This is a story about whether it's right to stay with an alcoholic and/or an addict...

Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink. Like every alcoholic and/or addict I have a million and one reasons why I had one too many bottles of wine, or why I lapsed or relapsed into drug addiction.

I mentioned on Facebook earlier today that I rearranged the furniture in a hotel room in Bournemouth, right at the very worst most moment of my divorce. If you think that "worst moment of my divorce" caveat is me getting my excuses in early, then you're wrong. Let's get this straight: I didn't break anything or chuck a telly out of the window, but I made a lot of extra work for housekeeping.

I was actually so concerned that I was in such a bad frame of mind that I was actually going to throw a telly out of the window, so I phoned the duty solicitor. The duty solicitor gets phoned after you've been arrested, if you don't have your own solicitor.  I had not been arrested, but I didn't like the way things were going.

The duty solicitor was rather bemused by a person ringing up to chat about things before they're arrested.... in anticipation. He said that he didn't think the police would arrest me, and I should probably just ring friends and family. I was loathe to involve friends & family in a mess that I had made.

Eventually, having tried several other local solicitors, I rang the family solicitor, who phoned my Mum, who told my Dad to phone me. He was exceedingly unhappy that one of his longest friends had suggested that I might be in the need of a bit of support during a messy divorce.

I rang my friend Tim, who texted an ex police constable, who confirmed that the police would not press charges given the circumstances. Tim came to the hotel, and said it wasn't bad at all and we could fix it up in 5 or 10 minutes, but I just wanted to get home.

Despite a couple of offers of financial compensation for any inconvenience or damage the hotel manager laughed, being rather experiences with the wrecked hotel rooms due to the large amount of stag dos who visit Bournemouth. His housekeeping staff had not even commented. However, I still feel guilty about that today.

That was December 2013.

Let's make one thing really clear before we go on. My ex wife did not addict me to drugs. She's not responsible for any of my addiction: then or now.

My startup company fell to bits because I was under unbearable pressure to deliver Investment Banker lifestyle on startup wages, and base my company in Bournemouth, where there are no angel investors, no venture capitalists, no startup scene, no customers, it was over 2 hours away from my co-founder and his new baby girl. It was an irreconcilable problem, with my ex-wife being least willing to compromise despite having a job she could work anywhere in the country. But, that's not her fault. It's my fault. It's my fault that I made myself CEO instead of my co-founder. It's my fault I couldn't handle the pressure. It's my fault I wasn't strong enough to leave a toxic unsupportive relationship.

Drugs - legal highs - appeared on the scene in the autumn, as I sat at home, desperately depressed about the situation. I had already tried about 5 different antidepressants by this point, and had even moved on to trying over 10 extremely rare antidepressants that are extremely rarely prescribed, even in treatment-resistant depression cases.

It's not like I didn't recognise the problem. I accessed local drug & alcohol drop in centres, where I sat listening to teenaged alcoholic prostitutes talking about their children being taken into care, knowing that I owned my own home, cars, boats, hot tub, summer houses and had tens of thousands of pounds in the bank. I left, because it feel like sheer selfishness to deprive the time that could be given to somebody more needy.

I spent a day in a residential rehab as a day patient. By the end of the day, I had brushed up all the leaves, done all the washing up, hoovered, mopped and done just about everybody's weekly chores. The people's lives were fascinating, but most of the day was drinking tea & coffee and sitting around.

I don't know if I was successfully hiding my habit, but I gave a talk to a bunch of startup founders in London, and a few came over and said they'd heard me speak in Cambridge, and they thought my public speaking had improved a lot. Go figure.

The only real problem for hiding my habit was school holidays - my ex being an educator - when I wouldn't have the daytime to take drugs. Christmas holiday was unspeakably awful, with me sneaking off in the middle of the night to take drugs.

Getting clean and staying clean is my sole responsibility, but I found it telling that the only book on addiction my ex read parts of was called "Nag your loved one sober".

After Christmas, my ex demanded that my parents take me away. Naturally, they resisted and I resisted. My dad came down, and my ex had been nagging our mutual GP about how hard it was on her to deal with my addiction. Deal with my addiction? She didn't even know about it until a week earlier, when I struggled to hide it during the school holidays.

I was completely spooked by the sudden appearance of my dad and my GP, through no request of my own. The idea of leaving my home, my friends and everything else I'd spent years building around myself, to go live in a house I'd never lived in, trapped in a village where I didn't know anybody. That's fucking offensive.

Anyway, the psychiatrist I saw just before I left Bournemouth told me to taper off the legal highs gradually - over the course of 6 to 8 weeks - because nobody knew what withdrawal would be like.

Having gotten rid of me to my parents' house, my ex then refused to take my phone-calls and generally treated me like dog dirt.

I would say, that if it turns out you're dating an addict and/or alcoholic, you should make a decision - based on how long you've been together - as to whether they're the type who's going to bleed you dry and move onto the next unwitting victim, whether you're prepared to help them - and trust me, it's really fucking hard - or whether it's your moral duty to help them because they became unwell while they were your husband, wife or long term partner.

Anyway, my ex continued to be a right ***** until someone who isn't me hacked her email account and found out that no sooner had I left MY house, she had been dating other people. I confronted her with her infidelity, and she started treating me like a human again. Unfortunately, I thought a leopard could change its spots, so I spent £4,000 on flights to Hawaii to get married and £3,000 on an engagement ring. As you can tell, I'm the kind of junkie who spends all their money on themselves.

I struggled with sobriety, but held down a couple of good jobs and continued to be a good provider. My ex could have called off the wedding at any point.

The wedding, which was supposed to be stress-free with no guests, somehow became one of the most stressful things I've ever had to deal with. The whole holiday was ruined by my bridezilla. In the end, I threw a tantrum and said I could no longer deal with teepees and camper vans that break down and other eclectic but stressful shit that I had to organise, and booked us into the $800 a night Hilton. I had cocktails by the pool and it was bliss, but there were two days until we had to go home.

I relapsed as soon as we got home. It didn't help that my then-wife had booked a taxi online, specifying the wrong year. We could have stayed at Heathrow and waited for 4 hours, but having been on a plane for most of a day, I wanted to get home: unexpected £180 taxi ride in a black cab that I managed to negotiate.

My then-wife must have ordered my parents to come and 'deal' with me, because my dad marched into my house and said "you're an addict. you're an addict. Can't you see you're a dirty addict?" which was rich coming from a man with a history of drug use. That's not the kind of treatment you should ever receive in your own home, nor did it take account of the fact that I'd been in a lot of correspondence with several specialist psychiatrists who could deal with my specific condition: dual diagnosis. I was bipolar before I was a junkie, and the two do not complement each other well.

My mum had decided that she could 'smell' drugs on me. Unless she has a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer for a nose, she is wrong. You can smell smoke and cannabis on somebody's clothes, but drugs that you snort, swallow and inject are excreted through kidneys and faeces. It's a completely disproven hypothesis. Anyway, My then-wife did nothing to vouch for my sobriety when my mum had a go at me on my sister's wedding day (I was clean).

I'd gone back to working at JPMorgan, and they coughed up £12k for me to go to The Priory for 28 days, without a single qualm. My general psychiatrist had said I needed treatment in a therapeutic environment, which clearly my home was not. My then-wife said that she'd divorce me if I followed his advice and got treatment, and that she'd rather be a widow than a divorcee.

On my first day at The Priory, I phoned the local florist near our home, and asked them to leave a different flower each day under the windscreen wiper of my then-wife's car, before she left for work. She however, joined the dating sites again and decided not to visit or phone me.

During my stay at The Priory, we established that I was not well supported at home, and indeed, perhaps my relationship did not contain the prerequisite levels of respect, love, care, compassion etc. etc.

I panicked on day 27 of rehab, realising I had to divorce my wife, sell our house and decide what I was going to do next with my life. I spent the day talking to a few friends about different ideas, and returned for my final day a lot happier.

Straight after that was the birth of my niece. My loving then-wife did not attend. In fact. I remember her once being extremely put out that my grandmother had the temerity to die at an inconvenient moment. I think my friends had been right all along: she really was "the poison dwarf".

Anyway, after being under virtual house arrest, where I must admit I abused a lot of drugs as I tried to grapple with the magnitude of selling a house and downsizing. Probably moving to London. The friends who would take sides. Having to get a new job. I got fed up with my then-wife making me feel absolutely terrified by her unjustified rage and abuse, so I took to cocooning myself into a single room of our ample 3-bedroomed house, and even built myself a man cave in our summer house. She was never content to leave me be, and would hammer and scream all the time at whichever door I cowered behind.

Then, I sent an SOS email to our parents, to come and force our separation. I was starving. I had no toilet, no shower. Do you think that's the way that people get clean & sober?

My friend Posh Will kindly offered his spare bedroom to get back into London life. I was clean & sober, riding my bike all over London, incorporating a new company and touting for consultancy work. I was entrepreneur-in-residence at PlayFair capital and I was loving the London startup scene. I was making new friends and I quickly got a beautiful new girlfriend. I know I wasn't the first to commit adultery, because someone who isn't me hacked my then-wife's email and found out she was fucking a married man with kids.

Then, divorce turned nasty. A six week house sale turned into a six month sale, simply because my then wife wanted to drag it out, knowing I had no income yet in London. She kept making me do the 4 hour round trip to Bournemouth to do trivial things she could do herself, like get estate agent valuations. Finally, we arrive in December 2013, where I went to a hotel because our house was sold but I was so angry and frustrated by my wife dragging out the sale to the point I almost ran out of money, I was going to trash the place.

Sure, I then did a 5 days of a 10 day detox, at a place where they didn't know what a detox was, or how to deal with somebody with a benzo habit. I then did 7 weeks at a proper residential rehab. My parents were on my no-contact banned list, but my mum still wrote to me with Louise's divorce demands. I told her from the start I wanted to rent out the house, defer the divorce and deal with it all when I had my health. When she refused, I said take whatever you want, but just don't drag it out. If I wasn't the kind of person who assumes that everybody's OK deep down, I'd say that it was all because she's a vindictive, abusive, greedy, *****.

Anyway, after a mix-up at my parents about what day of the week it was, my dad demanded that I get dressed in front of him and leave immediately. I agreed to leaving immediately, but I refused to get dressed in front of him, on the grounds that it would be one of the most degrading things you could ever ask a person to do. He manhandled me and a mirror got knocked off the wall, slicing my shin muscle in half along with 4 tendons and 2 nerves. Only then did he allow me to get dressed in privacy.

After my operation, I was taking fentanyl and tramadol - both strong opiate painkillers - for the pain, and yet I managed to avoid becoming addicted to these drugs. Having to wear a plaster cast kinda means you're going to have to destroy a nice business suit, and who wants to hire somebody who's sick?

My friends said it was time for me to get a place of my own, although I was still on crutches. I rented a room nearby. I went for dinner with Posh Will, and I was honest with him about my addiction struggles, and his attitude towards me changed visibly immediately. Our friendship was almost ruined, because he had such strong preconceived notions about what drug addiction is. He virtually accused me of being at risk of coming round to his house to steal stuff to feed my habit. I had the money from the sale of my house and some successful Bitcoin investments. I didn't need to steal from my friends. I cried myself to sleep and then tried to commit suicide.

Hospital discharged me, but I'd lost my flat, so I was homeless. I lived in hostels and Kensington Gardens. I guarantee you that not many people get clean from drugs when they're homeless.

Anyway, I finally got a great group of friends at a hostel in Camden, and a beautiful girlfriend. Those were some of the happiest months of my life. I also got an IT contract for Barclays and a room in a student house in Swiss Cottage.

I did have a couple of 'lapses' on mild drugs, but I was clean and I was happy. Then Barclays terminated my contract and I was evicted (the landlord was selling the apartment).

I tried to put a brave face on things and have a happy family Christmas, but I'd broken up with my girlfriend, lost half my friends, lost my contract, was homeless again. A lovely family in Ireland saved my life, looking after me at one of the most depressing and vulnerable times of my life.

At the suggestion of Posh Will - ironically - I stayed in a hostel in Shoreditch. Initially I had a whole dorm to myself, but when they realised I had an OK personality and was a long-term resident, they moved me to the infamous 'Ward P'. The drink and the drugs were off the scale in that place. I had to leave because I was off my face around the clock, but it seemed normal because everybody was.

I started staying in AirBnB places, because they were homely and I could do short [but expensive] lets. I'd recently reconnected with an old friend, so it was nice to live near him, in the East End.

I was running out of money again, so I stayed in a really awful hotel that's covered quite extensively in the blog post called Finsbury Park Fun Run.

That got me back to the Camden Hostel, but I was still hopelessly re-addicted to drugs. Trust me, it's hard to hide a drug habit in a 'regular' tourist hostel, and the tourists don't really love it if you're acting all weird because you're so strung out you can't even see straight.

Somehow, I managed to land the HSBC contract.

I ran out of money. Working for HSBC while living in a hostel is just not possible either. More drugs - whole week AWOL from work. Got away with it.

Stayed clean all the way to Christmas pretty much. I was a wreck on Christmas Day. I hadn't eaten for days. My Kiwi sofa surfer had kindly cooked the turkey but he'd pretty much cremated it, and it'd taken him hours to coax me out of my bedroom. Still, it was super kind of him to cook the world's most depressing Christmas lunch.

Then drugs, drugs, drugs to March 21st. I had a bag that could quite easily have kept me supplied for 3 years. That's the problem with being rich and choosing a cheap and powerful drug - you're never going to run out.

Are you spotting a theme yet?

January, February and March are my nightmare months. If I'm off kitesurfing at some exotic location, no problem. If I'm working a contract, no problem.

This year, I've had acute kidney failure and severe and ongoing leg/foot trauma AND the loss of my contract at Lloyds to deal with. However, I had the best Christmas ever and I'm also dating the world's most amazing girlfriend, so perhaps these things should cancel each other out?

I have to think about drugs at the moment, because my leg is so damaged that I need a cocktail of strong opiate painkilllers, nerve blockers and a sleep aid, just to be able to partially function. I wake up every 4 hours in the night in excruciating agony.

Through the urgent need to re-stock on painkillers, I found myself back on the Dark Web. It was a stupid move. I kinda knew I'd never be able to resist the urge to go window shopping. I tried to order weaker drugs that might satisfy the craving that was instigated by nothing more than buying other products, but lapse and relapse were inevitable.

My most amazing girlfriend in the whole wide world is somebody I could spend 100% of my time with, and never get tired of her company. We like the same trashy TV. We enjoy the same high-brow movies. We both have an insatiable appetite for feature-length documentaries. We love London. We love the same things and we love each other.

Why then would I relapse onto incredibly dangerous and destructive drugs?

The watchword you need to look for here is trigger. When I was with my ex-wife, if she ever went on holiday on her own - which is something she did regularly during the death throes of our relationship - it built a Pavlovian association with an opportunity to take drugs without having an aggressive abusive ***** attempting to kick my prison door in and screaming horrible things at me.

I found a black market seller who would supply just enough for me to have a moment of fun, but not enough for me to end up in a destructive binge. Then that supplier disappeared, and I ended up buying the next smallest bag I could find: 100 to 200 mild to medium strength doses.

The net result is that I spent all yesterday evening and all last night trying to jam my locked bathroom door closed with a pair of nail tweezers, because I was convinced that angry neighbours had phoned the police, and even a mob had formed outside my apartment, ready to heckle me when the police led me from the building, cuffed in shame.

That's a net result of two things:

1. Having more than you need of a highly addictive drug is bound to lead to a binge
2. It's impossible to measure milligram doses of drugs without excellent scales. The difference between no effect, and psychotic overdose, can not be seen by the human eye

I sold my scales because I've successfully been having long periods of abstinence, and it makes sense to get rid of drug paraphernalia that could 'trigger' a craving.

Of course, I should have controlled my craving. Of course, I knew what the worst-case scenario would be. Of course, it seems to suggest that the love of my beautiful girlfriend is not enough.

All I can say in my defence is that my life is pretty depressing right now. I'm on such strong pain relief that I can barely even concentrate on writing. I'm not well enough to go back to work. I've been stressed about running out of money and being evicted.

Life is also awesome right now, because me and my incredibly fetching and intelligent and knowledgeable girlfriend both have riverside apartments, and we take turns to spend nights watching sunrises and sunsets.

She has a really difficult decision to make right now. My longest period of abstinence from drugs is what? 9 months, since becoming addicted. My longest period of sobriety was 121 days. All my money has been frittered away on private healthcare, periods where I was too unwell to work, and yes - perhaps as much a 5% - has been spent on drugs. Would you choose somebody like that for your boyfriend?

Alright, so my drug habit isn't going to lead me to a life of crime. I've been cautioned by the police 4 times, but there's not much point in wrecking my career because I'm an addict is there, when I'm not shoplifting, dealing drugs, robbing, doing fraud or committing any other crime.

However, this weekend has shown that I still have the capacity to get myself in a life threatening mess. I was ready to stab myself in the carotid artery this morning, rather than have my life ruined by a criminal record and have all that shame on top of what has already been a pretty awful February and March.

Of course, nobody can deny that I brought this on myself and that the behaviour is just the same as it was over the last few years. Is my addiction getting better? It's certainly not cured.

If you want to know if my addiction is getting better, you could look at my medical records for 2014. I was an inpatient for 14 weeks. You could consider the fact that the longest period I had without my drug of choice was 2 weeks, for the first couple of years. You could consider the fact that I'm in a meaningful relationship with a kind, caring and compassionate girlfriend who's sympathetic and well informed. I'm not lying to her to have a drug habit behind her back. I've lied to her twice when she went away on holiday, both times shortly after I had lost a contract and was a bit depressed.

Ask yourself, am I worth knowing as a friend? I could drop a dirty HIV or hepatitis infected syringe in your kid's playpen. I might replace your salt with cocaine for a prank. I'll probably take money out of the purse and wallet of everybody in your house. I'll nick anything that isn't nailed down. All I want to talk about is drugs drugs drugs and my life story's not interesting because it just goes addiction addiction addiction. I'll bring shame on your family and you'll get in trouble just because you're friends with me. Not worth it, is it?

What about dating a junkie? Well, everything they say is a lie, and you won't like having sex with them all the time because you know they're probably thinking about a syringe of heroin while they're doing it to you. They'll take all your money and ask for more. Nobody ever got cured of drink & drugs. Death's too good for 'em.

I do feel terrible about the lies [two] and the betrayal of trust. Also, she knows that a binge could easily hospitalise or kill me. She's also trying to have a relaxing holiday break, but she knows I'm sick, haven't had any sleep and haven't had anything to eat.

She can't watch me like a hawk all the time. She can't spy on me using webcams when she's on holiday. She doesn't know what I get up to at home when she's at work.

Why take a risk on a loser with such a poor track record?

I've told her if she wants to break up with me, I'll fight to save the relationship, but I won't just say anything to talk her out of it. I actually advised her to break up with me, because I'm a month or two away from earning money again, I've got depression, bipolar and maybe even borderline personality disorder, along with the death sentence of dual diagnosis. Would you want your kids to have those faulty genes? Would you want your family to find out one day that you've been dating a loser?

Anyway, that's where I am right now.

No amount of stick will stop anybody from taking drink or drugs. I need to find a social group to regularly attend. I need to get out of the house more. Through socialising will come enjoyment of even more people's company, as well as routine. There will be new opportunities. Maybe a new hobby? I'll get a new contract and throw myself into work. Once the money starts rolling in, me and her can have holidays and plan adventures.

Could I replace everything and everybody in my life with supercrack? Almost. It is pretty fucking good. Still, how much money would you need? Even if you lived in a tent, I still reckon food & drink would cost you £150-200k over your shortened lifespan. I do however think you get sick of it after a while, but the bastard thing is so fucking good when you go back to it after a little break.

What can I tell you? That's the truth?

So am I honestly comparing a night with the love of my life, with a sniff of supercrack? No. The comparison is facile. If you choose the tent dwelling supercrack life, there's no coming back from that. Also, I've never been in such a good relationship in my life: it just keeps getting better and better.

One final question to ask yourself? Even if you think you have the perfect partner, perfect friends, perfect job and generally perfect life... do you still occasionally do something that looks totally insane in the context of your amazing life, like get too drunk, or take a recreational drug even though you never do drugs? Do you think the fact that you do that, means you love your partner any less?

Tags: #drugs #addiction

This is a story about insecurity...

The self preservation instinct varies by individual. In theory, we should all be equally risk-averse, because all genetically heritable traits must surely code for self-preservation, by definition. Any genes that would make an individual less likely to want to live, would literally die out. However, we know that people willingly jump out of perfectly good aeroplanes, while others are afraid to leave the house.

When life becomes one long unrewarding fruitless struggle - endless anxiety - then it seems logical that you'd give up hope of things ever getting better. "This will pass" people say. It doesn't. They're wrong.

I've done most of the stressful things in life: moved house, made new friends, asked a girl out on a date, got a job, paid bills, started businesses, balanced the books, paid my taxes, fixed a broken down car, fixed a water leak, fixed a gas leak, been punched in the face, got divorced, been arrested, been locked in a cell, been hospitalised, ran out of money, been homeless.

So, I've been through a lot of shit and survived. I've dealt with a heap of very stressful situations and I managed to get through them without having a nervous breakdown. However, I'm not exactly thrilled about having to start over.

I had become careless with my life, because I'd been suicidally depressed for so long that existence offered nothing but unrelenting pain.

My life attitude has generally been this: start today with whatever I've got, and make the best of it.

It's heartbreaking when you try your best for years and years, but you're thwarted at every turn. Imagine you've patiently observed, practiced and developed your skills. You're doing all the right things, but it's not working because somebody is working against you. I try to win people over. I try to get people onside. I try to convert the bad apples into good apples, rather than chuck them in the bin.

I'm named after a heroin addict: Mr Grant. I don't know his first name. If I took my mum's name, I'd be Nick Newton. If I took my dad's name, I'd be Nick Edmonds.

I had a blazing row with my mum when I was a child, over whether it was ever ethical to write somebody off as a lost cause. Unsurprisingly, my unshakeable belief - for as long as I can remember - has been that nobody is born bad, and nobody should be abandoned. Even the idea of casual dating is unpalatable to me: pick a partner and stick with them; be loyal.

My core beliefs have been tested to breaking point. I've lain myself wide open to be taken advantage of, and people have come and filled their pockets at my expense.

"Where are your friends when you need them?" my flatmate asked me a few times. "They're not there when you need them" he said.

In fact, I never phoned my friends for help. Ironically, the one time I phoned my friends for a favour, was to get rid of my flatmate - who owes me thousands of pounds in unpaid rent and bills - when he refused to leave.

Of course, my friends have been there when I've needed them, but I have a strong instinct to take my problems away from the people who I care about. I don't suck people into the turmoil of my decaying life. If I'm in trouble, I don't want that trouble to spill over onto my friends. If I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to throw up barriers - defences - to stop people getting too close to ground zero.

I haven't been ready to have anybody in my life, because I started to believe the bullshit: I started to think that I was a good-for-nothing write-off lost cause.

Now, a couple of people have stuck by me and been physically present through some of the horrors, and we've come out the other side. With every bit of loyalty, love and care that I've received, it's helped me to heal and repair a little more. It's hard to be objective, but it feels like things are getting better for once.

Everybody needs at least one person who believes in them. One person who'll be there when you really need somebody. One person who's trying to help, not thwart.

I find myself writing with consideration for their feelings and how they might perceive things. I'm starting to think about a positive future, rather than just brain-dumping before I die.

This blog was supposed to be a time-capsule; a smoking gun; a suicide note. This blog was supposed to contain all the things that hold some horrible people to account. It's so much easier if the target of your malice goes down without a fight and quietly dies.

She said to me "awwww, you wrote me a love letter" and it's true. In amongst the bitchy sniping at a bunch of arseholes who've screwed me over, there's a new theme developing: I care about hurting somebody's feelings and damaging a burgeoning relationship. There's something precious to me that I want to protect.

It's fairly hard to think "I hope we don't break up" and "I want to die" at the same time. Obviously, it'd be a logical fallacy to hold both thoughts simultaneously. Reason is a very poor way to tackle emotion, but it seems to be quite hard to be suicidal when you're cuddling on the couch... although not impossible.

When you care about somebody, you can feel insecure: "what if I lose her?"

It's progress, of a kind. I wouldn't say that dating is ever a reason to live, but having a significant other who you're crazy about is an improvement on a situation where your own emotional pain fills your world, to the point where you have no capacity to think or care about the people who would be sad if you were dead.

"Suicide is so selfish."

No, you simply haven't understood. It's you who is selfish, if you expect somebody to endure intolerable agony for your benefit. Believe me: people don't want to die because they're selfish; they want to die because they can't stand the pain and suffering anymore.

Guilt-tripping never works, but kindness, care, compassion and loyalty seem to be a winning combo.

Tags: #suicide #depression #relationships #divorce

This is a story about compatibility...

Very often, when you're acutely aware that there's something that you need to avoid crashing into, you'll end up staring at it, unable to tear your eyes away. When riding a board or a bike, flying, driving or otherwise in motion, you tend to go in the direction you're looking. If you want to avoid a crash, you should look at a spot away from danger.

Is this the reason why we don't talk about taboo subjects, because we're worried about tempting fate? We turn our back on the ugly truth and try to pretend like everything's OK.

My Christmas stocking included some bath salts.

Clearly, Santa has the same dark sense of humour as me. That's great. I think humour is a fantastic way to exorcise the demons of the past. First comes talking, then understanding and finally you can laugh and joke about a topic that was originally quite painful and difficult to remember. Repressing memories and walking on eggshells is no way to move forward.

If we don't have honest conversations where we can talk about how we really think and feel, then we build up a load of sensitive topics. Secrets and lies lead to paranoia and weak relationships. Keeping schtum about my parents' drug use - when I was a child - was too much of a burden. Writing openly has been liberating and has allowed me to move on from shame and regret, to regain my self-esteem and confidence.

I remember a desperate scramble to cover up my admission to The Priory. My psychiatrist had made a referral to a "private hospital" for treatment of an acute episode of bipolar disorder. All perfectly true, but there was a certain economic use of the truth. What would most people think, if they found out that I was spending weeks in the UK's most notorious treatment specialist for drug & alcohol abuse? They would leap to the wrong conclusions, surely?

It's so bloody exhausting keeping up appearances. One must be aware of how things can be [mis]interpreted and people aren't likely to share their true thoughts and feelings: "better keep him away from the kids if he's mentally ill" or "I bet he's a raging alcoholic behind closed doors if he's been in The Priory".

We're brought up to believe that our reputation is like a balloon: one little prick and it goes pop. We're scared to take time off work, because we'll have gaps on our CV that need to be explained. We're scared to share details of our private lives, lest our employers decide we're unreliable and judge us on preconceived notions. Who wants to work with a madman?

When it comes to dating, the same applies. Who wants to date somebody with flaws; defects? Who wants to take a risk on a ticking time bomb; an unsteady ship? And so, I should have found myself unemployable and undateable. "Take your pills, sit in the corner and shut up" says society.

However, if you ever meet me in a work or social context, you may gain the [false?] impression that I'm pleasant company: a healthy, happy and capable member of society, engaged in productive endeavours. Strangely, you might have the wool pulled over your eyes so much that you actually mistake me for a normal human being.

Surely this is thanks to the excellent medication that I take?

Well, no. I don't take any medication. I don't do therapy. I haven't had a course of electro-convulsive shock treatment. I don't even have a psychiatrist at the moment.

"But you're going to murder everybody if you don't take your pills."

Yes, that's right. I'm your worst nightmare. I'm out there, on the dating scene, luring unsuspecting vulnerable young women into my web. I'm a dangerous fantasist; a con-man. I'm so good at living a lie that I've constructed an elaborate fable that looks, smells, tastes and sounds very much like an authentic real life, but it's all fake. It can't be real. What about the secrets we now know?

If you take your secrets and turn them into jokes, you defuse that ticking time bomb... or at least that's my working hypothesis.

I certainly feel a lot happier knowing that I've met somebody with enough of a good sense of humour to make a joke on Christmas Day about my chequered past. I feel less sensitive, paranoid and insecure than ever before. I feel like I'm myself, and that's OK.

Maybe it's just a getting old thing: the realisation that we're all flawed in some way. We're all human. We all have weaknesses and strengths, and we all have history; baggage even. It seems better to wear my heart on my sleeve than present myself as some whiter than white, holier than thou saint who never put a foot wrong in their life.

I doubt I'll ever unify my professional and private identities, but I certainly don't regret jettisoning the traditional approach to dating. Honesty seems to have been the best policy in this case.

Tags: #dating #sex #bipolar #addiction

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 imitation and flattery...

What's through that door? Well, probably my entire career and every golden opportunity that will ever be presented to me, throughout my adult life.

That North Oxford house, if I've identified it correctly, used to be the headquarters of Daily Information. It was here that on one midweek night, computer games ceased to be a solitary bedroom activity, and instead became an opportunity to socialise.

So important was this place in my childhood, that I can still remember the code for the door behind the front door, that would lead up to my friend's parents' office, which was above the offices of Daily Info.

The main office itself was a fascinating place. There were zillions of flyers and posters pinned up on the wall, as examples of the desktop publishing and reprographics business, which also produces a popular "What's On?" guide for the Oxford area. There were also instructions on how to operate the many pieces of equipment and notices for the staff who worked there. It was a complex ecosystem, so unlike a home stuffed full of static ornaments and pictures.

There were piles of photocopier paper, and cardboard sheets in all colours and sizes. Printer cartridges, ink ribbons, toner, and daisy-wheel heads were piled up on shelves, or stacked nearby the cream-plastic machines that they served. Half-finished print jobs lay on the tops of every available flat surface.

But, the main event, and the thing that a group of geeky and otherwise introverted kids, had gathered there for, were the many computers. There seemed to be screens and keyboards everywhere. There were PCs and there were Macs, and they all had mice and colour screens, which was a big deal back in the 1990's, when people still used to do word processing on green-screen terminals that couldn't play games.

Yes, it was the computer games that we were there for, and between my friend, his mum, and a few willing staff members, they had always managed to coerce all the computers into playing amazing computer games. It was like the most fantastic treasure trove of an amusement arcade, with unlimited tokens to play again and again.

There were single-player games, like Shufflepuck, where you had to play air-hockey against a whole host of fascinating characters of increasing difficulty and deviousness. This was an interesting use of the computer mouse, which mirrored your hand's movements with the on-screen mallet, to try and send an air-hockey puck sliding into your opponent's goal.

However, the thing that I enjoyed the most, was co-operating with other kids to try to solve puzzle games. These were mainly of the point-and-click variety, where you guided an animated character through a world that you could interact with, using a number of verbs, like "push", "pull", "open", "close", "pick up", "walk to" and "use". These delightful creations included such titles as The Secret of Money Island and several Indiana Jones inspired games.

We would would pair up, with one of us operating the mouse, while the other pressed keyboard shortcuts to choose the different operations, while you tried to figure out how to solve the puzzles, which generally involved walking around, opening doors and boxes, picking up items, and then figuring out what to use the items on, or how to combine them together to make some new kind of object.

I idolised this friend who ran the event on a midweek evening, and tried desperately to imitate all the things he seemed to do so effortlessly. I read the same books. I tried to write and contribute articles to a school magazine that he had founded. I tried to learn how to become a programmer, and to create music using a MIDI keyboard, plugged into a computer. I wanted to play all the computer games he liked, which were often the Lucasarts point-and-click adventures, rather than 'shoot-em-ups'.

The bitterness that is so evident at times in my writing, could have ended up repressed and perhaps revealing itself in even more ugly forms, had computing not become a social experience for me, as well as a creative outlet.

Writing has never been my strong suit. When I was about 13 years old, I wrote an article about a computer game that I'd never played, in a desktop publishing program that I was learning to get to grips with. It got horribly mangled as paragraphs got moved around. "Were you on drugs when you wrote that?" my friend asked me, having reviewed it with another friend of his who I never met, on account of him going to a different school. I was put in my place, although not maliciously.

Everything I ever did was a pale imitation of what my childhood friend did, however, it was still immensely fortuitous that I had this role model in my life.

By writing computer programs nearly every day throughout my teens, I gained enough experienced to get a job as a junior programmer, some 3 years ahead of my peers. A few years later, there was a skills shortage because of the Y2K millennium bug, and I was able to get a very lucrative contract. Having held a graduate position for a prestigious corporation, and also been an IT contractor before the age of 21, I was then able to break into financial services and banking, which is normally off-limits to anybody without a good degree from one of the top Universities.

It should be remembered that there are many talented geeks, plugging away at code in their bedrooms. The difference between those who are 'tame' and able to play nice with others, is whether they have had adequate social contact. I was certainly rather removed from healthy social bonds by too much screen time, spent in isolation in a darkened bedroom, hunched over a keyboard.

Through people like the friend I idolise, the joy of computing became a joy of using technology to have a shared experience, to use computers as a mechanism for social bonding. Even though I had to move away from Oxford because my parents relocated the family, I was able to reproduce a little of the magic I learned at Daily Information and the social group that clustered around this one charismatic friend.

I learned how to connect computers together using coaxial cable, and I used to have groups of friends get driven over to the family home, with their PCs. We used our paper rounds and washing-up jobs, in order to buy the equipment necessary to allow our computers to 'speak' to each other, and so we were able to play co-operative games, with each of us operating our own computer.

As a bunch of 14/15 year old spotty nerds, having these early "LAN" (network) parties was amazing, even if we were cooped up indoors for whole weekends, waging virtual warfare against each other. Games like Doom were popular with us, where we just attempted to kill each other, but the pecking order was soon established, and the one-on-one combat soon grew tiresome.

We moved onto games like Command and Conquer where we could have two teams, each in their own "war room" connected by an extra-long cable that I had bought for the specific purpose of separating us, so that we couldn't hear each other's tactical discussions. A game would last over 12 hours, with us playing right through the night.

Because of the inspiration to write and to publish, plus the few social skills I had developed and the exposure to the reprographics and 'typesetting' industry, as a teenager I was confidently able to get a Saturday job for a little company that was like a smaller version of Daily Information, in Lyme Regis, called Lymteligence (yes, it had one 'l' missing, which wasn't very intelligent).

I had used money from my washing-up job at a local hotel to purchase my first modem and get connected to the World Wide Web (Internet) after a rather crappy old modem had completely failed to give a connection to my friend back in Oxford, who I was desperate to stay in contact with. For hours, my friend had patiently allowed his phone line to be tied up, while I tried to coerce some antique piece of hardware that I had bought at a car boot sale, into connecting with my distant friend's computer, but alas, he finally convinced me to give up.

At Lymteligence I learned how to author websites, writing the code by hand. I created a website for The United Kingdom Men's Movement. I remember feeling ethically challenged, as I typed up some of the bitter words of men who had suffered painful divorces. Thinking about it now, I feel that I myself could have been driven into the arms of this movement, had I not had a healthy social outlet for my technological skills.

Although it's shameful to admit, and a little creepy, I would try to keep tabs on my friends I had left behind in Oxford, by being a bit of a lurker on the rapidly developing Internet. However, by doing this, in a way I was able to stay abreast of advancements and trends that would otherwise have passed me by.

"Social media" means Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, today, and perhaps Snapchat and Vine. In fact, there is probably a movement that's already begun that's going to kill these technology giants, that I'm not even aware of yet. I've always been a bit behind the curve.

However, back in the day, social media meant bulletin boards, forums and websites like Friends Reunited. I have no idea how I managed to maintain a toe-hold of social connection with old friends, throughout the disruption of moving away and then our adult lives, but the Internet always provided a way.

It used to be the case that the search engines, of which Google didn't feature prominently until surprisingly recently, used to be very good at digging out which particular corner of the Internet your friends were hiding in, provided they were using their real name, and that name is quite uncommon... and my role model friend is blessed with quite a unique name.

Now that we tend to do most of our Internet social activities on Facebook, you'd be surprised to learn that your privacy is actually very well protected, and you have a reasonable level of control over what people can and can not find out about what's going on in your world.

In 1999/2000 I was living in Winchester in Hampshire, UK. Things were going well with my career, but I was struggling socially. Through a housemate, we ended up in the NUS (student) bar at Winchester University. I was leaning up against the table football table, when somebody behind me challenged me to a game. I turned around and realised that it was one of my fellow Daily Information computer club friends, and a guy who I went to school with since about the age of 5.

Reconnecting with an old schoolfriend was great. I had been back to Oxford, in order to show off my company car and boast about how well my career was going, but it was crushing inadequacy and a sense of loneliness that had driven me to go back there. I had even been quite evil and immature, and had wanted to exclude certain friends and monopolise other friends' time, in order to try to salve my insecurity. I was still a deeply troubled, lonely person, expressing that in very unhealthy ways.

Shortly after that chance meeting, I picked up a local newspaper and read that somebody had been electrocuted, while trying to take a short-cut underneath some parked railroad carriages, in order to get back to his University halls of residence. It was our childhood friend. Killed, through a momentary lapse of judgement, while under the influence of alcohol and the excitement of a fun night out in town. Tragic.

This put me - the lurker - in a really strange position, in terms of grieving. I later discovered through the Internet that my friends were attending the funeral, but because of the sense of distance and the shame of admitting that I had been somewhat jealously following our old social group from afar, like a stalker, I didn't know what to do. I procrastinated until it was too late, and the funeral was over.

There used to be so much stigma associated with using the Internet as a means of human connection. Admitting that you met your partner through Internet dating was likely to instigate stifled sniggers and snide remarks about axe-murderers and weirdos. I guess I am a weirdo though.

I don't know whether it's a British thing, or perhaps a function of a lonely childhood and being a needy, oversensitive person, but I'm kinda always struggling to articulate my needs and ask for what I want. I don't even admit to myself, what my fears and unmet needs are.

Writing this blog has been a journey for me, but it's taken me further than I would have ever expected. One leg of the journey was 5,351 miles, and took me to the hometown of a bunch of my idols and role models.

Is it creepy, is it weird, is it an unpleasant amount of pressure, knowing that in some sense, a friend is looking to you for guidance and direction? It must be, a little. Why the hell do I never seem to have grown up and gotten over childhood infatuations?

For me and at least one other friend, our mutual friend has provided at least some of the inspiration for our careers. In a way, I at least owe this friend a debt of gratitude for my financial security and the fact that a lot of doors are open to me, for career opportunities. I know that he shared with me at least a twinge of regret for having perhaps nudged one of our friends down one particular technology path.

Who knows what are going to be the knock-on effects of the connections we make with one another. Who could have foreseen that I would have taken the wealth that I generated so effortlessly in the highly paid tech sector, and use it to implode so spectacularly in my mid-thirties.

Of course this is not about blame, but instead, I feel this great sense of responsibility. I feel that there are certain individuals who I am crippled with shame, to imagine reading my sorry tale and thinking "what kind of monster has this guy turned into". I imagine their disappointment, and it slays me.

Where do we look for guidance and inspiration from in the world? Our parents? Well what if your parents don't provide it? In fact, what if your parents provide a cautionary tale for how not to live your life? I don't want to go into the details again, of why I don't want to follow in the footsteps of either of my parents, but suffice to say, I've always been looking to people outside of my family, to provide feedback and inspiration in my life.

So, I'm fessing up. That's what this whole blog has been about. I'm playing up like a kid and wanting to test my boundaries. When is some parent-like figure going to stand up and say "stop that!" so that I know I've gone too far? When is some authority figure going to step in, and tell me that I'm out of line, and give me some guidance on how I should think, act, speak?

Being given stacks of cash, relatively few responsibilities and no social structure around you, to tell you when you're taking things too far, when you're getting yourself into trouble, when you're wandering too far from the flock, when your ideas are getting too outlandish, when unpleasantness is rearing its ugly head. You probably take it for granted, the checks and balances that exist around you.

So, I'm making an appeal, to people from every period in my life, from every stage in my development: from childhood to adulthood, from Oxford, to Dorset, to London, to Cambridge, to San Francisco, to Prague, to France, to Brazil, to New Zealand. I'll travel round the world a million times, if somebody can just reach out and give me some kind of reality check.

I'm pouring my heart and soul out into the chasm of the Internet, hoping to make a connection with people, hoping to trigger some kind of response. I have no idea how I'm received. I have no idea how I'm perceived.

Yes, it's needy and yes, it's kinda pressuring people to say something where it seems impolite to even ask for feedback. We have lots of phrases that kinda shame people into keeping their mouths shut, like "emotional blackmail" and "attention seeking". If somebody even came out and accused me of such things, at least I'd have something to reflect on.

Everytime I ask somebody a direct question, they seem to think that the kindest thing to do is to spare my blushes, but I don't know whether to trust my own instincts, or actual concrete feedback that I've received.

For example, I was living with some friends, and it was only over dinner one night, when I had moved out of their house, that my friend finally let me know what he really thought and felt. The fact that the truth was suddenly unleashed was brutal. There was real pent-up frustration and having it all released all at once was too much to bear.

I just contradicted myself, didn't I? What an awful, needy, demanding person. I want honest feedback, but I want it little and often. I'm asking for people to give me a reality check, but I'm also admitting that the last time that a close friend fired both barrels at me, I nearly committed suicide. Who wants that kind of responsibility?

But, you know, the takeaway from this is that I didn't commit suicide, and even though that friendship was really badly damaged, at least it moved things along. I was in limbo before... really unsure of what was real, what I'd overheard, what was being said behind my back. It's an impossible way to live, like that.

I'm adrift in a vast ocean, with no tether to any fixed objects. I have no point of reference. I couldn't tell you which direction is which, and where I'm travelling from or to. I'm rather lost.

A friend got in contact earlier in the week, and offered their impression of something I wrote - noting that I had become bitter again - as well as some advice. I can't stress enough how this was like gold dust to me.

I'm not sure you realise how disconnected from the world I've become. I don't have any normal healthy friendships anymore, or regularly see people who I've had a long-term relationship with, knowing me for years, so they can comment on how I've changed. So many people have become just another 'like' on Facebook.

As a friend who I chatted to via Facebook messenger today said, we know what all our Facebook friends position on Britain leaving the EU is, but we don't know what's going on in the lives of those who are not sharing anything personal, except political opinions. There's a vast difference between the occasional reminder that somebody is still alive, because they're active on social media, and actually looking somebody in the eye, when they give you the British knee-jerk reaction of "I'm fine" when you ask how they are.

I appreciate I've written a lot, and huge amounts of it is virtually unreadable. Also, long bitter rants are not exactly pleasant reading, nor do they paint myself in a particularly favourable light. Who wants to know that angry venomous twisted person, hunched over their keyboard, blindly firing resentful and blame-filled missives into the void.

If you've persevered this far, I'm ashamed of myself. I think about all the stuff you must've read, and what you must think about me, but of course this is conjecture. I admit, I am trying to cajole you into giving me some feedback.

You know, I often think about how immature and childish I am. I often think that everybody is in the same boat, and we're always going to be left wondering how other people perceive us, and what people really think about us, to some extent.

It's easy to dismiss a lot of what I'm wrestling with, as just a standard part of the human condition. I'm also reflexively programmed to offer up neutralising statements, as standard, such as "I don't think I'm special and different" and "I know that my life is no more stressful and turbulent than yours".

The engine that drives this verbal diarrhoea is the fact that I do feel insignificant and worthless. I'm driven to try to anchor myself back into the world of the living, given that I have been hospitalised so many times with suicidal and self-harming behaviour. In a lot of ways, I feel justified in telling people who want to guilt-trip me into suffering in silence to shove their "you're not special, shut up" statements up their arses.

How does one go about fixing the very real and practical things, such as figuring out how to live amongst your friends once again? Sure, I can reconnect with people, but if they don't like who I am and what I say, what hope is there of there being any lasting relationship?

Anyway, this stuff is always cringeworthy and difficult to read, so I'm going to leave it there, as an open letter to my friends and acquaintances. An appeal to human connection, and the feedback that is essential for social bonds.

It's mighty cold when you're out in the thin atmosphere of the outsider, frozen and clinging onto life.

Tags: #friends #childhood #oxford #career #computing #socialmedia #suicide #depression

This is a story about channelling energy into something positive...

Buckminster Fuller was going to commit suicide, so that his family could benefit from his life insurance policy. After an epiphany, he found his purpose in life and went on to publish over 30 books.

In a month or two, I will have written the equivalent of 5 novels. Obviously, most of it is garbage, but I hope it serves as a warm-up. The point is to see if I have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Writing gives my life structure, routine.

I normally have 3 or 4 things I want to write about each day, and I struggle to keep under 1,000 words. Browsing statistics tell me that people read for between 3 and 4 minutes per day, on average... even when I've broken my rules and have written 6,000 words, which means that they're probably skim reading or getting bored and stopping reading before the end.

There has been real violence & venom in my words, as I've struggled with a sense of abandonment and real anger and frustration at being let down on promises at a really critical time, and when my life really hung in the balance.

My writing did nothing to sway the people who I targeted, to act with any decency, but now that I know they're no longer reading, I do feel satisfied that I have at least put my side of the story across.

In actual fact, I feel like I made myself look like quite a bitter and angry person, quite immature and unconstructive, negative. It might be well overdue, and the damage is already done to my image, my reputation, but now it's time to stop grinding the axe and start writing in a more positive way.

Behind every rant, every acerbic scalding word, was a lot of emotion, but it was all focussed & fixated on a few individuals. Not very healthy or productive. Unlikely to lead to pieces of writing that are interesting for people to read.

I've read a couple of posthumously published satires where the author's frustrations with the world are barely concealed. They are repetitive and almost cringeworthy to read, but the passion makes the books hard to put down. However, they are good works of literature, unlike me just slagging off my drug addict, alcoholic, loser parents and abusive ex-wife.

It's difficult to know how to act. My school days were dominated by bullying. My working years have been dominated by age discrimination and people who've been promoted to a position of incompetence, where they are completely useless and concentrate exclusively on stopping anybody else from getting ahead. My longest relationship was with an abusive bully. I've had relatively few good role models.

I've picked a few people who I like and respect, from around the world, and I've tried to learn what I can from them, and to emulate their life philosophies, some of their thoughts and teachings, to be interested in things they're interested in, to try and understand what is important in their lives, and how that makes them tick.

I'm a long way from where I'd like to be. I've made a poor account of myself, blathering on like a fool while in a messed up state. I've exposed my darker side: the rage and frustration has bubbled over and I've revealed human characteristics that are less than desirable.

It's good to connect with people but I've been very exposed. I fear that I've lost the respect of some people I really idolise, and others that I could learn a lot from. I fear that I have taken something that had a lot of potential to reach a broad spectrum of people I wanted to connect with, and I have corrupted it into a nasty weapon to try and beat up on just a few people, and that's kinda shameful.

You know what though? I don't have a healthy outlet, other than writing this, and nor did I learn any ways to deal with frustration and anger as a child and young adult. I was the one on the receiving end of other people's shit. I took the blame for my parents' shortcomings. I was the recipient of my ex-wife's viciousness. I was the victim of daily bullying and abuse.

I've soaked up all this shitty abuse for years and years and years and now it's all got to come out somehow. I'm fed up of being the punchbag. I'm fed up of being the scapegoat. I'm fed up of taking the blame for everything. I'm fed up of being the quiet keeper of secrets.

Yes, I've got to find a more positive way to channel this negative energy. Hitting back at the people who hurt me, in particular my parents and ex-wife, will never lead anywhere. The bullies and abusers never feel any remorse. They'll never back down. They'll never say sorry.

Retaliation & tit-for-tat... I know that it's a dark path to go down. I know that the secret is to rise above it all. It's hard to be the bigger person. It's hard to just let things go when you've been wronged, even if the hatred is destroying you from the inside.

Some of my friends' parents taught me to believe that two wrongs don't make a right. They're probably right, but the main problem is that retaliation is punished more harshly than bullying and abuse. We reward the bullies and the abusers and the bigger stronger people, and hand out trite platitudes to their victims.

But, it's true, I am the bigger person. I know the chain of violence and abuse has to be broken. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

I always thought that society would cleave itself in two, with the sensitive and intelligent beings creating a super-race that would have all the best technology, while the thick-skulled idiots would just slowly devolve into some more basic animal creature, which is quite well physically endowed but only uses its muscles to fight over food scraps and compete for other similarly dumb animal mates. These creatures would obviously very easy to herd and to keep separate from the elite.

When life was going well, I lost all the bitterness about my shitty childhood. At last, I was tasting the rewards for that abuse... I had risen above the herd of idiots. Sadly, as a horribly ironic twist, I ended up dating and then later marrying a bully, and she dragged me down to her level. It's taken me a long time to realise that I need to distance myself from such people as soon as I can, and to get myself back into safe space, away from the herd of idiots.

It's really hard to not be bitter & twisted, when you know you've got to rebuild so much. It's really hard not to be angry and resentful at people who have profited from your labour, your industriousness, your ingenuity, your trust, your kindness.

I'm remarkably close to either a breakthrough or capitulation, suicide. Things are on a knife-edge. I have the opportunity to earn 3 or even 4 times what I could have done, weighed down by the abusive numbskulls. With money comes opportunity. With opportunity comes the benefit of all those tough experiences.

Now, I'm so passionately against bullying and abuse. I'm so passionately against living miserably. I'm so passionately against brutality and cruelty.

It would be easy for me to become cruel and bullying, as a result of having suffered so much shit myself, however my future hasn't been written off by a few horrible and small-minded people. There's a glimmer of an opportunity, and every chance I might rise above the herd of idiots once again.

I've got 6 months ahead of me before any kind of sense of security will return to my life. 6 months living under threat. 6 months where one thing going wrong could screw everything up. That's a lot of pressure to live with every day. Everything has to go right, during the next 6 months, or else it takes me beyond the limit of what I can handle. There is no contingency. There is no safety margin. There is no excess fat.

As you can imagine, that makes me very tense, very highly strung, very anxious. That pressure comes out in a negative way sometimes, directed at those who dumped me in the shit, but I know that's no use. That pressure comes out as hopelessness sometimes: a sense that I can never overcome the obstacles, and luck will never be in my favour for long enough to break free again. The hopelessness leads to suicidal thoughts.

So, tomorrow I start something that has real tangible value, to rebuild my life. However, don't be surprised if the pressure is unbearable, and I fly off the handle at seemingly minor setbacks. Don't be surprised if I'm still not quite able to bury the hatchet and stop being so aggressive, so violent in my communication towards my persecutors.

I'm a long way from breaking free again.

The geeks will inherit the earth

Tags: #bullying #parents #childhood #divorce #writing #career

This is a story about late starters...

The way that girls enter and leave my life is fairly strange. Often I find myself dating somebody who was firmly in the friend zone. It never seems to pan out with the girls I've picked myself, so far.

I seem to be inescapably hopeless at reading hints that are dropped, or other indications that the opposite sex has taken an interest in me. When I replay past events, conversations, sometimes it seems obvious that there was flirtation, and I slap my palm to my forehead, but other times I seem to completely get the wrong end of the stick.

While some people might mourn the loss of the games, the ambiguity, the 'chase', playing 'hard to get' and generally feeling insecure and uncertain, I'm very glad that we're entering a more modern phase in the development of society, where we tell each other what we think and girls are allowed to be as forward as boys are. Hopefully, everybody gets what they want a lot quicker and easier than the old fashioned way.

It would seem to me though, like matching people's self-esteem levels is as important as matching people who are attractive to each other. Getting together with a girl who you feel is 'out of your league' when she confidently let you know she was attracted to you is one thing, but can you handle those little deliberate or accidental blows to your sense of security? When one partner clearly feels they have the upper hand, is the relationship doomed?

In your mid thirties you can't deny that the stakes of the game change substantially for the sexes. For women who haven't yet had babies but would like to be a mother at some point, the biological clock doesn't have that many more years to tick. The race to find the few remaining single men who haven't become fathers, adulterers or terminal imbeciles, is a challenge that I don't envy the opposite sex.

So, the photo-message of bodily parts is the new pre-date paradigm, apparently. After the exchange of phone numbers, WhatsApp'ing can commence, and for many men, the urge to send the object of their affections a picture of their 'junk' is too hard to resist, apparently. Perhaps shorthand for all that conversational 'getting to know you' waffle, the sending of penis photos is quite normal now, I'm told.

I don't think I've even photographed mine, let alone entrusted the digitised image to the internet for delivery.

I know that my ex used a no-strings sex website for a hookup, and photos of genitals were positively and eagerly sent and received there, but I can't see how it could have made a transition to traditional dating, although I guess it's the next logical step now that we are doing away with the hint dropping and more subtle flirtation.

I feel quite glad to have had a few relationships end amicably, or fizzle out naturally, to reassure me that things don't have to end as badly as they did with my ex-wife. It's true that with one fiery Italian, things were a bit too similar for comfort, with plates and other kitchen implements being hurled at my head. When she stormed out of my flat, I was all too pleased to lock the door behind her. She was surprised and disappointed I didn't chase after her.

Finding a girl who'll sunbathe on a windswept beach for an entire week, taking photos and videos of you kitesurfing, is jackpot kind of stuff, but holidays are only brief respites from daily drudgery. If you're not getting along in your regular everyday life, at some point the relationship is going to fall apart.

The modernisation of relationships is great in terms of transparency and getting what you want, but personally, I can find myself going along with things and ending up somewhat embroiled in situations that I never intended, simply because I still lack self confidence and don't assert myself sometimes.

Being polite, courteous and generous when buying drinks or food can often be mistaken for shy guy flirtation, and I know I've sent some girls confusing signals, when I've done little more than conduct myself with good manners, or so it seems to me.

I read something the other day that suggested men have sex whenever they can, and women have sex whenever they want. I guess I must be quite the freak if the article rings true with most other people, as I myself have found myself faking illness and even faking climax, although that one is slightly harder to pull off without a condom.

If you've read much of my blog, you'll know I'm exceptionally weird anyway.

Not having sex or at least trying to kiss the girl on the first date is seen as saying you're not interested and there's no 'spark' so far as I can tell. Taking things slowly with girls I've really liked has always been misread as me not being interested, and so it is that things tend to move pretty fast in the London dating scene.

Pulling in a nightclub is still a black art to me, but perhaps I shouldn't flirt so much with my gay friends. Probably sends out the wrong kind of signals.

What's the proper protocol to observe when trying to pull a girl in a club? I know there's something about meaningful glances being exchanged, and then you dance closer and closer, until you're definitely unnaturally in each others body space. Then I guess there's a point at which you just grab each other and start getting off. Either that or you get knee'ed in the bollocks and some kind of sexual harassment change is brought against you, presumably. I haven't really had the guts or the stupidity to try it.

Men are pretty lazy and content to go with the flow. I wonder how many relationships have continued to the marriage and children phase, simply because a guy couldn't face the tears and practical task of actually separating. According to the James Bond movies I've seen, women seem to make their selection of partner based on someone wh0 pushes themselves upon them most forcibly, before then becoming limp and compliant.

Personally, I seem to not have benefitted at all by trying to be the gentleman, doing things in a slightly old-fashioned way, even if I do benefit from the fact that at least I know where I stand with most girls now, and opportunities for promiscuity are there even if I'm still pretty much a serial monogamist.

I guess London has always had its seedier side

Tags: #london #divorce #friends

This is a story about discovering yourself...

Nostalgia is a liar that tells us that there was a bygone era when things were better than they are today. It tells us that despite a lack of antibiotics, immunisation, modern surgical techniques, telephones, internet, jet aircraft and reliable fuel-economical automobiles, there is something that we're missing from the pre-war years.

The fact is, that most people didn't have enough to eat, struggled to stay warm & dry and lived in fear of preventable diseases, which killed a huge proportion of people. Manual labour and low standards of health & safety killed men early. Childbirth and a lack of family planning killed women early. Infant mortality rates were stupendously high. Life was short & shit.

There's no point in looking backwards to those times. There's no point in stuffing your house full of antiques and dressing your children like some Dickens pastiche. There's no point in preaching a values system that probably never existed. You might like to believe that there was a time when there was more respect, more order. Do you think that the whip, cane and the gallows were never used? Even with corporal and capital punishment as deterrents, people still stepped out of line.

You might bemoan unruly or even ferral children, and imagine that there was a time when kids "behaved themselves". In fact, it is you who is delusional. Children are not dollies and mannequins. Children are not there for you to play dressing up games with, and to robotically comply with your instructions. They are little people, with their own identities.

The sooner that you accept that we live now, not yesteryear, the better. Your child does not have some imagined Victorian values stored hidden inside them. Your child exists as they do, today. They are shaped by this very moment, not your flights of fancy, nor your imagination.

Sure, as a parent, you have some preprogrammed delusions. You will always believe your baby is the bonniest. You will always think your child is the most adorable, the smartest, the one destined for success. No, probably not.

It's a good idea to back your kid up, to be on their side, to fight their corner. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It all goes a bit skew-whiff when you start using your kid to live out your own fantasies though, getting your kid to compensate for your own inadequacies. If you didn't do well at school, pushing your kid too hard to be the academic that you failed to be will never fix your past failure.

And so it came to pass, that I arrived at the age of 17 without the foggiest idea of who I was as a person. I was quite clear about two different imaginary people that my parents wanted me to be, and just how much contradiction and impossibility there was in realising their fantasies. However, I hadn't the faintest idea of what shape my own personality took.

Discovering the drug, Ecstasy, allowed me to feel self-love and explore my feelings for myself. It also gave me a strange identity, bound up with drugs, dancing and music. I was a clubber/raver. I knew who I was on a Saturday night, in a sweaty railway arch, cutting shapes in the air and with pupils like saucers, high as a kite on MDMA. The rest of the time was dead to me. I was just counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until the next weekend.

This was clearly not a sustainable and complete identity, and my self-esteem was still at absolute rock bottom. In this vulnerable phase in my development, I slept with my male boss, believing - hoping even - that I was possibly gay. Turns out that I'm not gay. Shame. Life could have possibly slotted into some order, as at least there is some strong identity in being camp and effeminante, as a man.

The next cruel twist of vulnerability was to see me get involved romantically with an achondroplastic dwarf. She's one of the nicest girls you could ever hope to meet, and I really hope her feelings aren't hurt if she reads this, but she was quite aggressive in her advances. As I was completely lacking in self-confidence, I struggled to assert myself. I went along with things. I complied.

It's a bit strange, dating somebody that you're not attracted to, but I guess it's no different from my experiments with homosexuality. It's just that she was less unpleasant to kiss than somebody whose face is covered in stubble. Being f**ked in the arse is tolerable, but not exactly pleasant. This girl at least didn't want to penetrate me with some part of her body.

This strange little life had formed itself. I switched myself off during the week and went into hibernation. Then at the weekends I would take Ecstasy, and under the influence of this chemical, my feelings became much more fungible. It's easier to believe you have fallen for somebody, under the influence of the 'love drug'.

I guess I always maintained some toe-hold in reality though. I always knew that my feelings were being psychopharmacologically pulled this way and that, and I knew deep down that something felt very wrong.

It takes a long time to fix broken self-esteem and for you to emerge from the oppression of people who never allowed you to have your own identity. My own tastes had never been allowed to develop. I had never gained the skills of choosing my own clothes and outfits. I didn't know how to dress.

My hair was unruly and an inconvenience. I didn't like its style, but I had no idea how I wanted it to be cut. I had no idea how to tame my wavy locks. It's only because of an outdoors lifestyle, that I arrived at the shorter cut that I wear today.

IT contracting gave me the money to attain status symbols like a nice car, which I'm ashamed to admit, helped my self-esteem to some extent. Becoming some twat who is rather pleased with himself because he's rich and successful in those materialistic measures was not a road that I would have liked to continue down though. It was rather offensive to be flashing the cash to compensate for crushing inadequacy.

It was London that eventually gave me the space and the time to develop my own style, my own precious identity. It was tough going. One very bullying housemate drove me to the very limit of what I could endure, before she finally pissed off. Oh, what sweet relief! To finally be living in the Angel Islington, as a well dressed young man in a job that I was good at, with a healthy circle of friends and acquaintances. It was bliss.

The combination of corporate identity midweek - nice suit and crisply pressed shirts - with a surf style at the weekends, coupled with my newfound love of kiteboarding, really sealed the deal. I felt like a complete person, and for the first time in my life, age 23, I actually asked a girl out on a date.

I was still crushingly insecure, but I mostly muddled through because I was busy and I was optimistic and positive. I bungled a lot of the growing up, and failed to see the opportunity for bed-hopping for what it was, and instead continued to think I was falling in love at the drop of a hat.

I was hopeless at reading even the most un-subtle of advances by the opposite sex, and screwed up opportunities to trade up with some girls who I fancied the pants off. I was a faithful monogamist, but perhaps only because self-esteem and experience were still quite lacking in my love life. I kick myself now, when I think of some of the gorgeous women who advertised their availability to me.

In London you can find people whose style you wish to emulate. You can find those few inspiring fashion pieces, which can prop up your fragile self-esteem. You can start to develop your own identity, your own style, your own wardrobe. You start to feel good in your clothes, and then later in your body.

My broken self-esteem was restored to the point where I was confident enough to make a permanent mark of ownership on my body, in the form of a tattoo. I'm now so self-confident that I made the mark in a place where I can't even see it. From the photos that I've seen, it's not even quite in the right place but I don't care. It feels nice to have disfigured myself, deliberately, through my own choice.

I even grew a moustache for Movember, which is something I never thought I would do, given my lack of ability to grow decent stubble or a beard.

There's this tightly-bound link between London, outdoor/adrenalin sports, working for a corporation and being a secret raver/clubber, that is instricically linked to my identity. It's hard to shake those foundations as the things that I will run to in times of stress.

I know that MDMA will release me from the shackles of shame, regret and self-criticism, when I become paralysed by those oppressive thoughts. I know that the chemical will help me to have an epiphany of sorts, and move on with my life when I have become stuck in a rut. It's like taking a brief holiday from yourself and all your baggage. It's pretty hard on your body & mind in your thirties though! Quite a hangover.

I know that adrenalin sports will remind me that I'm alive, when I feel dead or dying. Just riding across London on a bicycle is enough to reaffirm that you still have some self-preservation instincts. You always end up having a moment where you nearly die, which puts things into perspective.

I know that immersing myself in corporate culture is occasionally good for my identity. It feels good to put on a suit, and know that the public are somehow looking at you as somehow more respectable, more mannered, more civilised. It feels good to puff your chest out with self importance and pretend like being part of the big money machine means that you have some value, even if the bubble soon bursts.

I know that being part of the heaving mass of bodies that make up London is a very cool part of somebody's identity. When you are somewhat hardened to it, used to the noise and the invasion of personal space, and the offence on your senses, you then start to get enjoyment from gliding serenely through the carnage. You know that people are looking at you and wondering how you managed to cut through the crowd and anticipate the seemingly random movements of individuals, so that you dance around the dawdler and dodge the ditherer. It feels good to have mastered the capital city, to know these mean streets.

Put it all together and you have quite a strong identity, quite a distinct personality. It's quite nice that a 'me' has emerged after a rather difficult upbringing, and further struggles to break free from parental oppression and some relationships which preyed upon my vulnerability, my insecurity.

If you wanted to try and get me outside the M25 now, you'd have to put my dead body in a pine box.

I love this dirty town.

Tags: #london #career #childhood

This is a story about global children...

I should have been in Prague today, December 22nd, visiting the greatest Kiwi-Czech couple I know. I love them to bits. I'm sad I didn't get to go.

My ex-wife was a programmer when I met her. I thought there could be nothing greater than dating a geek. Turns out it's better just to date somebody you like and who is nice to you.

Yes, I went out with my checklist of things that I wanted:

• Science degree
• Computer programmer
• Outdoorsy
• Adventurous
• Ambitious
• Prepared to follow me into dangerous situations
• Able to stay calm in a crisis

I would say that I got most of those things. The problem was that she never backed me up. There were so many times when I expected her to have my back and she didn't. In fact she was an even more harsh critic of me than I am, and I'm unbelievably hard on myself.

She ended up trying to be me, which is a bit weird. She wanted to learn to climb, so she paid money for a guide and porters to drag her up a mountain. I could have taken her up some Scottish winter routes that are amongst the most brutally dangerous and exposed in Europe.

She wanted to learn to sail. I'd already pretty much taught her, but I could have found some really nasty tidal eddies and extremely tough ports to navigate into, where loads of boats run aground. I could have taken her out on a brutal day where you surf down the waves and try not to broach. No, she wanted to pay SunSail to bob around on a floating caravan in non-tidal waters.

She said she wanted to drive a rally car and thought she was a good driver. I've raced round the Belgian Formula One circuit and won a bunch of karting races. She bought herself a little car that looked a bit like a sports car while I was in hospital once. I bought her a 1972 MG Midget with wire wheels, for her to drive all summer while she was off work.

You would have thought that she'd take care of me, but either she didn't realise how good she had it, or she had a highly inflated opinion of herself.

It occurs to me that a lot of geeks would like a geek girlfriend. They're highly sought after.

I probably just picked badly.

Also, being nice to somebody doesn't make them nice, it turns out.

This photo was taken 8 days after we met. My life skills were ploughed into learning how to be a good adventurer, leader and geek, rather than pick a good life partner (July 2005)

Tags: #divorce

This is a story about the battle of the sexes...

Why would you punch that face? What would it achieve? What would the effect be? I can tell you about the final point.

If you punch me multiple times in the face, without provokation, I will react. Here's how my reactions will go...

If I'm lonely and isolated, because I've been forced to leave my home and rent a flat for you miles away from all my friends, then I will be sad and depressed. Especially if I'm home alone in that flat all week while you're working away and out drinking with all your friends. That isn't very nice, is it?

Perhaps you don't like me seeing my friends. When I had all my friends to visit for our engagement party you threw a massive tantrum. When I went out kitesurfing with my friends, you went through my internet browsing history and rummaged through all my personal belongings. When I got home, you put me on trial, even though what you found was entirely innocent.

Why would you boast about hitting men in the past? Hitting people is not good. There's never an excuse for it. It's never the answer. I feel bad about the times when I have swung my fists. I can't defend my actions. Why do you think you have an excuse?

So, I was afraid. I was very afraid, because domestic abuse was literally killing me. I had become suicidal.

Men don't really talk about domestic abuse. We're not really allowed to be abused. The system isn't set up in that way. Domestic abuse is when a man hits a woman, not vice versa.

So, I was given every reason to believe that when she got angry, I was going to get my face smashed in. It had happened three times. Three strikes. She had boasted about doing it in the past. She had no remorse. She was unapologietic. She didn't think she had done anything wrong. I didn't even defend myself. Why would I? It was her who was angry and aggressive and violent. I was passive, unguarded, open, loving and caring.

My reaction wasn't great. First I sliced my wrist open with a breadknife. She got even more angry about this. Apparently the fact that I had been driven to self mutilation was a provocative act? Apparently, somebody crying, in pain and bleeding is a target for violence and abuse.

My next reaction wasn't great. I rigged up one of my climbing ropes so I could hang myself. This resulted in the police being called. She thought that was the end of it. The police had 'dealt' with it, so to speak. Her actions were in no way linked to anything. You ring the police, and everything is fixed. That's how society works, isn't it?

My next reaction wasn't great. I smashed up my own laptop. I saw her getting into one of her rages, and instead of letting her start throwing punches, I smashed up my laptop. It stopped me from getting hit. She was quite fond of my £1,000 laptop. She liked watching movies on it with me. I smashed it up and she didn't hit me that time.

You can't keep smashing up £1,000 laptops though. It gets expensive.

So we both suffered a little for the laptop. She didn't get to watch movies with me, but I was the one who mainly suffered, because I didn't have a laptop anymore. It also cost me a load of money to replace all the broken parts. It also took me a load of time to repair it. It was me who learnt more of a lesson than her.

My next reaction wasn't great. I smashed up our bed. I saw her getting into one of her rages, and instead of letting her start throwing punches, I smashed up the bed. It stopped me from getting hit. She was quite fond of our £300 bed. She liked sleeping in it with me, occasionally. I smashed up our bed and she didn't hit me that time. 

You can't keep smashing up £300 beds though. It gets expensive.

So we both suffered a little for the bed. She had to sleep on the mattress on the floor with me, but she was away a lot of the time, so I suffered more. I paid for the bed, so it was me who suffered financially too. I was glad not to have my face being punched though.

My next reaction wasn't great. I smashed up her car. I saw her getting into one of her rages, and instead of letting her start throwing punches, I smashed up her car. It stopped me from getting hit, although she did try. She ended up tearing my favourite clothes, in her attempt to physically hurt me. She was quite fond of her car. She wanted to hit me, and it made her want to hit me even more because I had damaged her car.

So that didn't work at all. It made her even more violent and aggressive. That was a total failure, as well as being expensive. I had to get her a new bonnet and have a dent in the door filled, as well as having the panels resprayed.

Anyway, you get the idea about the way the relationship went. Because I had good reason to expect my face to get smashed in, when she would get angry, I would get scared, and she would be aggressive and threatening, and I would smash something up in order to not be punched. I don't like being punched. I don't like having black eyes and a broken nose.

Seems rational enough? Well it was completely insane. What seemed logical to me, was for her to stop being violent, threatening and aggressive towards me. I had this crazy dream of a perfect relationship, where I wouldn't get punched in the face. I had these wild fantasies of dating somebody who didn't swing their fists into my head. I had the crazy notion that she might admit she was in the wrong and stop being so aggressive.

Anyway, we should have broken up, but my parents taught me to always persevere with a completely fucked up relationship. They taught me to never give up on somebody, no matter how abusive the relationship. I tried to fix things. I tried a kindness offensive. I bought her flowers, I cooked her lavish meals, I took her on luxury holidays, I showered her with gifts, I made her heart-shaped chocolate eggs, I painted her pictures, I made her music... I tried to sooth her rages.

I remember throwing her ski boots into a snow drift because she was having a tantrum about something. The icy air seemed to chill her out a little, and I avoided being hit.

If I'm totally honest - and I tend to be - a lot of her rage seemed to be linked to sex. She seemed to quite like it, and she didn't like that I knew that. She didn't like that I knew she liked having sex with me. She wanted to have sex as a weapon to use against me, but she was frustrated that it hurt her too. She knew that she would weaken before I did. She wanted me to beg and crawl over broken glass, but her libido was too high to permit such power games.

It's strange what men and women will do to each other. I work on a very simple relationship principle: I've got a surplus of love that I want to give away. I want to make my partner feel loved, adored, cared for, secure and happy. Strange, right? I should just be out to get my dick wet, but I don't really work like that.

Sure, I had nowhere near as much sex as would have been good for my adult psyche, as a teenager. I was highly undersexed. Nowhere near enough sex in my teens. Perhaps it's common for many kids, but I only had a couple of girlfriends, and not nearly enough sex.

To say I was a late starter is not entirely accurate. I had a dab of speed paste (amphetamine) at a nightclub, when I was 15, and ended up losing my virginity that night with chemically enhanced confidence, despite having 'speed dick' (stimulants - like speed - shrink your dick due to blood pressure changes... honest, love).

Because I started my career 3 or 4 years early, I always had a nice car and plenty of money. Insofar as I can tell, girls are looking for confidence, not for money or material things, but having a nice car can make you feel confident as a guy. It's a penis extension. It's a confidence booster. It's a social crutch.

My confidence and self-esteem were rock bottom, on account of having my school life ruined by being forced to wear unfashionable clothes, uniform worn in the wrong style, and ride past over 1,000 children at the bus stop in the morning, riding a stolen girls bike. That's not helpful to a teenaged child.

But anyway, between Devon, Dorset and Somerset, there were opportunities for the occasional tryst with a girl from another school, who you perhaps met at a festival, on the beach, at a disco or a club, or later in life when I got a car. It wasn't feast and famine. It was famine with the few occasional crumbs from the table.

I'm jealous of friends who hooked up with childhood sweethearts. I would have loved to have had a childhood sweetheart, but you just can't damage a kid's image that badly without there being terrible repercussions on their social standing.

The net result is that I was grateful to have a girlfriend when I had one. I never took them for granted. I worked hard to please them, and to make the relationship work. Even to the point where I was taking a beating, but not complaining or telling anybody. I took it personally. I took it to heart. It hurt, and I blamed myself.

My ex probably thought she could do better. Yes, when you have a partner who makes you feel adored, when you're put on a pedestal and you have the ground you walk on worshipped, you can get a little arrogant. You can get totally complacent about receiving love and care and attention. Well, I've matured a little now. If you'd rather be with somebody who's unfaithful and treats you with contempt, you know where the door is.

Yes, I'm pretty stubborn. I will act with kindness, and more kindness, and play nice, and be nice and do nice things. I don't play games. I don't try and manipulate. I don't try and frustrate. I don't play hard to get. I'm a bit of an oddball like that.

I'm not perfect, and I did once end up in a relationship because I thought I was worthless and had to settle for somebody I didn't fancy. I ended up feeling resentful though. I didn't know how to get out of that relationship, and I wasn't very nice to that poor girl at times. I didn't hit her though. I do regret some things I said and did though. I did feel remorse for not handling that situation better. However, we saw each other again about 10 years ago, and we still got along just fine.

I guess when two stubborn people meet though, sparks are going to fly. I'm a bit of a weirdo in that I feel sorry when I hurt people. I feel responsible for my actions. I'm a bit strange like that. I really don't like the way I acted with my ex, even though it was clearly a reaction to being victimised. I can't justify my actions. I should have found a way to walk away. I should have ignored my parents example and done things my own way.

My way normally works. Living to try and be somebody's abstract idea of what they want doesn't really work. You can't twist and contort yourself into an imaginary being that they want. You can't be somebody else's fantasy, no matter how hard you try.

I don't like disappointing people. I've always been a disappointment to my parents. They are always looking to pick holes in everything I do, and destroy me in order to blame their shortcomings on me. I selfishly decided to conceive myself and pop out of my mother's uterus and get in the way of the drug taking party. How selfish and inconsiderate of me. Oops.

Why am I still going over all this stuff? Well, I found a way to numb the pain. I found a way to stop the arguments. I found a solution to all our problems. I found a way for us to peacefully co-exist. I found a way to protect myself that kept me safe from violence and aggression. I hid in my shell for 4 years. I used tricks I learned from my parents. Luckily there were no children involved. I'm not that irresponsible and reckless, for fuck's sake!

It's a hard life, dating a rich guy who treats you like a princess and takes you on lovely holidays. You should beat some manners into him (July 2006)

Tags: #divorce #childhood