's complicated.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about compassion fatigue...

I imagine that the boy who cried wolf was probably telling the truth every time he raised the alarm, but the villagers just wanted him to shut up - they wanted him to quietly deal with the wolf on his own and to leave them alone. I mean, what kind of monsters would leave a little boy to protect sheep from wolves? The moral of the story is "don't complain" and "fuck off and die".

I'm sick and tired of explaining that my depression and suicidal thoughts aren't going to be cured by yoga, kale smoothies, exercise, mindfulness, whale song recordings or other quack cures. I'm sick and tired of explaining that I've had enough of swallowing a heap of different pills to try to level out my moods - one to counteract another, and so on ad nauseam. I'm sick and tired of explaining that my job is making me unwell, but I can't quit because I need the money. I'm sick and tired of explaining that my living and travel arrangements are toxic to my mental health, destroying any sense of wellbeing. I'm sick and tired of hearing simple solutions to an oversimplified version of my complicated problems. I'm sick and tired, and I want to die, because that's the only easy solution.

I was pleased to reach the end of Jinxed January. I was pleased to start dating again. I was pleased that money has started to flow again. However, it's all too little too late - the demands which have been placed on me are too great. The things I've had to battle through and overcome have exhausted me, and I've got nothing left to give - I'm spent.

In the last year I lost two girlfriends, two apartments, two jobs. In the last year I spent 7 weeks in hospital. In the last year I quit stimulants, opiates, benzodiazepines, neuropathic painkillers, sleeping tablets and a host of other pills, powders and potions. I moved between several cities and slept in so many different beds that I can't possibly count them all. You'd think that all the hard work would pay off, but it hasn't. For all the agony and anxiety, there's no reward at the end of it. For all the stress and strain, it hasn't got me anywhere. For all the self-denial and good behaviour, there's been no benefit.

I emerged from work this evening and the sky wasn't completely dark. Longer days are coming. Better weather is on its way. However, sustaining myself until the first warm days of this year is going to be impossible - I'll never make it to mid-spring, because I'm fucked right now. "One day at a time" is the problem - the days are unbearable.

I thought my suicidal thoughts had subsided, but this evening I had the strongest urge to end my life that I've had in quite a long time. My suicidal thoughts had turned into hopes and plans for the future, but this evening those hopes seemed too far out of reach. I've done the maths and the figures just don't add up. There's no way that I can carry on. The money's not coming in fast enough to stop the rot. I can't keep myself afloat like this any longer.

I found some Bitcoins I'd forgotten about. They're sitting there ready to be spent on the dark web. I'm not going to relapse, because that would be slow suicide. If I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to do it quickly and suddenly, not in the drawn-out and degrading way that happens with drug addiction. If I'm going to kill myself, it's going to be with pride and dignity, knowing that I tried as hard as humanly possible to rescue myself, but it wasn't enough. If I'm going to commit suicide, I'm going to be clean, sober and sane.

Life's not worth the aggravation. Life's not worth the effort. The rewards just don't match up with the stress, exhaustion, loneliness, isolation, boredom, trauma, suffering, grief and inevitable death.

Why bother?

I've worked a million jobs and delivered a zillion projects. I've moved house so many times, built fortunes, created companies and invented products. I've travelled. I've lived and loved. I've taken everything to the extreme. I've had enough. I'm sick of this shit.

Don't try to persuade me to live and don't be sad when I'm gone. I've lived a thousand lifetimes. I just can't stand having to live one more, when it's just repeating the same old bullshit I've done a million times before.

Don't ring the police or whatever. I'm not going to kill myself immediately. I just really want to die and I'm planning when and how I'm going to do it.

Tags: #suicide #depression

This is a story about the bitter end...

For a devout atheist, I can be surprisingly superstitious. I seem to have survived Jinxed January without losing my job, becoming homeless, going bankrupt, being hospitalised, getting sectioned, getting arrested, getting anybody pregnant, committing any crimes, taking any illegal drugs, contracting a terminal illness or dying. Epic win.

I looked in my photo archives to see what I was doing this time last year. Apparently I was pissing in a bottle, hospitalised on a high dependency ward with kidney failure. On my blog, I was writing about "what would Jesus do?" so I was clearly pretty deranged, but then I was on dialysis for several hours a day, which was not exciting so I'm sure my mind must have been wandering a lot. On Facebook I was jabbering about a cocktail of painkillers, sleeping pills and tranquillisers I was taking to try to get some sleep on the ward. I feel relatively sane and happy by comparison - my life looks quite peachy compared to that unfortunate period.

I looked back two years ago to see what was going on at the end of January and there's a gap. I simply ceased to exist for a few days, before popping up and writing over 3,000 words about all manner of things. It looks pretty conclusive that I was in the vice-like grip of madness and shenanigans.

I can't look back three years on my blog, because I only started two and a half years ago, but I do know that three years ago today I was staying with friends in County Cork, Ireland. My contract with Barclays had been terminated early, I'd broken up with my girlfriend, lost loads of friends because of the breakup and I had been evicted from my apartment in Swiss Cottage. I needed to escape from London for a bit, because I couldn't take any more, and so my friends looked after me in rural Ireland. Not so jinxed, but pretty jinxed because my life was still totally messed up.

I can see from an email that four years ago I was receiving inpatient treatment for dual diagnosis - bipolar and substance abuse - after the messiest and most acrimonious divorce you can imagine. My life was profoundly dysfunctional - I'd only just managed to escape "the poison dwarf" and the relationship that nearly killed me. My stuff was in storage and I was living with friends in Kentish Town. My new business had been put on hold because the divorce and house sale had been too much for me to handle. I'd been surviving by mining bitcoins, but the price had crashed and I was in big trouble, even though I'd managed to cash in at $1,100 per bitcoin.

I can't see my email from five years ago, because I lost my original Google Mail account, which I'd had since soon after GMail launched for public beta testing. I can see that I was late for my appointment to see a psychiatrist who I'd found (albeit a week later) so I imagine that things were pretty dire... although I clearly had the presence of mind to find a private psychiatrist and arrange my own treatment, so I'm guessing this was the beginning of the descent into Hell. This time five years ago - roughly - my new wife told me that she wanted to be a widow and that she wouldn't let me have the treatment I needed. This time five years ago, I was trying to find people to help me, while my wife and my parents broke my heart. This time five years ago, I realised that I needed to get my parents and my wife out of my life at all costs - I realised they're toxic people and that if I wanted to have any kind of future, they couldn't be part of it.

Five years of insanity is a hell of a long time. In those five years, things got a lot worse before they got any better. In those five years, I sorely missed my house and my cat. In those five years, I sorely missed the life I'd built for myself, with my friends and my good reputation and my good job. I threw away a lot, taking a gamble that I'd be better off in the long run. The last five years have been insane, but I don't see how I could have extricated myself from the situation any better. I've played the best I could with the cards I was dealt.

I'm sick and tired of Jinxed January, and I hope I've seen the back of it; I hope I've broken the curse.

Of course I tempt fate by saying that now I've had one un-jinxed January then I've got things sussed and it'll all be plain sailing from here. Of course there are going to be Foul Februarys and Miasmic Marches but January has been my nemesis for so long. I don't want to get cocky and complacent, but it's a big deal that I've beaten this dratted month. February and March are going to be dreadful, but at least I have a few quid in my pocket, no imminent threat of homelessness and nothing particularly awful on the horizon. I have another month of paid work ahead of me. For once, I have a few things going in my favour.

You might see that my biggest fight is with myself. Of course, there's work available year-round and my skills mean that I'm never going to go hungry and homeless, except through spectacular self-sabotage. It seems obvious that I should just quietly and obediently pop the pills and behave myself. It doesn't look that hard to just get my head down and concentrate on working hard to get myself back into a position of financial security. To say that by the end of the year I could be well and truly wealthy again, seems like no time at all to you. However, you must remember that I march to a different beat. My timescales are not the same as your timescales.

I'm not going to get paid for the whole of February. A very Frugal February beckons. The weather's just as dark and miserable in February and my job will be just as isolating, lonely and boring. The unfavourable conditions very much remain unpleasant and unconducive to any mood improvement. However, the so-called short month of February does seem like a less daunting proposition than Jinxed January was. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Another month without an almighty fuck-up is a huge achievement, in the context of my messed up 5 years of Jinxed Januarys. If I'm being superstitious, so be it, because it's helped me to avoid going off the rails.

I'm really pleased with where I'm at actually. Drink and drug free, unmedicated, as sane as I'll ever be, relatively settled in my home life, regular(ish) income and gainful employment. There aren't too many loose ends to tidy up. I'm on top of my taxes and my paperwork. To be in this position, at this dreadful time of year, where I don't have anything looming that's of major concern, is a really big deal.

I submitted another invoice to my client, and even though I lost over £4,000 of potential earnings this month, I'm still in profit after expenses. The money's not in the bank yet, but it's on its way. Perhaps it will be good to spend another month being a little thrifty - money after all, can be something that's triggering.

Of course, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm imagining that by the end of February, my financial woes will be mostly ended. I'm imagining that by the end of March I'll be feeling positively wealthy again. I'm projecting into the future, and that's bound to end up making me miserable. I still have a whole month more of my miserable boring contract to do. I need to start looking for the next job, at some point sooner rather than later. I can't make tomorrow come any sooner, and I shouldn't wish away today.

What can I say, except I'm slightly glad that I didn't throw away a perfectly salvageable situation. I'd still rather be dead, because it's been a lot of stress and hassle, but I'm alive so I'll carry on for a bit longer and see what tomorrow brings.

Tags: #depression #suicide #divorce #career #mentalhealth #bipolar