This is a story about setting a good example...

If you take drugs in front of your children, you are a sh1t parent. Period. No ifs. No buts.

If you are high on drugs, drunk or otherwise intoxicated, stoned, coming down, craving drugs or generally in a f**ked up state because you are abusing drugs and alcohol, then you are an inconsistent parent, and this sends very mixed messages to your children, which affects the development of their personality.

Your children are like sponges. Little rabbits have big eyes and big ears. They can pick up on the variations in your mood. They can sense the instability caused by drink & drugs. It affects them.

If you smoke your drugs or cigarettes in a confined space with your children, even worse. Drugs are measured in the body using a unit called mg/kg. That's milligrams of drugs in the bloodstream per kilogram of body weight. I don't know if you've noticed this but children are a lot smaller than adults.

If two adults are smoking in a car, and there is a small child present, that child may be forced to smoke the equivalent of several boxes of cigarettes for even a short car ride. Nicotine is a horribly addictive drug. Imagine addicting that child and making them go through nicotine withdrawal over and over and over again, when the child doesn't have a clue what's happening to them or any ability to explain what they're going through.

My friend's parents used to call me Nicotine, as a nickname, because I used to stink like an ashtray. My parents were always driving somewhere, smoking. I was just part of the baggage being lugged around. I felt like a burden. My parents just wanted to get drunk and take drugs. I was an accident. Oops.

If you are a sh1t role model for your children, they will want to run away from home as soon as they can and never come back.

I don't know if this is coming across, but I don't think my parents are very responsible. I don't think they are very good role models.

It's unbelievable, but they actually think they are cool for taking drugs. That seems rather immature to me, but then I've always felt like I have to be more mature than them, because they're not very responsible.

I left home as soon as I had a job and enough money for a flat, age 17. I couldn't wait to get away from such bad role models. They are liars and hypocrites and they are lazy and project their inadequacies onto their children, who are hard working and mature and responsible.

I don't know if this is coming across, but I'm very disappointed with their behaviour.

Parents must try harder. All my friends in my generation are very responsible parents. I think the baby boomers could try taking a leaf out of our book. Don't try and roll it up and smoke it though, like you usually do.

Did you know my own father refused to read anything I write? Pretty p1ssed off about that.

"La la la, I'm not listening" I imagine him saying while putting his fingers in his ears. How childish.

And parents wonder why their kids run away from home and never want to come back. Tsk!

That is all.

Tags: #parents #childhood #bullying #drugs #oxford #london #homeless

This is a story about being an activist...

The streets of London are home to a huge population of runaways, refugees and other homeless people who have been marginalised by society. We tend to ignore them and their struggles. There are so many, we can't help them all, right?

I'm not OK with people freezing to death on the streets, right under the noses of the wealthy. I'm not OK with just walking past human suffering on a daily basis, on the commute to the office. There are people huddling in shop doorways for a little shelter from the elements. It's brutal out there, and things are getting worse.

There are no words to describe just how cold it is, sleeping rough. I have slept on a glacier. Millions of tonnes of creaking ice. That's cold, even with a decent sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and a tent. Sleeping out on the streets is just as tough - most homeless people don't have equipment that cost hundreds of pounds. The most vulnerable people in our society don't even have enough money for food, clothes and other basics that they depend upon.

Normally charities will expect you to reach for your wallet. Normally charities will expect you to donate money. The whole fundraise & spend model of charity has failed, sadly. People and corporations are just not giving enough. People and corporations are treating charitable giving as a way to absolve themselves of personal responsibility for the wrongdoing in a society that they belong to.

Let's start with some empathy, instead.

If you haven't roughed it ever in your life, or it's been a very long time since you were truly soaked to the skin, freezing cold, shivering, and with chattering teeth... then you have lost touch with what some of your fellow human beings are going through. There are people freezing to death, here, in a supposedly civilised advanced Western econonmy. I'm not OK with that.

Please, try and make it to West India Quay with some warm clothes and a good sleeping bag, and sleep out with us. 7pm to 7am on Thursday 12th November 2015. It's incredible that this can take place when Canary Wharf Estate don't really want a whole tent army right under the noses of rich bankers!

The Centrepoint charity has worked incredibly hard to make this possible, and only by agreeing to do things in the most unbelievably controlled way. There is private security for the event, as well as Canary Wharf's own private security force, making sure that the wrong sort of people are not protesting about the abhorrent situation of young people being left freezing to death on the streets of London.

Sadly, in the 3 years that this event has been happening in Canary Wharf, my ex-employer JPMorgan Chase & Co has donated a paltry £70,000. That's a disgustingly small amount of money considering how this bank has wrecked lives. One of my colleagues was driven to #suicide by the insanity of what Global Banking is doing to the world.

I absolutely do not want to see this event lose credibility, so please sign up for an official ticket and donate whatever you can afford: https://www.centrepoint.org.uk/news-events/events/sleep-out/west-india-quay

Whatever happens, please please please tell everyone you know about the plight of the homeless and support this event.

7pm to 7am, Thursday 12th November, 2015.

So, last week, I was working for HSBC on their number one project. The biggest bank in Europe at the moment is HSBC. They just declared quarterly profits have risen 33% to $6bn. That's a substantial amount of cash that they have extracted from the world's pockets!

So, how much do HSBC care about the homeless? Well they employed a homeless person (me) but their due diligence should have prevented me from getting that job and working my way out of poverty and debt. I should have been trapped into living on the streets.

We can't have the wrong sort of people getting ahead in life, can we? It's all about the rich getting richer, at the expense of the destruction of society by people who already have more than they need.

I made sure I got this email from the HSBC Group so that nobody is going to get sued! Hurrah!

I've got a bunch of other emails that prove that Corporate and Social Responsibility is a joke. These companies pay a pittance in order to try and cover up wrongdoing on an unimaginable scale. The institutional corruption is disgusting.

I'm being warned by journalist friends to flee for my life for whistleblowing. You'll be able to find me... sleeping rough somewhere in London. If the Safer Streets teams can't find people, then good luck to the banks with their teams of lawyers out to gag me!

Come and sleep rough with us!

That is all.

 Tags: #homeless #frankie #london #banking #capitalism #notanonymous

This is a story about you. This is a story about me. This is a story about everybody...

Hi, my name's Nick Grant, and I'm not anonymous.

I believe anonymity creates lonliness, isolation and kills the social ties that bond us all together. If we don't know any of the names of the people with whom we share a cramped tube carriage, then we are living far too anonymously. You know what the person next to you smells like, but you don't know their name.

Without social structure, we can act in inhumane ways. We start to see people as statistics. We start to treat people with no regard for their feelings, for their safety.

SAFE

We all just want to feel safe and secure. Do you feel safe and secure? I hope you do. I see it as a human right. I think it's being infringed by the way we have organised ourselves into ultra dense urban populations, where we are mistrustful of each other.

You shouldn't mistrust me. I just want to be friends. I just want everybody to get along.

London, please don't be alarmed. I come in peace. I'm unarmed and I'm not out to harm, alarm or upset anybody.

So, if you see me on the tube, say "Hi Nick" if you recognise me. I will be overwhelmed that somebody knows who I am. I feel really anonymous. I don't like being anonymous. I feel unloved.

I'm giving out some coloured stars... that's my only purpose this evening. It's totally benign. Peaceful.

If you see me, we catch each other's eye, I might introduce myself. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to make meaningful human connections. All I'm doing is giving away colourful cardboard stars to anybody I feel shines out, as a beacon of human connection. You are under no obligation to accept a colourful cardboard star, which is totally free.

If you're too busy thinking about getting home and getting your dinner, I'll try and read your body languague as best as I can. I'm certainly not inviting myself into your life. It's totally OK to ignore me if I misread your eye contact for human connection. Please ignore me if I make you feel uncomfortable... I really don't mean to.

Have a safe journey home tonight. I hope you're happy, safe and secure.

Stay safe.

I see you shining. Hope to see you soon.

If I see you shining I will give you a star.

Love,

Nick Grant (that's my real name)

Tags: #notanonymous #london #politics #civildisobedience

This is a story about social engineering...

The first rule of bus stop club is: you don't talk about bus stop club. The second rule of bus stop club is: you don't talk about bus stop club. The third rule of bus stop club is: don't jump off the bus stop... it's quite high.

I work on the Customer Due Diligence project for HSBC. We are expected to do due diligence on 48 million customers in 61 countries worldwide. HSBC is not very good at due diligence, mainly because they won't listen to the experts.

When I was employed - as a disguised employee - by HSBC to work on the project, I was no fixed abode (homeless) and I was at the limit of my overdraft and credit cards. I had no income. I guess that technically made me bankrupt... except that it took me 4 days to get the job. That's a record... it normally takes me less.

When you are honest, hard working, dedicated, an expert, passionate and have integrity, you don't tend to have a lot of problems finding work. My main problem is finding anything that I'm interested in doing. Making the lives of 48 million customers a little better, and trying to save 245,000 jobs and create 13,000 new jobs is interesting to me. That's why I got up and went to the interview with HSBC.

So, this sounds super arrogant. Yes, sorry. There's absolutely no doubt that I'm only a very small cog in a very big machine. However, try buying a Rolex watch and removing one of the little cogs and see if it still works.

Teamwork is what gets stuff done, but every member of the team needs to be valued equally. Equality is important. Valuing people is important. Everything is awesome when we are part of a team. Everything is better when we stick together.

Here's me going to my interview... just opposite the bus stop where me and my other homeless friends hung out. I actually wasn't going to go... there were far more interesting projects at Meganews Corporation, Mega Credit Card, Mega TV Station, Mega Investment Bank(s), Mega Petroleum Company... London is not short of roles for software engineers. The agent convinced me to get up, have a shower, get dressed and go to the damn interview. I was glad that I did.

The way the whole system is set up with economic incentives, meant that rules were probably bent in terms of background checks. Nobody cared that my credit score was probably terrible - living on your credit card because society has abandoned you, is not great for your computer credit score. Nobody cared that I was no fixed abode (homeless) because the whole thing was arranged via email and mobile phone.

I guess this was an experiment in social mobility. I can tell you where all the 'gates' are that will prevent the 'wrong sort' of people from getting ahead. I did nothing illegal or fraudulent. I was just trying to get myself off the streets. I was just trying to move from surviving to thriving. I was barely surviving. I had countless hospital admissions in 2014 and 2015. Living on the streets and in hostels is hard.

Imagine being in a 14-bed dormitory with your one suit. Imagine how many people there are snoring in that room. Imagine how many people want to use the one bathroom in the morning. Imagine people knocking your ironed shirt off the bunk bed where it was hanging up, onto the dirty floor. Just put it in the washing machine, right? Oh... you share that washing machine with 120 people? Oh dear.

I used to go and sleep in Royal Kensington Park Gardens or on Hampstead Heath just to get some damn peaceful sleep. The sound of snoring and smell of sweaty bodies just gets too much to bear at times. Yes, sleeping under the stars and waking up to beautiful views like the one above is kinda sh1ts and giggles... when the weather permits.

Yes, you have to be very in tune with nature, with the weather and the seasons, if you want to survive. You also need some really high quality gear. The only reason why I was able to cope through a pretty rough patch is that I'm well trained and disciplined. I have the Dorset Expeditionary Society to thank for that.

I can live small and neat. Take only photographs, leave only footprints. Park rangers used to leave me alone because I would be camping out with nothing but respect for my environment and mindful of the fact that I'm just one of millions of Londoners using the incredible green spaces.

Fundamentally, we are animals. We are animals that need to sleep and eat. We need to be warm and feel comforted by the presence of each other... we are social animals after all. We were not supposed to be isolated in a concrete jungle, surrounded by glass and steel and right-angles that would never appear in a natural setting.

I am also seasonally affected. I think it's bad enough to say that it qualifies as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). When the clocks go back and the days get shorter, I feel the need to hibernate. I get tired & depressed. Especially if my employer is not particularly supportive about me taking time out to top up the sunshine that I need to live. I'm literally solar powered... we all are.

Frankie the cat in his natural habitat. He loved his garden. So did I (June 2007)

Tags: #homeless #frankie #banking #career #london #computing #mentalhealth #hsbc

This is a story about human nature...

What kind of pose does one pull at the birthplace of Silicon Valley? Imitating the undead seemed somehow fitting. There is an incredibly powerful global brain drain at the moment.

Money does not trickle down, it concentrates in pools. If you want me to show you how to make a million dollars, give me 100 million and a year. I must be some sort of financial genius, right?

I'm alarmed by just how hard all the engineers are working, and how little of the reward they share. In fact, they are getting burnt out by an industry, which seems to care very little about the lives it's destroying. Get rich or die trying seems to be the order of the day. Very much more of the latter going on than the former.

Anybody who tells you that Americans don't understand irony is completely wrong. They not only understand it, but they play with it, and it's hilarious. The tongue-in-cheek humour I have had the pleasure of experiencing is delightful.

The entire world, including America, has been misled about the American Dream. Hollywood tells us we can all been rich and beautiful: take taxis, fly in jets, stay in 5-star hotels, have swimming pools, helicopters, speedboats and sports cars. We can't. There are far more people watching those movies and buying into that dream than the space available for helipads on the planet. It's a con.

Some of my super super smart engineer friends have even been taken in by the simplest con of all: getting somebody to do a load of hard work for you, while you pocket all the profits. It breaks my heart to find out just how diluted their shares are by the time they've built a valuable company for a bunch of Venture Capitalists.

However, my friends have gotten to scratch that "engineer's itch" and work with great people doing intersting stuff. I guess my remuneration is based on boredom and danger money for working in a tall building on an airport approach path, in a rather hated industry.

We used to talk about the 'golden handcuffs' at JPMorgan Chase & Co. We knew that what we were doing was completely insane, but we had big houses, kids in private schools and pretty wives with spending habits that were proportional to their good looks. We were locked into the system. We were prostitues and junkies.

However - as is always the case with human nature - people got greedy. They started getting young, idealistic and hard-working people to do more of the work for less of the pay. They even started getting massively underpaid Indians, straight out of University to to all the work for a tiny fraction of the pay. That doesn't work.

If you undervalue a person, they become a zombie. Zoned out.

If you wave a ridiculous cash reward under someone's nose, but chronically underpay them until they 'win' the prize that they can never seem to quite reach, they become burnt out.

Or they get really cheesed off with it all, and come back and kick your ass. The fact is, they've worked a lot harder than you, so they'll fight a lot harder too. They're probably smarter than you too, because they've had to be resourceful. Getting fattened by the labour of other people makes you lazy and soft.

Why people think that they deserve a big salary for forwarding emails is completely beyond any sensible comprehension. The laziness in middle management is incredible. Nobody can be bothered to do any typing. Nobody can be bothered to collate any figures, let alone do any math. Nobody seems to have any relevant knowledge or experience. They are just blundering fools.

So, I need to go back to London. The company that I'm officially contracted to at the moment desperately wants to terminate my contract but hasn't found an excuse to do it yet. I really wish they had the backbone to just do it so I could spend some more time with friends out here in California. I really could do with the money from the contract, and I really don't have any money to spend staying here, but I'm not being allowed to do anything approaching useful to help HSBC deliver the #1 project on time, on budget and to a decent quality.

"I told you so" is so completely useless. I just want to do a good job. My normal approach is to do the right thing, get in trouble for it, but then at least the problems are solved, things are delivered and the client is begrudgingly accepting of receiving exactly what was needed.

I can't be arsed with that anymore. Time for some honesty.

I'm actually completely exhausted by the relentless crappy compromises that are demanded by ass hats that result in death by a thousand cuts. Why do idiots feel they have to 'add value' by undermining the experts? Why do little hitlers feel that they are adding value by encroaching into people's lives? What I wear to work and when I turn up is none of your business if the work is getting done. Certainly my private life is completely off limits if you're not going to be sympathetic when I get sick.

I'm aware that people from work might read this, and I actually hope they really do. It's interesting to me to see how social media sourced data might be unethically used against me. Again, it's about a complete spinelessness in corporate culture. Why not just call me out... I've given so much to my job to try and get a late project back on time, and then when I needed a week out, I got accused of being "unreliable" and was told I was acting "cloak and dagger"... that's such utter horse sh1t.

Was I unreliable when I was amongst a handful of people who always got phoned every weekend? Was it cloak and dagger when I was working 7 days a week and clearly not sleeping because I was answering email around-the-clock? I couldn't possibly have concealed anything as I was forever in the eye of my team, and the client. No cloak, no dagger.

Frankly, you picked a fight with the wrong guy. I'm coming back to the UK, and I'm mighty p1ssed off... and you don't want to see me p1ssed off.

Here is an unrelated picture of Frankie the cat. I like the feel of grass under my feet. It calms me down (July 2012)

Tags: #banking #career #computing #frankie #mentalhealth

This is a story about reaching the limits...

We are about to enter a consumer debt crisis. Credit Crunch 2.0. How do I know this? Well, I don't see any joined-up-thinking in retail banking, but I do see all the signs of a bubble about to burst.

In Germany, there is a central system that tracks what money is owed between every company. When you raise an invoice, you enter it in the system, and that way, you can see who owes who, and how much. You can do something called netting where all the balances are totalled up and you can then see exactly who's in debt and who's in credit.

The Germans have got that spot on. We need to know where the bad debt is, so we can contain toxic companies that are trading recklessly.

We don't have anything similar for consumer debt.

The credit-scoring system is only useful when people are applying for more debt. When they get into a debt crisis, they only show up when they start defaulting on their loan repayments, get to the limit of their overdraft, can't make their credit card minimum payments, default on their mortgage etc. etc.

I worked in Debt Management in 2012 and I listened to many phonecalls with ordinary individuals who didn't do anything reckless, but got caught in a debt trap. They were encouraged by consumer lenders to take out more loans to cover the last loans, and then payday loans to cover the interest, and before you knew it BOOM they were as good as bankrupt.

Personally, I hadn't been in debt since the age of 19 or so. This is unusual. I paid the deposit on my house. I paid for my wedding. I paid for my cars. I paid for our holidays... all with cash I had personally saved. The only way that was possible for me to do this was with way above-average earnings. This would have been impossible for anybody who was earning average wages.

I didn't really know what it was like for an ordinary person, living on an ordinary wage, in an ordinary way.

There was a huge amount of interest in my Debt Management startup, when I tried to found it in 2013. People still email me about it today. People still remember. I only worked on it for a short amount of time before I was consumed by my own ordinary life event - a divorce - which tore my stable world apart.

I wanted to let out our house, so that we had steady rental income, and I was able to defer the stress of financially settling the divorce until I had re-established myself back in London. I begged my wife to allow me to secure my life before she rained fire and brimstone on my head. She undermined everything I tried to do to protect myself.

By the time 2014 started, I had managed to keep my finances ticking over with Bitcoin trading, but she had wrecked me. When the house sale money eventually came in, I was in no fit state to work. She had destroyed me. I could have sold the house in 6 weeks. She managed to drag it out to 6 months. It was fine for her, she was staying in Bournemouth and she had a job. I had to rebuild my entire life.

I had a huge cash pile, but I had been stress tested to the limit and beyond. I couldn't work. I had to go to hospital. I was a wreck.

So, I ended up spiralling downwards. I didn't borrow money, but you sure rip through it if you're unwell, living in London and trying to support yourself getting better. Especially if you can't afford to sit and wait for state support. It was a Catch 22. London is where friends and my work network are, but it's certainly not easy to get any help from over-stretched boroughs. I had to turn to the private sector. That cost me a lot of cash.

So, I don't really qualify for state support... that's right. Why should I take something which I could afford to pay for privately? Only I couldn't really afford it... I got well, but then I had no personal safety net any more.

I spent all my money keeping myself alive. I had yet to thrive. 

Other people are very good at spending my money. My ex totally forgot that I paid for everything. She felt entitled. My ex flatmate, John, went overbudget on a flat that he didn't pay a penny towards, and even took some of my furniture with him when he left. He felt entitled.

Why do people feel entitled to come and pick my pocket? I've got nothing left.

The banks have done very well out of me and I've defended them. I've not claimed my PPI that I'm entitled to. I've not frozen the interest on my loans and had unfair credit charges refunded to me. I could - in fact - just throw down my tools, and say sod this for a game of soldiers. I'm trying to prevent a domino-effect of systemic failure in the banking system, which would see bank runs and total carnage as the whole system deleverages in an extremely inelegant way.

I'm trying to help my masters avoid such a crisis, but I feel like ground zero at the moment.

I need to go to work tomorrow, but I can't. I'm not well. I have been stress tested to the limit, and it's broken me.

Poor Frankie lost his home, which was his castle. Look how relaxed and happy he was there in his lovely big bed (June 2008)

Tags: #divorce #mentalhealth #frankie #banking #career

This is a story about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons...

I had 3 options: hospital, suicide, support network. Thankfully, I still have the latter.

I really didn't fancy another inpatient hospital admission. I probably would have had to accept stronger psychiatric medication, as it's pretty clear that my life hangs by a thread. One rash, hot-headed decision and it could be snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Think that sounds melodramatic? Screw you.

If you think that people say that they're depressed and suicidal because they're attention seeking, you're wrong. If you want to understand suicide a little more, you should watch The Bridge, by Eric Steel. It will cost you £2.49 and 90 minutes of your life.

I watched The Bridge as an inpatient. My suicidal plans to take Potassium Cyanide, changed. I decided that jumping off the Golden Gate bridge would have much deeper personal meaning, seeing as I had to cancel a San Francisco trip because of my horrible divorce. If you're going to die, do it quick & clean, or do it in some meaningful way, right?

Does it seem irresponsible? Well, actually I took out life insurance that covers suicide, that will leave a small legacy for my sister and my niece. I'm sure they'd rather have their brother/uncle, but suicide isn't really a choice but instead it's a reaction to unmanageable factors out of the control of that suffering individual.

So, instead of going back to hospital and being put in a chemical straightjacket, I made a video explaining what I was going to do and why. Then I booked a flight to San Francisco, packed a bag and headed to the airport. I was a man on a mission, but also a man on fire.

My friends have been scattered fairly far & wide. My friend John came back from Australia relatively recently, but we have been out of contact for years & years, and I struggled to support him - paying his rent and wages - when my need was very much vice-versa. We fell out when I grew impatient with his adoration of TV rather than job-hunting.

My friend Dave lives near Bristol. I would love to spend more time with him, but it's away from my work in London. That was one of the problems that was a coffin nail in our startup: Hubflow. I'm super grateful that Dave is such a great guy that he forgave me for becoming a complete sociopathic a**ehole as the pressure and stress of it all became too much, when I was CEO, and that we still seem to have a good friendship.

My friend Tim lives in Bournemouth. I really want to avoid that place. Bad memories linked to my divorce and startup failure. London is home. I like London.

My parents and a few old friends live in Oxford. I was dragged there against my will, and then my ex cheated on me, while I was temporarily evicted from my home. Bad memories. It's not my life... I live in London, not Oxford.

My sister and my friend MG live in Nottingham. I'd like to give it a go, but I haven't let London run its course yet. I will probably try and have a little pied-à-terre up there soon, so I have a base nearby my sister at a way lower cost than London. It's good to have an escape plan in case sh1t goes bad. Don't have one at the moment... hence suicidal thoughts.

I really want to get up to the North-East of England to see my friends Andy and Jim. It's a strange land for me though... I've been to the USA more times than I have been in the North of England, in my adult life.

So, when I booked my flights to California, USA, I knew that I was at least going somewhere with relative familiarity, even if that familiarity comes only from the movies I have watched and technology companies (Apple, Google, Oracle, Facebook etc. etc.) that I worship.

Also, I knew that there might be a chance to see long-lost friends, Ben & Jakub, who are business founders in Silicon Valley. Now, I feel very very embarrassed about the way I have conducted myself while things have not been going very well. I feel most embarrassed of all in front of these role models of mine, who have handled the same pressure and stresses. They have done it without vindictively and publicly blaming their shortcomings on their ex and/or parents.

Embarrassment drove me into my shell, made me withdraw. I didn't want the London Kitesurfers and my Cambridge peers from the Springboard Program to see me - an enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky, extroverted, capable and entertaining guy - so subdued by unhappiness in a destructive relationship. 

I stopped talking to my friends.

That was nearly fatal. Social media is the reason why I have maintained a toe-hold in life. Friends have reached out to me, when I'm clearly fumbling around without a bloody clue as to what the heck is happening to me, except that I'm loosing my grip on my will to live. That's made the difference. That's why I didn't chuck myself off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Thanks.

Jakub lent me the Apiry.io bike so I could cycle to Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge. Another thing ticked off the bucket list (Friday 30th October, 24 hours after making the video)

Tags: #suicide #depression #bipolar #startup #entrepreneur #parents #childhood #oxford #london #media #mentalhealth #friends

This is a story about manipulation...

My ex told her side of the story so much that our friends got sick of it. She then moved onto my parents. Sadly, my father was taken in by it.

Damsel in distress? I really think not. She spent a huge amount of time cultivating self-pity and a warped story that attempted to completely exonerate herself of any responsibility for our destructive relationship. I went quiet. I was slowly dying. I was self-harming and suicidal. Meanwhile, she vociferously attempted to turn friends and family against me. It didn't really work, as most people are mature enough to listen to both sides of the story before judging.

I certainly admit to my equal responsibility in an unhealthy co-dependent relationship based on hate sex. But I was the 'weaker' in this relationship, and I was beaten into submission. I think my friend Wiktor accurately summed up our marriage with the following image.

I should have walked away. I tried to walk away very early in our relationship, when it became clear to me that she wasn't ready for a committed relationship. I tried breaking it off loads of occasions, but she kept begging forgiveness for things like cheating, and I kept forgiving her. Fundamentally, I loved her and she didn't seem to love me.

That was a life lesson I couldn't really seem to learn, because she isolated me from my friends, from the activities that I loved and even from my GP and my family. The conflict of interest was appalling. I literally ended up with almost nobody fighting my corner. She cultivated such a convincing 'woe is me' story of her own suffering.

I was suffering in silence.

However, I'm a very forgiving person. She vindictively destroyed me, and I forgive her.

I'm struggling to forgive my parents. They should remember that it was me who eventually reached out to both sets of parents and got them to negotiate my release from captivity, and allow my life to be spared. I found her parents to be extremely supportive, understanding and kind. It's really upsetting how my own were so twisted by her manipulative and one-sided bullsh1t.

I also have a problem with the way that my GP acted. She took my wife on as a patient - which I believe was an unprofessional conflict of interest - and started to see my ex on a very regular basis, and began to become compromised, sympathetic to the patient who she saw more and more of. I honestly believe that my GP was convinced by my ex to act in a manner that was by no means in my best interests.

I have evidence for this. When it became clear that I had few human allies, I turned to technology. I installed a keylogger on my spare laptop, which I left in my house. When my ex eventually subdued me into being taken away by my gullible and manipulated idiot father, I was able to see what was typed on the keyboard of that laptop.

My horrible ex immediately joined a dating website and started messaging men. Supposedly she justified conspiring with my father and GP for my safety, health and wellbeing. In actual fact she showed her true colours straight away. The front door had barely closed behind me.

This 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' fake image of a person had her mask torn down. At first, I didn't even resort to looking at the keyboard transcripts. I just had great intuition that something was wrong. Naturally she played the "he's just paranoid... mentally ill" card. She bare-faced lied to the Crisis Teams in Bournemouth and Oxford when confronted by them about my concerns that she was not loving, supportive and faithful.

When I showed her the evidence, she backtracked with remarkable speed and started acting with some human decency. Foolishly, I forgave quickly. I married her. In sickness and in health and all that. I bought in to all that love and marriage vows crap. Strangely, I still do.

I don't think the end justifies the means. I wish I hadn't had to resort to snooping on the use of my own laptop (which is completely legal... it was my property, running my login account) in order to retain my own sanity. Can't people just be honest? Moral?

One of the moments that I clung to when my character was being assassinated, was when my ex recounted a tale of her trying to elicit yet more sympathy from our friends (I was not present, naturally). She was outraged that they were so dismissive of yet another here we go again tear-jerking tale of woe is me and pity party for the biggest martyr I have ever had the misfortune to meet, let alone date and foolishly marry.

Yes, fundamentally, this is a story of me growing up. This is a story of me finding out that relationships can be abusive, with cheating, lies, subterfuge and people are even prepared to take a life to perpetuate their disgustingly twisted image of self-righteous perfection. Whiter than white. Ha! I think not.

I accept now that I played my part in this. I should have taken responsibility for the safety of my own life much earlier, but so much of my support network was perverted by this manipulative character. Many of my friends went quiet, reserving judgement. They didn't reject me as a friend, but our relationship went cold.

I really hope she's OK. I don't think she's a bad person. I actually don't think anybody is 'bad' per se, Instead, we are all animals that respond to stimuli, to our environment, to factors outside of our control. I tried my best to make it work - that's what my parents taught me to do - but I didn't know how to walk away.

I didn't know how to walk away and it nearly killed me.

I got to keep our cat, but nothing else. My 'half' has been spent on putting this heartbroken chap back together again. I'm off to hospital again now. Hopefully I'm going to have an echocardiogram soon and see how bad the damage is.

This poor animal was the victim of a horrible divorce. Frankie the cat didn't have a great time either (October 2014)

Tags: #divorce #suicide #friends #mentalhealth #frankie

This is a story about making new friends...

I don't like bullying. My new friend Klaus Bravenboer doens't like rugby. Somehow we get along and became friends, fast. We are just about to go surfing. Yesterday I was in hospital feeling sorry for myself. That's the difference that friends make.

We are really enjoying a spur of the moment visit to Koa Tree Camp in North Devon/Cornwall, mapping the territory as a high-performance team. None of this was preplanned. We are just going with the flow, dude.

I've always been a bit of a man on a mission, and it's nice to have a healthy way to express my masculinity. I've been fetching wood, making fire, tending to the animals, walking round the farmland. I feel quite proud of myself, even though that's a little laughable to all you happy well adjusted people who are loving your lives.

Klaus and I have been capturing videos, taking photos and doing interviews with the lovely founders of Koa Tree Camp: Andy, Gemma, Sam & baby Hamish and Poppy the dog. You'll be seeing more of this on social media over the coming week or so, during the build up to the inaugural Man on a Mission weekend.

78% of suicides are young men. That's more than 3 times that of women. I'd like to understand why that is, and understand myself more. I just want to be happy and well adjusted, like you. I'm pretty happy right now, and I'd like to hang onto a little piece of that.

There will be more Frankie the cat pictures soon. Meanwhile. here is Klaus with a black and white pig (October 24, 2015)

Tags: #friends #manonamission #bullying #suicide #surfing #adventure #leadership

This is a story about obvious consequences...

The Trek 820 mountain bike was excellent, and cost just over £300 in 1993. This was apparently too much for my Dad to pay, so he stole a girl's bike.

Having removed the family to the middle of a remote part of the UK, on very steep hills on the Devon/Dorset/Somerset borders, away from all my friends in Oxford, I was then expected to get to school and do my paper round on this bike, as well as making new friends at the school which was part of my 6 day a week gruelling punishment for being the son of a couple of lazy dope smokers.

Averaging about 50 miles a day on some of the UK's steepest gradients. I can tell you a lot about lactic acid burning in your legs. I can tell you a lot about gritting your teeth and grinding the pedals, through all seasons, through all weather.

One thing I can tell you about children, is that they are extremely good at spotting other children who are different. Usually bullying and social exclusion are based on these perceived differences. I can tell you a lot about both of those things.

I'm going to hospital now, because I'm suicidally depressed. It seems like the responsible thing to do, even though all I really want to do is run myself a hot bath and slice my arms open with a kitchen knife, to get at my radial arteries. The pain must flow out of me somehow. The thoughts are invasive. I can't block them out.

At least my parents got to save £300 (or maybe less if they actually bought me a bicycle second hand). Are they responsible?

Tags: #bullying #oxford #childhood #parents #cycling #addiction