depression – Page 5 – Nick Grant

Nick Grant

Tag: depression

  • I Am Ridiculously Exposed

    This is a story about laying it all on the line…

    Glasses

    My livelihood, any realistic prospect of me being able to pay back my mountainous debts and the impossible dream of restoring myself to health and wealth – escaping the nightmare – hinges upon successfully blending in as a part of an organisation which is particularly noted for being intolerant of anybody with bad character.

    I’ve been required to fill in a 66 page form which legally obliges me to disclose criminal convictions, psychiatric problems, the abuse of drugs and alcohol, partners from the last 3 years, marriage, divorce, bankruptcies, loan defaults, debt repayment agreements, financial conduct and details about my parents. Most employers are only entitled to know about any unspent criminal convictions, under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, but I work for an organisation that knows everything.

    Of course, I’m ahead of the game, because I’ve already publicly declared every single unflattering thing about myself.

    Luckily I’ve never been convicted of a crime, but there are still some things I’m legally bound to disclose which would portray me in a less-than-ideal light to the powers that be, who will judge me based on what they see on paper. My life and my future will be reduced to a few scribbles on a form.

    Many people have been through rough breakups and divorces and had breakdowns. Many people suffer from mental illness. Many people have had periods where they’ve drunk too much or dabbled with recreational drugs. Nobody is squeaky clean.

    I’m in the ludicrous situation where I’m more-or-less managing to plod along and keep my mouth shut, and demonstrate that I’m a competent and capable valuable team member at work, but I’ve continued to write and publish this blog using my real name. I’ve continued to write with unflinching honesty about some of the terrible stuff I’ve been through and the aftermath of problems I’m dealing with, as I desperately attempt to get back on my feet.

    I’m in the ludicrous situation where my hard work is beginning to pay off and my debts are getting rapidly repaid. I’m in the ludicrous situation where there’s an end in sight, provided nobody screws me over.

    It appears to be self-sabotaging that I would continue to write and publish stuff which makes me so exposed and vulnerable, but in fact my online presence has been one of the big factors in my recovery. Without being able to share my story and connect with kind supportive people, I couldn’t have gotten this far. Without having the sense of identity, pride in my achievement and the structure and routine that daily public writing gives me – the scrutiny – then I would have been destroyed by my problems and would have perished in obscurity long ago.

    Whaddya want to know about me?

    Trouble with the police? Sure. I got caught with legal highs a couple of times.

    Psychiatric problems? They don’t call me Nick “Manic” Grant for no reason. I make no secret of having bipolar disorder.

    Drug and alcohol abuse? Not the former anymore but the latter is a bit of a problem, although my drinking doesn’t seem to be any more abusive than that of most of my colleagues. Arguably I’m successfully self-medicating, because I’m functional and unmedicated.

    Partners from the last 3 years? I haven’t co-habited since separating from my wife.

    Marriage and divorce? Tied the knot in Hawaii. Divorced 18 months later.

    Bankruptcies and other debt problems? I pay my bills. I’ve never defaulted. I’m a good debtor.

    Financial conduct and credit score? I need to pay back half my credit card debt ASAP but that’s the only bad thing on my credit file.

    Parents? They’re not seditious traitors. They’re not Russian, Chinese or terrorist sympathisers. They’re not political agitators.

    What about my character in general? I’ve had a successful career spanning more than 2 decades, working for some very big organisations on important projects. If I was some kind of fraudster or con artist, my true character would surely have been unmasked by now.

    There’s a lot written down here which could easily be twisted and used against me by somebody intent on casting me in a bad light. I write a lot of things about myself which are very unflattering and wouldn’t usually be publicly declared by people. I spend a lot of time asking people to take the things I voluntarily tell them and to decide for themselves how they want to judge me.

    It’s a ridiculous thing to do.

    For one reason or another I’ve become easier and easier to find, for anybody who bothers to look. Because of a recent mistake I made I’ve become even easier to find than ever before. All the effort that I’ve put into projecting myself into public consciousness, because I’ve been on the verge of suicide for so long, is finally gaining traction and I’m becoming a victim of my decision to make myself exposed and vulnerable.

    Every time I write and publish I have to consider the consequences to my life. I have to make a decision between my ideological belief that we have a right to live with the freedom to be proud of our identities and to be open and honest, without fear. If we really live in a free country I should be free to be candid and not suffer persecution and tyranny. If we honestly believe in equal opportunities and our laws forbidding discrimination, then we need to take the brave and bold step of speaking without fear of repercussions.

    This vast repository of information that I’ve created is the polar opposite of a 66 page form, designed to distill me down to a few ticks in boxes. This 1.1 million word document is intended to frustrate the reader who is looking for a convenient pigeon hole to stuff me into.

    Do your worst. I’m not afraid.

     

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  • Insignificant Speck

    This is a story about sonder…

    Supermoon

    Is it useful to have a realistic appreciation of your own insignificance? Is it useful to correctly perceive that you’re not significantly different from any of the 7.6 billion other people on the planet, or the 108 billion humans who lived and died since homo sapiens first appeared as a new species? Is it useful to be conscious of your cosmological insignificance, where the entire human race will be obliterated so completely that it will be as if we never existed? Is it useful to understand the fundmental laws of physics well enough to know that there isn’t going to be a technological breakthrough which might allow us to travel to another star when our sun dies? Is it good to know that in the long run, nothing matters, because we live in a godless universe with no afterlife, and we are destined to be forgotten?

    Just as we might become aware that every other person has a rich and complex life of their own, we can equally become aware of humanity’s wider insignificance.

    Warp drives, wormholes, time travel, cryogenics and hypersleep are all lovely sci-fi fantasies, but we can’t even solve the basics, such as the fair distribution of wealth so that we can all have clean drinking water and enough to eat. There isn’t going to be a colony on Mars. We’re as likely to kill ourselves in nuclear armageddon as we are to die because of runaway man-made climate change. Yes, we’ve made great strides in science and technology in recent years. All those advancements are being used for killing each other in increasingly nasty ways.

    The population growth trends are easy to extrapolate, along with predictions about our ability to use the available land to produce food, leading to the unavoidably obvious conclusion that we’re going to have mass-starvation of billions of people, in barely a couple of decades. If you like to trot out the tired old lines about what a monster Stalin was, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen what capitalism can do to billions. It’s already easy to see what industrial capitalist society has done to the environment, causing all manner of extreme weather events and natural disasters, which are anything but natural, because things are exacerbated by man-made climate change.

    It’s easy for me to write about the need to show some restraint and forego some luxuries, because I’ve been lucky enough to have enjoyed those luxuries for quite a long time. What about all those people who haven’t yet had a taste of Western imperialist decadence? Isn’t it unfair that those who’ve only ever known poverty and deprivation will never get to live a decadent lifestyle?

    Many in the guardian class would prefer it if you just damn well knew your place, and stopped trying to improve your standard of living. How else are the guardian class going to snobbily believe they’re a cut above the rest of the society, if every man and his dog is able to have a nice lifestyle? Get back in your place, you proletariat scum.

    Thus, we arrive at the new class warfare. We ALL think that we should be at the front of the queue, and we ALL know how to get there, thanks to the internet.

    The internet is a humbling place. Where else can you face such an enormous deluge of individual people who all think they’re special, unique and different? Everybody’s going what they think is an important opinion to share; that they have a voice that needs to be heard. Everybody thinks they’re good looking, talented, intelligent. Everybody thinks they’re capable of original thoughts and ideas; that they’re creative.

    It’s hard to maintain your own sanity when you see all those social media accounts controlled by all those individuals, who’ve carefully chosen their name, bio, profile picture, and then carefully creates and curates their own content, according to their personality and the image they wish to project. It’s hard to be a homo sapiens with the same hardware that evolved 350,000 years ago, when the population was 99.999% smaller and we didn’t have any technology except fire and pointy sticks. Our brains really aren’t built to cope with constant reminders that we’re an insignificant speck.

    We might hope to build up our social media following – our celebrity status – and begin to broadcast ourselves to big audiences, hoping to make ourselves feel somewhat less insignificant, but it’s delusional. A judge and jury might convict a person of a serious crime, locking them up for life, but all 14 of those people will die at more-or-less the same time, be cremated or buried. In 4 or 5 generations, those 14 people will be completely forgotten – the criminal will be indistinguishable from those who sat in judgement. For a psychiatrist to diagnose a patient as having delusions of grandeur, is also a delusion of grandeur – both are suffering from the delusion that they have any importance at all, when clearly they are both equally insignificant.

    Significance is an invention of the human mind, as a coping mechanism for the increasingly inescapable realisation that nobody matters, nothing matters, we’re all dead in the long-run and every piece of evidence that we ever existed is destined to be obliterated some completely, that even alien archeologists with futuristic gadgetry, would never know anything about our entire race; our whole history.

    It’s pure vanity to think that you’re important; that you’ll be remembered.

     

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  • In a Darkened Room

    This is a story about invisible sickness…

    Psych ward

    I’m not throwing up. I haven’t got diarrhoea. I don’t have a fever, sweats or chills. I don’t ache or have physical pain. I haven’t got a rash. My skin isn’t discoloured. I can pass urine. I’m lucid; conscious.

    Symptomatically, I’m not sick. I’m perfectly fine and healthy.

    A few years ago – back in 2015 – I got so exhausted and stressed at work and I felt so unable to say “no” and ask for some time off, that the only legitimate way I could lift the pressure upon me was to be hospitalised. Being in hospital somehow legitimised the ‘sickness’ I was feeling, due to invisible illness. I felt protected from the relentless pressure which was being applied to me constantly, in the workplace and with mountainous debts. I felt safe in hospital.

    I slept.

    I slept so much.

    I slept for 12 to 14 hours a day at least, for a whole week.

    I was voluntarily admitted to the psych ward – I could leave whenever I wanted – but I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay safely protected within the walls of the hospital. I wanted to stay safely protected from the world of work, the world of debt, and the world of intolerable and unreasonable expectations; insufferable pressure which was killing me.

    Unless my sickness is externally validated, by a doctor, I don’t feel like I’ve got a legitimate reason to not work as hard as I can, and bash my head against a brick wall in a futile attempt to deal with an unreasonably huge burden of responsibility placed upon me. Unless somebody tells me it’s OK to not be OK dealing with the mountainous tasks placed in my path, then I work until I reach breaking point.

    Breaking point in 2015 meant getting myself admitted to a psych ward. Breaking point in 2017 meant killing myself.

    I’ve been at breaking point for most of this year.

    Today, I’ve spent a second day in my hotel room with the curtains drawn. Yesterday, I was overwhelmed with anxiety. Today I’m just plain exhausted. I’m a little sad and regretful that I’ve wasted another day of my holiday, but I really think I needed the rest. I was at breaking point.

    You’d think I’d get bored or hungry, just lying in bed. You’d think that the prospect of a dip in the sea and the sensation of warm sand in-between my toes would tempt me to get out of bed. You’d think that the rollercoasters and water slides, which I haven’t yet ridden, would tempt me out of bed. You’d think that the excitement of having a whole week with nothing to do but enjoy myself would give me an energy and mood boost.

    I have a very busy mind. I’m constantly bombarded with thoughts. I don’t need TV, films, books and other distractions to keep myself entertained. My brain will constantly bombard me with invasive memories and other groan-worthy things, as well as a steady stream of things to worry about. I don’t get bored, even when I spend 2 whole days in a dark room with the curtains drawn.

    I probably work too hard. Fundamentally, I’m a bit of a workaholic. The root of many of my problems is working too many hours at high intensity. I never switch off. I never relax. I never plod along at a steady pace – I always tear through things as fast as I can.

    The mountainous debts have only amplified my tendency to work too hard, for too long, without taking enough breaks. I cannot take my foot off the gas pedal for a single second, because I’ll easily be swallowed whole and disappear into a debt black hole; go bankrupt.

    Debt is with you 24 hours a day, just as mental illness is. There isn’t an on/off switch which can control depression, and similarly there’s no off switch on the anxiety and pressure of mountainous and unmanageable debts.

    Working an 8 hour day and having weekends off provides some relief from the pressures of the workplace. Although I spend most of my leisure time anxiously dreading having to go back to work, there are moments when I relax and enjoy the fact I’m not at the office.

    There’s never a moment’s relief from debt.

    Debt just has to be paid.

    If you don’t pay your debt off quickly enough, it’ll never be repaid. If you don’t earn enough money, you’ll never repay your debts. Interest accrues on your debts, even when you’re sleeping.

    My situation got so bad that I cannot take an average salary job. I cannot take a break. I cannot relax.

    Things were headed in the wrong direction in 2015. My mental health was causing problems in the workplace – being too outspoken due to hypomania – and I was living on borrowed time. I’d recently rented an apartment, which was going to cost me an arm and a leg, heaping a load more pressure onto me when I was already struggling to cope.

    Things are headed in the right direction at the moment. My important debts could be cleared by the end of the year. I could be completely debt-free by March next year.

    I worry that I’m screwing-up at work. I’ve been far too outspoken lately. I’m sure I’m pissing people off and making myself unpopular. I’m worried that my mental health problems are starting to adversely affect my behaviour in the office.

    My coping strategies are unhealthy. I eat too much. I eat junk. I drink too much. I use sleeping pills and tranquillisers, when things get too unbearable.

    As far as my colleagues are concerned, I’ve gone off on a holiday which was pre-approved and everybody’s known about it for a while. As far as my colleagues are concerned, everything’s ticking along just fine. As far as my colleagues are concerned, everything is pretty much normal.

    This is good.

    Back in 2015 I’d had several problems with my mental health, which had caused me to be absent from the office without any notice, or otherwise acting strangely. My colleagues were sympathetic, but they were well aware that something wasn’t right with me. There were issues.

    If things go to plan, I’ll go back to work feeling refreshed and in a much better state of mental health. If things go to plan, the mania which was spilling over into my office behaviour, will be back in-check and I’ll be able to resume my tight-lipped and poker-faced game of keeping quiet and fitting in as best I can; not being noticed. It’s important to blend in and not be noticed, if you want to keep hold of your job when you’ve got a mental illness and mountainous debts.

    If things go to plan, I’ll go back to work and I’ll finish October, work the whole of November and December, and then take another well-earned holiday for a couple of weeks, having cleared all my important debts. It seems feasible, doesn’t it? Two and a half months of working my bollocks off, then I’ll have dealt with the bulk of my woes – most of this crippling bloody debt.

    If things go to plan, each of these holiday breaks arrive just in the nick of time, to save me from exploding in the office and losing my job. If things go to plan, each holiday allows me to recharge my batteries and carry on going.

    Previously, I had been working until I reached breaking point, and becoming so unwell that I was unable to carry on working.

    This year has been unsustainable and has ruined my health. This year has been horrible. However, the plan has been working and my debts are being rapidly repaid. I’ve been digging myself out of the hole.

    Everything’s taken its toll. I suppose I should not be surprised that this year has made me so sick that I’ve been in bed for two whole days, when I’m supposed to be on holiday enjoying myself.

    I don’t look sick.

    It’s a shame to waste a couple of holiday days, but so far this year I haven’t been hospitalised and I’d like to keep it that way.

    It’s my holiday and I’ll spend two days in bed if I want/need to.

     

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  • The Logistics Are Complicated

    This is a story about three consecutive weeks away from home…

    My front door

    Despite some pretty serious drug and alcohol issues, having reduced my supercrack addiction to just a couple of relapses in the last 16 months, my life is going considerably better. Before, things were too chaotic and messed-up to manage basic adulting, let alone making complex plans and following through with them.

    Poly-substance abuse makes life particularly unmanageable. Stimulants produce excessively, obsessively focussed attention on tiny details, to the point of dismantling a television to see how it works, but forgetting why and not thinking about the consequences, such as not being able to put it back together again. Tranquillisers paper over the cracks temporarily, forestalling the inevitable crash and inducing amnesia, such that the brain doesn’t have its natural corrective reaction: “fuck! I should never do that again! that was dumb!”.

    In the grips of drug-induced mania, I’ve made a lot of plans, contacted a lot of people, done a lot of hard work and generally laid some of the groundwork for grand schemes, only to let everything rot and wither on the vine because eventually I crash. My ideas are never dumb per se but as we say in the startup world: ideas are worthless; execution is everything.

    This weekend I need to wash and pack 3 weeks worth of clothes; 3 wardrobes – work, UK autumn and holiday sun. I need to buy flip flops and sunscreen. I need to get a haircut.

    I need to load up my car on Monday morning with everything I need for 3 weeks.

    It sounds like an adventure, right?

    I’ve had enough adventures to last me a thousand lifetimes.

    My left arm is covered in scars where I’ve slit my wrists and cut my veins lengthways. My left shin has a humongous scar from when I was trying to escape from my sister’s bedroom, where my dad had cornered me, and I picked up a mirror to defend myself – like a shield – which got smashed and a massive piece of glass dropped like a guillotine blade. My right thigh has a huge scar from when I fell through a glass roof, running away from voices in my head; admittedly more obviously a consequence of my so-called bad choices but easily understood in terms of the fucking abuse I had suffered at the hands of my ex-wife and my parents beforehand.

    My life is remarkably improved since mostly quitting drugs, legal highs and black-market medications, but I’m loathe to become one of those “drugs ruined my life” idiots, because clearly there was a reason why I was driven to seek something in substances: I was denied a conventional happy contented life. This isn’t a “poor me… poor me… pour me… another drink” whingefest. This is simply a statement of fact.

    My needs are the same as anybody else’s: food, shelter, companionship, intimacy, safety, security.

    I’m a pretty basic guy.

    Garbage in, garbage out.

    If it sounds to you like I’m absenting myself from personal responsibility – distancing myself from my bad choices – then I’ve got a few questions for you. Where were you when I was lying on the floor dying of a suicide attempt overdose a couple of times? Where were you when I was in hospital all those many, many times? Where were you when I was sleeping rough? Where were you when I was arrested, locked in a cell and then released without charge? Where were you when I was voluntarily admitted to a psych ward, or sectioned? I’ve faced so much adversity alone. It’s true that in the last couple of years I’ve had the assistance of my guardian angel, but that person is clearly the reason why I’ve recovered, obviously. I was floundering on my own, but at no point did I ever fully abandon the notion that I was personally responsible for influencing the outcome of my life, or death.

    So you think life’s complicated doing the school run? Wiping bums, making packed lunches, playgroup, after-school activities, grazed knees, tears, tantrums, sleepless nights, sore nipples and general procreation-related bullshit is a reason why your life is hard? I’ve got 7.6 billion living breathing walking talking reasons why you’re a fucking idiot. I’ve got over a hundred billion skeletal remains of your failed attempts to clone yourself into immortality you fucking moron. You’re at the top of the bell-curve you rutting simpleton.

    Life’s not a competition but I’m winning.

    This is not what I intended to write tonight at all, but I’ve abandoned all attempts to avoid repetition and any misguided belief that I’m able to project an idealised image of myself, as opposed to baring my ugly soul for anybody who unfortunately happens to be looking in this direction at the time.

    You might think that my life is an enviable adventure, but it’s actually a fucking nightmare, without kisses, cuddles, hugs, spooning and the comfort of knowing that I’m safely embedded within the crowd; safety in numbers, like a school of fish.

    I’m an outlier and it sucks.

     

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  • Controlling The Variables

    This is a story about self-experimentation…

    Xanax tablets

    It’s very difficult to conduct a scientific study involving human beings. Our innate ability and inclination to adapt to our ever-changing environment means that we can’t control the variables as we would be able to in vitro.

    Sample sizes are always tiny – statistically impossible to gain any insight from – because of the difficulty of recruiting so-called ideal study candidates and being able to follow them for long enough to gather any meaningful data. Each individual will have wildly varying personal circumstances, which render any studies of hundreds or thousands of participants, complete and utter pseudoscience hogwash; nonsense; garbage.

    Aggregating data from all the antidepressant controlled trials, as well as thousands of other studies into the efficacy of those medications, concludes to a high degree of statistical significance, that in more than 80% of cases the person’s depression would have ‘cured’ itself on its own – medication makes no difference at all.

    Clearly, psychoactive medications do have perceptible effects, just as you’re able to tell if you’ve drunk 4 pints of beer or 4 pints of water. Thus, a double-blind placebo trial is not a placebo trial at all, because those who are in the placebo group know that they’re unmedicated.

    The question then arises: can we prove that some medications have positive effects?

    Problematically, we are as superstitious as an animal with a bird-brain, quite literally. If a food pellet is randomly released to feed a pigeon kept in a cage, the pigeon begins to believe that whatever it was doing when the food pellet was released caused the food pellet to be released. If the pigeon was – for example – turning 360 degrees clockwise when the pellet was randomly released, it will continue to spin in circles, believing that its actions are causing the food pellets to be released. This is called magical thinking and humans are just as prone to it as a bird-brained pigeon.

    Extrapolating, if we take up yoga, start eating kale, listen to whale music, start believing in imaginary sky monsters, wear lucky underwear, read self-help books, use homeopathic remedies or start doing any one of the many billions of similarly stupid and futile superstitious rituals, these are at least 80% likely to co-incide with a natural improvement in our mood which would have happened anyway. However, we will falsely attribute our better mood and more hopeful future, to something which actually had absolutely no effect whatsoever so far as good empirical evidence-based repeatable science is concerned.

    To control the variables is extremely hard, in complex modern life.

    I had a very good night’s sleep last night, woke up early, ate a healthy breakfast, got to work early, had a productive day, and I felt like I had the energy and enthusiasm to do some exercise. My quality of life was manyfold better today than it has been for a very long time. My hope and optimism were sky high today.

    Let us deconstruct the reason for my good day.

    Last night I swallowed two 7.5mg zopiclone tablets, which are a sleeping pill. Perhaps it’s high quality sleep, delivered with some help from medicine, that’s the reason I had such a good day – I was well rested and refreshed.

    No.

    Earlier in the year – and in fact quite recently – I had completely quit all sleep aids and I was sleeping very well without them. I have no problems initiating sleep and remaining asleep. This variable is eliminated.

    Last night I swallowed one 2mg Xanax tablet, which is a short-acting benzodiazepine hypnotic-sedative muscle relaxant, generically known as alprazolam. Perhaps it’s relief from anxiety delivered with the help of medicine that is the reason why I had such a good day – my anxiety was subdued.

    No.

    Earlier in the year – and in fact quite recently – I had completely quit all sedatives, tranquillisers and tranquillising painkillers and I was coping very well with my anxiety without those medications. I am fully functional despite my very high-stress and demanding life. This variable is eliminated.

    Last night was my 5th consecutive night without alcohol. Perhaps it’s the healthy decision to quit booze and become teetotal which is the reason why I slept better, woke up refreshed, had improved concentration and felt more full of energy and enthusiasm for other healthy activities than I have done for a long time. I thought about catching up with a friend. I thought about doing some exercise.

    Ah. We have a problem.

    On the face of it, we have 3 significant changes, and those changes all concern mind-altering substances.

    I can be fairly certain that I’m able to sleep and I’m able to cope with my anxiety without medication, but I combined two medications which should have helped with both, which is already complicating the clinical picture, but then I also quit heavy drinking quite abruptly and managed to get through 5 consecutive sober days. 3 changes is far too many changes to attribute my improved mood to any one of them, or even all 3 in combination.

    But.

    Oh no.

    There are other changes too.

    I got paid on Monday. Getting paid is always a good day. Sure, Monday I was off work sick, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I started doing some sums and I realised that I can pay off half my debts at the end of the month. It’s something worth considering.

    I went back to work on Tuesday. Not losing my job is always a big relief when I get sick. Sure, it’d be pretty bad luck to lose my job after just one day off sick, but it’s always a relief somehow to go back to work and find everything’s fine and people are cool with me. It’s something worth considering.

    I have 8 working days – less than two weeks – until I go away on holiday. I haven’t had a week-long holiday since July 2016, over two years ago, so that’s a massive relief to know that I’m going to get a relaxing break soon. It’s something worth considering.

    I spent the weekend in the company of old friends. I took a flight to Prague. Socialising and travel are exciting and stimulating. I played with my friends’ children. We did activities, like sightseeing and mushroom picking in the woods. All of those things are very nice and normal and pleasant. Sure, it was exhausting, but now that I’ve gotten over the travel I have some really nice memories of that trip. It’s something worth considering.

    At work I’m starting to feel like I’m really making a difference and I’m a valued member of the team. My colleagues were glad to have me back and people are keen to work with me. I feel cherished and a little bit more secure every day. I feel increasingly confident in my own skills, knowledge and experience. It’s something worth considering.

    My sister picked up my mountain bike from my parents, so that I can collect it from her. I’m looking forward to seeing her and maybe my niece too. I’m looking forward to having my bike back. I’m looking forward to getting my bike repaired, upgraded, and being able to use it to get a bit more fit and active. It’s something worth considering.

    Lives are complicated.

    Life is complicated.

    It’s impossible to control the variables.

    If you were looking for the perfect test subject – a guinea pig – you would fail to find a better one than me, because so many things in my life are constant. I stay in the same hotel, I eat in the same gastropub, I do the same job I’ve done for 21+ years. I’m a creature of habit and I’m not destabilised by anybody else, such as family, a partner or children. I’ve cut every variable out of my life that’s possible to do, short of locking myself in a laboratory cage. I’m the perfect test specimen.

    I can’t tell you why I had a good day today, but I have very good reason to believe that it was a combination of a multitude of factors, including the sleeping tablets to help me get back into a good sleep pattern, the anxiety tablets to help me cope with intolerable stress levels, the sobriety, the travel, the socialising, the money, the job satisfaction and a million and one other little things, all of which are very positive. For example, my Apple Macbook was repaired under warranty, saving me the cost of a £1,500 replacement or a hefty repair bill, which is a big relief. Who could have predicted any of this and why would we attribute my life improvements to any one particular thing, such as the favourable mood of an imaginary sky monster? Stuff was just going to get better on its own.

    As you can tell, I’m not the superstitious type.

    I will, however, be taking a zopiclone and a Xanax again tonight.

     

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  • Sorry For Not Replying

    This is a story about having a miniature nervous breakdown…

    Blurry phone

    I know it’s offensive to say “I’m a bit OCD” just like you can’t be “a bit in a wheelchair”. However, I’m a bit of an authority on life implosions. It’s not hyperbole to describe myself as on the brink of a breakdown and/or a suicide attempt. If anybody could know just how close I am to breaking point, I would be me, given that I’ve lived far too much of my life on the limit; I’ve had far too many breakdowns and brushes with death.

    What do I mean by a breakdown?

    There’s the fairly tame stuff, like not going to work, not answering the phone, not answering the door, not opening the curtains, not getting out of bed, not washing, not eating, not socialising, not paying the bills, not opening the mail, not doing any kind of activities, sleeping all the time, unpredictable random bouts of uncontrollable crying, suicidal thoughts and plans… that kind of stuff. That’s your common-or-garden depression tame breakdown stuff, which destroys your job, your finances and your relationships with friends and family.

    I can pretty much manage to stay functional and not lose my job, even when I’m spending 40 hours a week at my desk plotting to kill myself. I can quite literally spend a whole day in the office thinking about what poison I’m going to buy, where I’m going to get it from, how I’m going to use it, which tall buildings I can access the balconies of, what pavement or other area there is beneath the balcony, how I would gain access, how I would get there… all the little details.

    Nowadays, I plod along like it’s ordinary to have those thoughts and feelings. That sort of stuff is just ordinary background noise to me.

    There’s other tame stuff like spending vast sums of money on expensive consumer electronics and plane tickets. Casual sex, alcohol and drug abuse; extreme sports, bad driving and other excessive risk taking. All of that stuff is part of my day-to-day existence.

    I’m able to quell both my impulse to stay in bed and my impulse to run away, to such a great extent that I’ve given an excellent false impression of a highly functional adult human being, for 10 or more consecutive months. A large number of people have been fooled.

    I’ve dragged myself to work after drinking 3 bottles of wine. I’ve dragged myself to work after a multiple-day drug binge without any sleep. I’ve kept the receipts for thousands of pounds worth of consumer electronics and mostly resisted the urge to walk out of the office and jet off to an exotic location with a fat wad of £50 notes in my pocket, yelling “SEE YOU IN HELL” and flicking V-signs at my colleagues as I exit.

    It’s the last part that’s been my biggest success.

    My brain mostly tells me I’m brilliant and other people are slow and dimwitted. I work with very smart people, and the less I say about my colleagues the better. Let’s just focus on the me part, because it’s a confusing issue. My thinking goes a little bit like this…

    “I was a drug addict sleeping rough in a bush in a park, nearly bankrupt, and now I’m putting together this massive software system for a gigantic organisation, even though I’m as mad as a box of frogs, and yet everybody seems to respect my opinion, trust me and follow my leadership; they pay me an obscene amount of money”

    So then I start thinking…

    “Who else in my organisation is a nearly-bankrupt severely mentally ill person who was sleeping rough in a bush in a park and physically addicted to multiple dangerous drugs?”

    When I arrive at the conclusion that my colleagues have not faced the same adversity, it fuels delusions of grandeur. Why would it not? It seems only logical that the reason I’m not destitute or dead and instead I’m earning big bucks and doing important work, must be because I’m special and different. I write this paragraph dripping with sarcasm, the reader should note.

    On the matter of the success part: turns out that it’s a good idea to keep your mouth shut most of the time, if you want to get along well with the literally hundreds of thousands of employees who work with you in some of the world’s biggest organisations. It turns out that it’s an even better idea to keep your mouth shut and not say what you think, if you’re plagued with delusions of grandeur, brought on by the sheer ridiculousness of seemingly being able to drag yourself out of the gutter and reach the stars at the drop of a hat.

    It’s quite mind-fracturing to believe at the same time that you’re worthless and that the world would be better off without you, while also believing the hard evidence that no matter how hard you try to destroy your life, you still remain eminently employable and in-demand; no matter how many times you walk out the office shouting “GO TO HELL FUCKTARDS” somebody somewhere still will offer you a great big suitcase filled with £50 notes to sit at a desk and think about killing yourself.

    It should be noted that I like my colleagues and I think they’re very smart people.

    It should be noted that there hasn’t been a “GO TO HELL…” moment for quite a while.

    Like, there probably hasn’t ever been a “GO TO HELL…” moment.

    Not ever.

    I get very worked up about the systems, the organisations, the politics, the structural problems, the inherent unfairness and absurdity of it all. I get very worked up about perfection, utopia and engineering elegance. I get very worked up about management incompetency. I get very worked up about the speed with which things get done, which feels painfully slow.

    These opposing forces within me – the depression and the mania – seem to express themselves quite suddenly as an exhaustion which confines me to bed for many weeks, jetting off around the world or getting very angry with one particular situation. The anger one is probably the most destructive; the other two are recoverably destructive.

    I’m particularly fearful of waking up one day and being unable to go to work, which is strange because that would probably be the least damaging of all outcomes. Yes, it doesn’t look great to disappear and not answer your phone for weeks, but understood within the context of a major episode of depression, most people’s reaction is sympathetic.

    Past experience has taught me that becoming arrogant, cocky and full of myself leads to saying and doing stupid things in the office, which is far more damaging than being off work sick. As hypomania boils over into all-out mania, I know that I can be prone to say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time; patience and tolerance wear thin.

    Somehow, I manage to navigate a path through both extremes, so long as I’m not too depressed or too manic. I build up some goodwill which carries me through difficult periods. I prove my worth and make myself useful, such that I get second and third chances.

    Knowing myself very well, I feel like I’ve been skating on thin ice for far too long. I feel like I’m well overdue a meltdown; a major catastrophe.

    I don’t have any spare energy left to maintain my mask of sanity; I can no longer keep up my “game face”.

    The mask is slipping.

    My main preoccupation should be remaining civil.

    So long as I can remain civil, I’ll probably be forgiven for having a breakdown.

    I’m too outspoken, as usual. People are getting to know me. I’m super exposed.

    Some poor bastard usually feels the sharp end of my tongue and I desperately attempt to apologise and take back the things I said in the heat of the moment. My regret and remorse are heartfelt, but it’s usually too late. Gotta keep things civil, no matter how much pressure and stress I feel I’m under.

    Perhaps worst of all are the lies and the boasts, which come at the very end of a long period of fake it until you make it when I actually no longer need to fake it anymore. Lolz. Irony.

    The fear of being exposed as an imposter – having my secrets revealed – has followed me around for an incredibly long time, but now I’m almost-but-not-quite back on my feet. This is the very worst period.

    I need to consolidate my gains.

    But.

    I’m so close to having a breakdown.

     

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  • The Dread

    This is a story about when the alarm clock goes off…

    GMT

    I’m routinely late for work but I think I’ve figured out why. I was very tired when my alarm went off this morning, but I think I could’ve gotten out of bed and gone to work. I was tired but I felt OK. I needed more sleep but I’d have been alright if I immediately got out of bed.

    Unfortunately I let the dread set in.

    My thoughts and feelings changed from “I need more sleep” to “I’m going to be late” to “I don’t want to go to work at all”. From initially planning to get up, iron a shirt, iron a jumper, take a shower, get dressed and drive to work, I then started planning how best to tell my team that I wasn’t going to make it to our morning meeting. As lunchtime approached I dreaded having to finally get up and the ridiculousness of “I’m going to be late” meaning not turning up until the afternoon.

    I did not get up.

    As the afternoon wore on I was dreading having to tell my team that I was actually going to be a no-show. I dreaded the loss of earnings. I dreaded the damaging impression that I’m unreliable. I dread the day that I’m finally unable to keep going any longer, and I stop turning up for work altogether. I dread the day that I hit the wall.

    I did not tell my team that I was going to take the day off sick.

    It might seem like I’m my own worst enemy. It might seem like I’m making things harder for myself. It might seem like there’s a long string of decisions here, and I’m making bad choices, but it doesn’t feel like it at all. The whole process is quite agonising.

    A couple of times in the past fortnight I’ve woken up at around the time when my alarm goes off. I’ve gotten up, dressed, had breakfast, driven to work and arrived on time or even early. “This must be what life’s like for a normal person” I’ve thought to myself. It’s been blissful on those days. Life has felt sustainable and pleasant and I’ve even envisaged being able to keep working for the foreseeable future, on those good days.

    Most days are not good days.

    I’ve only found a few solutions for the dread.

    Short-acting hypnotic-sedatives work very well in the short term. Xanax and zopiclone last just long enough to get a good night’s sleep a bit more tranquillising effect in the morning, when the dread would normally set in. Without a sleep aid, the dread sets in the night before: “I’m never going to get enough sleep and I’ll be exhausted in the morning” I think as I lie awake until the wee hours of the morning.

    Alcohol works a little bit as a sleep initiator but the liver metabolises alcohol so efficiently that it’s mostly eliminated from your bloodstream after 4 or 5 hours. Alcohol-induced sleep is not high quality and it’s followed by dehydration and a full bladder, which I usually try to ignore because I’m warm and comfortable in bed. By the time the alarm goes off alcohol withdrawal and bad sleep combine to make the dread doubly bad.

    Getting absolutely smashed drunk works surprisingly well as a mechanism for getting me to the office more-or-less on time. Waking up half-pissed from the night before does offer an intoxicated tranquillisation which allows me to overcome the dread.

    Driving to work drunk and/or tranquillised and being in the office while reeking of alcohol and/or slurring due to tablets, is a pretty undesirable state of affairs. Public transport, heavy lunchtime and after-work drinking were the norm in the City, so my heavy alcohol dependency was not conspicuous until I was banished to the provinces.

    Everything’s catching up with me now.

    The heavy boozing has led to sudden weight gain this year, which depresses me. Drinking heavily no longer seems like a sustainable strategy to get through the working weeks.

    The solution is a total detox, exercise, sensible bedtime, healthy breakfast and good sleep hygiene; routine. The solution is to live the most boring life imaginable, dedicating myself purely to the pursuit of being able to get up in the morning. The solution is to completely change the way I live – the way I act – in order to fit in with early-bird culture.

    In many ways I am still going through an extended benzodiazepine withdrawal, neuropathic painkiller withdrawal and sleeping tablet withdrawal. My alcohol use has prolonged and worsened the excruciating withdrawal from the physically addictive medications. My body and brain’s instinctive reaction to drink more and eat more to compensate, has been a very poor coping mechanism and has instead lengthened and exacerbated the negative symptoms, instead of providing the mild relief I so desperately crave.

    Having used Xanax a couple of times in the last fortnight, it was remarkable how my brain responded: “THIS is the stuff which I’ve been screaming for” it seemed to say, as I gained some long-overdue respite from round-the-clock anxiety and the dread.

    Obviously it’s not desirable to use pills or booze long-term. Obviously, it’d be good to suffer the short-term pain and get healthy, before things get any worse. I’ve done a substantial part of the hard work, in breaking my physical dependence to a multitude of addictive medications.

    I desperately craved alcohol all weekend but remained sober because my friends who I was visiting are not big drinkers. I was really craving alcohol tonight, but I managed to resist, although I’m comfort-eating to compensate for the craving.

    I hate the situation, where I’m not where I want to be with anything. I’m not teetotal. I’m not medication-free. I’m not doing the healthy stuff. I’m gaining weight not losing it.

    To eat less, eat healthy, go to the gym, be teetotal, stop taking sleeping pills and stop taking the occasional tranquilliser, but yet maintain my miserable single hotel-dwelling living-out-of-a-suitcase life, seems completely ridiculous. However, using my misery as a justification for drinking as much as I want, whenever I want, is also ridiculous and has led to appearance change and health degradation, which I don’t find acceptable.

    Tonight I’ve comfort-eaten and not done any exercise. Tonight I will take one or maybe even two sleeping pills. However, I won’t have any alcohol or tranquillisers. I’ll try to go to sleep at a sensible time. I’ll try to get up early, have a healthy breakfast and get to work on time. If I can do all that, it’s still a reasonable achievement considering the circumstances.

    I’m not reliable. I am struggling. Hopefully nobody will hold it against me though.

     

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  • Relapse

    This is a story about the easy option…

    Pill packets

    I took a sleeping pill last night. Sunday nights are hard and so are Monday mornings. Lots of people struggle but I’ve got a fairly legitimate set of reasons why I’m struggling: mountainous debts, soul-destroyingly boring and slow work, social isolation, mood disorder and having recently gone gold turkey on a zillion addictive drugs and medications. Normal people who’ve been through the ordeal I’ve been through – including the homelessness and the hospitalisations – are not working a full-time high-pressure demanding job. I find my job pretty easy, but it’s still a lot of pressure and very demanding to turn up and appear like I’ve got my shit together as opposed to having just dragged myself off the streets and gotten clean.

    Take a look at the people who are getting clean and recovering from a severe mental health crisis. Take a look at the people who are recovering from suicide attempts and addiction. Take a look at the people who are getting back on their feet.

    Are they working full time jobs, miles away from home?

    So I took a sleeping pill.

    So. Fucking. What.

    It’s not the slippery slope. It’s not the thin edge of the wedge. It’s not the beginning of the end.

    I will have a proper relapse at some point. I’m bound to. It’s inevitable.

    When I’ve finally got my debts paid off and I’m finally free, the relief is sure to be overwhelming. I’ve struggled so hard for so long to reach that milestone of repairing the damage of divorce and everything that went with it, that I think I’ll be happy to sleep rough at least knowing that getting off the streets and working to earn money was the easy part which I’ve done a million times before. The hard part has been that it’s been so unrewarding. I’ve worked so hard for so long and I’ve got nothing to show for it. Where’s the payoff?

    I took a sleeping pill and I slept well.

    I woke up feeling refreshed.

    It was easy to get up.

    Dread = gone.

    That was amazing to wake up and not be filled with dread about the day ahead. In fact that reduced feeling of dread lasted all day and I was reasonably happy at my desk, rather than bored out of my mind. Is that a co-incidence, or is it linked to the fact that my brain was getting something that it was missing?

    I don’t really want to go back to being dependent on all those pills, but I did go cold turkey very abruptly, and the re-adjustment has been brutal. So many little things make me stressed and anxious, which is not a choice to catastrophise, but a perfectly rational and logical thing for a person who’s suddenly found themselves living life without copious quantities of nerve-soothing tranquillisers, sedatives and painkillers. Medication adjustments aren’t something that can be done in days, weeks and months. It takes a very long time to adjust to harshness, and the world is a very harsh place.

    It’s so tempting to pop pills at the moment.

    Pills don’t have any calories. Good quality sleep is so valuable. Life without anxiety is so much better.

    Why would I want to suffer?

    I need to sleep well, wake up refreshed, not dread going to work, not be anxious and miserable at my desk and not feel hungry and wanting to comfort eat all the time. Of course I want pills.

    The rebound insomnia and rebound anxiety were terrible, and it’s still a problem, but without tea, coffee, energy drinks, cigarettes or some other vice to overcompensate with, I’ve snacked like crazy and put on weight. I’m stressed and anxious about my weight, which is a self-perpetuating vicious cycle.

    The solution is to not have to get up at the crack of dawn every day and go to an office and be bored out of my mind. The solution is to not be in debt up to my eyeballs and unable to stop working as hard as I can. The solution is not to live with job insecurity, money insecurity, housing insecurity, social isolation and all the other problems which come about as a result of the pressure on me to simply chain myself to my desk.

    Those options are not available to me.

    Those solutions are denied to me.

    Make hay while the sun shines.

    I never know when I’m going to lose my job, lose my mind, suffer health problems or get fucked over by somebody. I never know when I’m going to get totally fucking screwed so I’ve got to work as hard as I can for as long as I can, because somebody always screws me in the end.

    All I can do is take pills.

    I take pills so I can keep going in the fucking miserable merry-go-round which is my life. I take pills to prop me up. I take pills to pep me up. I take pills instead of taking a holiday. I take pills instead of taking a break. I take pills because I can’t afford to stop pedalling as fast as I can. I take pills to help me cope with this never-ending nightmare.

    I take pills.

    I hate taking pills.

    I’d rather take a break.

    But I can’t.

    Not yet.

    The day never seems to come.

    Always just out of reach.

    Round and round.

    On and on.

    Forever and ever.

    If I do come out the other side of this, I need to make sure I’m not too fat, not too addicted to things, not dead. It’s pretty hard, balancing things. It’s pretty hard judging things just right.

    This is the last time I do this.

    If this time doesn’t work out, I’m through with life. I’m done. I’ve had enough. Either it works out for me this time or I’m checking out. I’m history. The end. See you later. Goodbye.

     

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  • Déjà Vu

    This is a story about history repeating itself…

    The Monument

    Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. I am incredibly fortunate to have created a repository of my thoughts, feelings and my general state of mind, which allows me to compare and contrast my present situation with prior moments from my recent past.

    I offer up a quote from exactly two years ago:

    “It is unhealthy and unnatural that I work in the same place, doing the same thing, and working a job that moves at snail’s pace. I just don’t have the social life and hobbies at the moment to get any balance, let alone the financial means to travel, socialise and pursue pastimes with the usual gusto that I apply to everything”

    What I was writing about two years ago is scarily similar to my present situation. I was dealing with the same problems in the same way. My suffering was alarmingly similar to my current agony. My problems seem to be nearly identical.

    I have the advantage of knowing what happened next. The project I had been working on ended prematurely and I found myself out of a job. I decided that I was so sick of being depressed and miserable that I would start taking antidepressants. I met the love of my life and took my eye off the ball. I decided not to get another job and just to relax and spend my hard-earned cash, writing a novel in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

    So. I need to do things differently.

    This year I have semi-secure employment which is supposed to last until at least next summer. This year my expenses are a tiny fraction of what they were in London. This year I’ve freed myself from lazy layabout Klingon rip-off merchants profiting from my hard work and ingenuity; defrauding me and picking my pocket. This year I’ve been looking after my skills and experience and I’m highly employable and confident in my own abilities. This year there’s much less financial pressure on me.

    This year I know what’s coming next.

    I can see that the misery of the preceding 10 consecutive months without a holiday has burnt me out and made me desperate for some well-earned rest and relaxation. I can see that I’ve been suffering with persistent depression, driven by my toxic work and home life, and that I’m desperate to feel happier. I can see all the same temptations and pitfalls of the past threaten to destroy me again.

    Drink. Drugs. Excessive money spending. Excessive risk taking. Abandoning responsibilities. Getting into debt. Having fun. Enjoying myself. Feeling alive. Relaxing. Being myself.

    You have no idea what it’s like to be me, unless you’ve compromised on your identity, values, needs, emotions and everything else that allows your life to be liveable, for years and years on end, chained to a full-time career because it pays the fucking bills. You have no idea how awful it is to have worked really hard and then to have everything stolen from you by a bunch of exploitative cunts; to see the vultures make off with your life savings; to see others profit from your hard work and suffering. You have no idea how hard it is to suffer such a catastrophic loss of status, because somebody’s picked your pocket and left you with nothing.

    I know the route to wealth, because it’s a well-trodden path for me, but having to make the same sacrifices and go through the agony of rebuilding myself from nothing all over again is actually harder the subsequent times, because it gets boring and repetitive. I know exactly what I’ve got to do, so all I’m doing is waiting for the cash to land in my bank account. All that waiting is agonising, and it’s made extra painful knowing that other people are off having fun with my fucking money.

    I’m a very responsible person.

    I’ve gotten deep in the shit, but I’m digging my way out rather than just throwing my hands in the air and saying “I give up”. Seriously I can’t over-emphasise this enough: I’m doing things the hard way.

    I’ve seen some pathetic little shits darken my door. Some total bottom-feeding scumbag mummy’s boys have entered and then left my life. They’ve run up huge debts and then run away. They’ve had huge cash handouts from their families. They’ve had huge cash handouts from the government. They’ve begged, borrowed and stolen every penny they can lie and weasel to get their hands on, then they’ve abandoned all responsibility towards their victims – like me – without a shred of conscience. Those filthy maggots are the lowest of the low.

    I was vulnerable and I got taken advantage of.

    Now I’m hopefully finally getting towards a position that I should have been two years ago, but I was robbed. I’m hopefully getting towards the position I should have been four years ago, but I was robbed.

    That I was robbed is arguably my own fault, because I was too trusting. My mental health was messed up and I had periods where I was in trouble with drug addiction, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK to come and pick my pocket. Just because I was sick and weak, doesn’t make it OK to screw me over.

    I’m unlikely to ever be able to recover all the tens of thousands of pounds I’m owed by those scumbag mummies boys who are on the run from all their many creditors. There was a grossly unfair settlement with my ex-wife, simply because I was weak, sick and desperate to have a clean break – which she did not give me at all. Bitterness and regret will hold me back and prevent me from fulfilling my potential. Unfortunately, I need to allow those fucking criminals to get away with their crimes, because to pursue them would bring only a Pyrrhic victory, although I have been sorely tempted to make them pay dearly at my own expense.

    Writing this, I realise how bitter and resentful I am that I got fucked in the ass. I almost regret being kind and generous and trusting and attempting to live life by some genuinely admirable values… then I realise that at least I know just exactly how much blood those parasitic leeches sucked from me, so I can take some comfort from knowing that I’m one of life’s givers – I create wealth rather than robbing it from others.

    I have mixed feelings.

    I’ve stirred up quite a lot of anger in myself.

    I’ve had a difficult time and I’ve made choices which have been the right thing to do but have cost me very dearly. Of course I’d have rather been a leech, bumming around and getting a free ride like so many have done at my expense. I feel cheated out of MY opportunity to sit around reading books, creating art and generally being a fucking waste of cunting space, because I’ve been the one doing the thing which actually makes money. When’s it going to be MY time to bum around doing whatever the fuck I want, while somebody else picks up the bill?

    It occurs to me that there’s a strange circularity to things which I need to explore in subsequent blog posts. A wealthy civil servant worked very hard his whole career and gifted vast sums of money to his daughter, who then invested in me, so that I could become a wealthy civil servant myself. It seems only right and proper that I should ensure that there’s a full return on investment, because I want to live in a world where hard work brings just rewards and taking a risk – investing in somebody – should also be handsomely rewarded. To end this motherfucking nightmarish never-ending cycle, I need to close the circle. I need to be one of the few fucking responsible hard-working people who honours their commitments and moral obligations. I can’t join the ranks of the mummy’s boys who think it’s OK to bum around, living a lavish lifestyle and enjoying leisure time and education through unearned wealth, debt and other monies which will never be repaid.

    My life sucks a lot but hopefully it’s taught me to never suffer fools gladly ever again.

    Bitter and twisted, but remarkably – and frustratingly – close to making a long-overdue breakthrough.

     

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  • Paranoia: So Close But Yet So Far

    This is a story about being thwarted…

    Social Media Training

    If I was prone to paranoia, I could swear that I’ve had more than my fair share of bad luck while trying to get back on my feet. Things should have panned out for me several times, but I’ve so far been thwarted by some asshats.

    In September 2014 I was beginning to sort myself out after my divorce. I took a quick holiday before starting a new job. I was making good progress with the new project, but a couple of asshats took offence to me getting ahead and conspired to screw me over. Mercifully I took ’em down with me, although it was a hollow victory.

    In September 2015 I’d had an eventful summer but I’d achieved a lot and proven myself to be a valuable member of the team on the project I was working on. It was a friend who rather unreasonably expected me to help him get a job and get out of the dive he was living in, which pushed me beyond my limits and made me unwell. There was also excessive pressure on me at work, but I could have coped if I’d have had a more settled personal life, such as having a secure place to live and some financial assistance.

    In September 2016 I was starting to believe that I was finally going to get back on my feet, but the project I was working on was cancelled unexpectedly. With hindisight I suppose it was obvious that the project was going to get cancelled and that it was a dead-end job. It’s my own fault for taking my eye off the ball. It’s my own fault that I didn’t immediately attempt to get another job, but I’d been so bored and miserable, and I felt like I’d been de-skilled by all the time off work I’d had. I hadn’t learned anything, gained any new experience or developed at all on the project, so my self-confidence was at rock-bottom.

    In September 2017 I was sacked because I was in a coma on life support and the asshat I was working with thought that unconscious people are able to make telephone calls to phone in sick. He still owes me a lot of money. Obviously I had a lot of different problems that year, but successfully delivering software projects was not one of them – never has been and never will be.

    I’ve been working for 10 consecutive months without a holiday and I’ve delivered two software projects successfully into production. I got sick in May, but I was given the benefit of the doubt because I’d proven myself to be a valuable member of the team, like I always do. I was sick in January/February time and barely limping along, but because I’d already completed my project in record time nobody much cared. That’s the way I work – I’m blazing fast when I’m well, but I get sick too. You don’t get to have me only on my good days – you’ve gotta take the rough with the smooth – although I don’t charge my clients for the days I’m not productive.

    Even with all the gaps in-between projects and time off sick, I’ve still delivered a hell of a lot of software in the last 4 years and I’ve impressed a lot of clients and colleagues. I’ve achieved a huge amount, despite not being very well. What I’ve managed to do in the workplace is all the more remarkable when we consider that it’s set against a backdrop of homelessness, near-bankruptcy, drug addiction, mental health problems, hospitalisations, being sectioned and kept on locked psych wards, suicide attempts, moving all over the country, being estranged from family, social isolation and a whole host of other things which are toxic to a person’s chances of succeeding in life.

    I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much, but I deserve a break. It’s time I made a breakthrough. It’s time I’m allowed to make a breakthrough.

    Every time I get close to making a breakthrough, something goes wrong which is beyond my control.

    It’s making me paranoid.

    If I can get to the end of the month, I’ll have hopefully proven my worth sufficiently with my colleagues on my current project, such that I’ll be able to relax and take a holiday in October. It would be incredibly cruel and unlucky if something went wrong, such that I’m not able to go away on holiday and relax, knowing I’ve got a job to come back to. That’s what happened to me earlier this year, when I’d booked a holiday in June but then my project ended and I found myself looking for work again.

    It’s good that I’ve been able to work for 3 different organisations on 3 different projects this year, without any asshats screwing things up, yet. Not having huge gaps between projects has been crucial to my recovery. Also, it’s important to note that this year I haven’t – yet – been screwed over by anybody and I’ve been recognised for my talents and experience which I have to offer. It’s nice to feel confident in my own abilities and to feel like I have proven myself to be reliable and dependable, beyond any doubt.

    Obviously, I’m very exposed – my colleagues have seen the semicolon tattoo behind my ear and must have wondered if and when I’m going to get sick, but hopefully they’ve now started to see that I’m very capable and productive; hopefully they’re enjoying working with me and they value me as a team member. However, if I need to take any time off work sick, it will obviously raise doubts again about whether my mental illness makes me a useless loser who should never be allowed into civilised mainstream society or permitted the dignity of getting back on my feet.

    I’m probably pushing things too hard for too long. I should probably have a holiday sooner rather than later, before I have a breakdown; before I burn out. However, I also want to get to the end of the month, because it’s a significant milestone and it puts enough cash in the bank to leave me safe from any unexpected bumps in the road. I’m so desperate to get back to a position of security as quickly as possible, having been on this agonisingly drawn-out journey with so many dashed hopes.

    Everything is set up very well for me to be able to continue working and improving my life, but I’m paranoid that something’s going to go wrong and screw everything up.

    I spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of a work colleague discovering my blog. I wonder if I might be the architect of my own destruction by writing this. There’s nothing here that’s unprofessional though. I’m not naming my client or divulging confidential details about the project I’m working on. I’m not guilty of misconduct of any kind.

    As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve been trained to be paranoid. I’ve been trained to keep my mouth shut and pretend like I don’t have any problems. Despite the walls of the office being plastered with posters which proclaim “it’s OK to talk about mental health problems” they really don’t mean ME. I’m expected to be faultless. If and when my faults are ever revealed, it will be the end of me. The tiniest blemish is career-ending for those of us who work in the corporate world, where we must maintain a fake professional façade of perfection at all times.

    If I’m feeling optimistic I like to think that my valuable contributions would outweigh the stigma and shock of realising that my colleagues have been working with a homeless, junkie, alcoholic, bankrupt with mental health problems all along – I should never have been allowed to get past the gatekeepers and rub shoulders with those who inhabit the fit-in-or-fuck-off corporate world.

    When I’m feeling paranoid I feel like I’m only tolerated because I’m reasonably good at pretending to be a regular guy – any hint of who I really am and what I’ve really been through, and I’ll be swiftly ejected onto the street to suffer destitution and homelessness.

    It’s so frustrating right now, because I’ve almost but not quite got enough money to complete my transformation from homeless, junkie, alcoholic, bankrupt with mental health problems, back to somebody who’s indistinguishable from any other corporate drone. I’m so desperate to prove that it can be done – to get back on my feet from a terrible situation. It’ll crush me if I’m thwarted.

    Keep your fingers crossed for me. The next few weeks are crucial.

     

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