This is a story about reading between the lines...

I don't really understand why it's necessary to guess and extrapolate. I don't really understand why somebody would want to reinterpret the scant available evidence, and reach outlandish and ridiculous conclusions. I don't really understand why somebody would want to pore over the pages of my blog and read all my tweets, looking for hidden meaning that doesn't exist. Why can't you just take things at face value?

I texted somebody who'd been quite an important figure in my life, and I asked them if I could take them out for dinner. In the last few weeks, I've gotten settled in a new job and moved into my own place - there's plenty to celebrate. This year has been very stressful, with cashflow problems, a boring job, commuting across the country and living out of a suitcase, dating, getting a new job, renting an apartment, security vetting, tenancy vetting, credit checks, buying a car, taxing & insuring the car, moving house... it's been stressful. Naturally, as I'd gotten through most of that stress, I wanted to celebrate with that person.

"No thank you" came the reply. Polite enough. Strange, but whatever. I'm not in the business of speculating.

Then came the accusation that I'm some sort of monster who people need protecting from. This followed relatively hot on the heels of an accusation that I'd identified that person, which I hadn't. There was the accusation that a load of my tweets were about specific identifiable people, which they weren't. I fail to see the evidence for any of it. I haven't deleted any of my tweets - they're there for all to see. I'd be very surprised if anybody except me knows who I'm talking about, because how would you know what's going on in my head unless you're telepathic? How would you know who's tormenting me and causing me untold stress?

I once mockingly used a turn of phrase that my friend Posh Will used to refer to an ex of mine as a "cute little Italian thing". This became a running gag. I'd have probably only said it once, but this person just kept on saying it and saying it. Whenever I talked about a girl, this person would ask "is she a cute little thing?". This person asked if my mum's cousin who lives in Chelsea is a "cute little thing" which I found very weird, but whatever. Whenever there was an opportunity, that person would refer to girls as "cute little things". It was our running gag... or rather theirs, because they kept using that phrase so much.

The phrase "cute little Italian thing" is now forbidden. In a rather melodramatic and completely unnecessary confrontational moment, it was confusingly and aggressively put to me that I use the phrase "all the time", which I don't. Further, it was put to me that I'm a sexist male chauvinist pig who has zero respect for women, hits women, rapes women, abuses women, sexually assaults women and generally attempts to marginalise and oppress women, as part of my patriarchal one-man crusade against women. Naturally, this was quite a surprise.

I'm using the forbidden phrase now, because I've been told so many times that this person doesn't read my blog, and now that person has told me in no uncertain terms that I'm a danger to them and the people they love; I'm a menace.

I guess it's over between me and that person, but I can't understand why. I never wrote about them online. I never identified them, or their loved ones. I'm really not sure what I did. Their accusations that I wrote about them, connected them, identified them, attacked them, repeatedly used the phrase "cute little Italian thing" and generally carried on like the world's biggest arsehole, are frankly complete and utter codswallop. What I write is there for all to see - I don't delete stuff. If any of this stuff was there, show me where the hell it is!

It's a nonsense. It's misplaced paranoia. It's more than misinterpretation - it's a complete warped perception of reality bordering on the insane.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend often worries about me posting images of previous girlfriends, which I haven't. My girlfriend will see the image above which IS of a previous girlfriend - the "cute little Italian thing" no less - and she'll see that her very worst fears have been realised.

Yes, I'm a monster. I did once say "cute little Italian thing" when I was aping the mannerisms of my investment banking chum for comedic effect. I have just posted a picture of my ex girlfriend, which I'm sure you'd be able to recognise her from if you saw her in the street now that I've disrespected her privacy. Damn me for revealing such personal identifying stuff that would allow any member of the public to immediately make the connection. Damn me for being so damn evil. Yes, lock up your daughters and hide your valuables... Nasty Nick is on the prowl.

On the final matter of sexist disrespectful language, perhaps it was wrong of me to even say something in jest. I'm always prepared to consider that I might be in the wrong. Just don't make a running gag out of it, and for god's sake don't start imagining stuff that's SIMPLY UNTRUE.

There's no need to read between the lines. What you see is what you get with me. If you're unsure, just ask.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #girlfriend #cutelittleitalianthing

This is a story about relentless monotony...

I fell asleep at my desk today. I haven't had any time off since November. I spent November writing a novel, so I guess I haven't had any time off since October. I was in hospital in October and I moved house, so I guess I haven't had any time off since September. I was in hospital in September and I tried to commit suicide and I lost my job and I was evicted, so I guess I haven't had any time off since July. I moved house and started a new job in July, so I guess I haven't had any time off since June. I was selling loads of my stuff, trying not to go bankrupt, while also trying to get a job in June, so I guess I haven't had any time off since May. I was quitting supercrack, having an episode of medication-induced mania from California rocket fuel and breaking up with my girlfriend in May, so I guess I haven't had any time off since April. I was a drug addict in April. This is what I was doing back in April.

Here I am looking at the dark web a little over a year ago. I'm probably not buying anything that would be illegal because I already had enough supercrack to last me 2 years. The fact I'm wearing clothes and sitting in my lounge, taking recognisably normal-ish photographs suggests that a little over a year ago, things were going OK.

Oh no I spoke to soon. This night-vision photograph indicates that I was going bat-shit insane while high on supercrack. I took this photograph only a couple of days after the one before, where I was sat in the lounge browsing the dark web. This photograph was taken about a year ago.

What the hell is THAT? Well, it's pretty obvious that I've barricaded myself in my bedroom. This photograph was taken one year and one day ago. This photograph perfectly illustrates my subconscious fears of privacy invasion - that people are going to burst in on me, shame me and violently attack me. I don't come across as very paranoid in day-to-day life, but I'm very traumatised, and this is my reaction that that trauma: I barricade myself in to protect myself from my parents and ex-wife. It's bat-shit insane, of course, but this is my underlying psychology.

Looks like I was eating some food. I'd probably barricaded myself in my bedroom for days. I'd probably not slept for days. My life was a horrific mess a year ago. I had a virtually unlimited supply of supercrack and my addiction was raging out of control. Clearly I was paranoid because of drugs and sleep deprivation, but what was the seed of that paranoia? I wonder if it could have anything to do with having the rug pulled out from under my feet - being muscled out of my own home; being horrifically injured in my own home; being punched in the face or suffering a horrific injury to my leg, at the hands of my ex-wife and parents. I wonder if it could have anything to do with them. I was trapped in a corner for so very long, with no means of escaping my tormentors, who were demonstrably vile, violent and abusive. Fuck them. That kind of trauma has a lasting effect.

My paranoia reached such ridiculous levels that I barricaded the door to my ensuite bathroom using my laundry bins and some clothes storage boxes. Clearly I just wanted to be left alone. Clearly I didn't feel safe. Yes, it's paranoia that's come about because of drug abuse and sleep deprivation, but there's got to be a seed too. Nobody gets this paranoid unless they have their ex-wife kicking doors in and screaming abuse at the top of her lungs. Nobody gets this paranoid unless they have their parents humiliating them and bursting in on them, and dragging them out of their own home. There's a seed for paranoia. There's always a seed.

Something to help me sleep (zopiclone) and something to help me cope and function (dexamfetamine). You can't end a horrific addiction instantly. There's no cold turkey when you're in as deep as I was. I was too dependent. To attempt to suddenly quit overnight would have caused me unbearable withdrawal symptoms and would have required me to be hospitalised. This is what I prescribed myself - two medications for harm reduction. Two medications that I used to wean myself off the dangerous and highly addictive supercrack.

I flushed that big bag of supercrack a year ago. There was enough to last me a couple of years, easily. I can't remember when exactly I flushed it, because my life was chaotic, but the evidence suggests that it was at this point I decided to get clean, using substitute prescribing.

Things didn't go smoothly, but it's very difficult to deal with a major addiction as well as mental health problems and all the practical problems that came about because my life had disintegrated. I needed to get money, get a job, get an apartment I could afford. I needed to move house, move city. I needed to get a new girlfriend and a new group of friends. I had a false start in Manchester, but I tried again in Wales... I'm trying again in Wales.

Maybe you think my life is easy and everything is sorted out, because I earned bit of money, which I spent renting an apartment and buying a car so that I can get to my new job. Maybe you think my life is easy because I get up and go to work every day, and I'm doing a good job and my bosses are impressed with me. Maybe you think my life is easy because I've 'bounced back' from losing two apartments, running out of money three times and being hospitalised twice. Maybe you think my life is easy, because I've made it look so easy, quitting supercrack, Valium, Xanax, tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodiene, pregabalin, zopiclone and zolpidem, which are all highly addictive. Maybe you think my life is easy, because I've gone 7 months unmedicated and I haven't had a single mental health episode that's caused me to commit suicide or do something else drastic to fuck up my life. Maybe you think my life is easy because my finances are improving and I've got a girlfriend. Maybe you think none of what I went through in the last year was very hard. Maybe you think none of what I've been through in the last year has caused any lasting damage.

I'm in my 5th consecutive month of full-time work without a holiday. I'm working my bollocks off. All I do is work work work, because I'm running as fast as I can to get myself into a position where my housing is secure - nobody can evict me - and I'm financially secure. I constantly have to ignore my physical and mental health, because I so desperately need to get myself into a position where I can collapse in a heap and have a minor nervous breakdown.

Yes, I can do stuff like this - I can save myself; I can come back to life; I can return from the brink of destitution and make it look very easy.

It's not easy.

Tags: #homeless #addiction #drugs #bipolar #mentalhealth #suicide

This is a story about data protection...

Congratulations. You found me. Somehow you managed to figure out my real identity and hack my personal data. Somehow you've managed to discover all my most closely-guarded secrets. You've compromised my privacy and discovered all my data that was held securely in the vault.

I'm fast approaching 900,000 words that I've written on this blog. I've written extensively about my childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, losing my virginity, first love, getting engaged and married, getting divorced, my mental health problems, my problems with drink & drugs, homelessness, near-bankruptcy, trouble with the police... I've written about everything. Everything you could ever hope to find out about a person is all documented right here, in unflinching detail.

I repeat myself.

I repeat myself because nobody fucking cares. I've written all this stuff about myself and left it out there for anybody to read, and it doesn't matter - everybody's too wrapped up in their own lives to give a shit about the details of anybody else's messy little life. I've published high-resolution photos of my passport. I've published every single detail you'd need to steal my identity, but nobody can be bothered. Most of us are far too boring and mediocre and average and uninteresting for anybody to give a shit.

Perhaps you've been so stupid as to share personal information in a way that's easily harvested in vast quantities. Maybe you're just another idiot who made their date of birth public on Facebook, or told some other popular website personal details about yourself, where you completely ignored the messages that told you exactly what data would be shared with 3rd parties.

You've got free email. Free photo sharing. Free messaging. Free document storage. Free business contacts. Free marketing. Free social networks where you can connect with your friends and meet other likeminded people. How the hell did you think any of it was funded? If the service is free YOU are the product.

The email address on the bag pictured above is my business email address. You can email it and your message will be delivered to me. I've been very careful to not mix my professional identity with my Nick "manic" Grant identity, because I work in very boring corporate environments which don't take kindly to people with mental illness who've recently been destitute and locked up on psych wards. There's a fundamental incompatibility with my true identity and the persona that allows me to get good jobs and get ahead in a corporate environment.

To write that email address in text form on the pages of this website would mean that Google would index it and make it searchable, such that my email address would be added to spam lists and my inbox would be inundated with crap. To write that word - the name of my company - on the pages of this website would tie me to any search that included my name and my company's name. I'm already on page 2 of Google, and I'd hate to make it any easier for me to be found. People already find me very quickly on LinkedIn, so heaven forbid what it's going to be like if people start digging for me on Google and stumbling on this blog.

A colleague of mine has already found my blog. I can see that he has an iPhone Plus and he uses the WiFi at our workplace to read my blog. I can see what pages he looked at and how long he spent reading them. Perhaps he doesn't know that I know this, but maybe he does now... if he's just read this. If you think I'm spying on my readers you should know that every tech company collects analytics on its users. Of course, I can't know who every individual is, but I can make very good educated guesses by looking at the IP address they visit from - which tells me their location, their ISP or workplace - and the kind of device they're using.

If you think it's unethical to spy on the people who consume content for free, you should consider whether you'd be prepared to pay for Facebook, Twitter, news websites, funny comics, interesting blogs, videos, games and all the other content you regularly consume. Would you pay for email? Would you pay to keep your photos and documents safely stored in the cloud? At the moment, you receive so much stuff for free, because your data isn't private - you consented to give it to us tech boffins so that you could get free stuf. You made the deal with the devil.

If you think you have privacy you're incredibly naïve. The details of your confidential medical consultations are discussed casually around the dinner table. The details of your life are pored over by the guardian class, who present themselves as protectors of your privacy, but are in fact terrible gossips who share all the lurid details of your most embarrassing moments with all their guffawing chums. There's no privacy - it's an illusion; a fantasy.

Having dealt with GPs, psychiatrists, hospitals, the police, security vetting people, tenant vetting people, credit check people, proof-of-identity people and numerous others who've sought to invade my privacy, I can tell you from first-hand experience that information washes around quite freely and there's very little protection of your precious privacy. The most sensitive information is casually chucked around in the most careless fashion. You're delusional if you think your data's protected.

I became disillusioned with data protection and privacy, and I decided to go public. I decided to write 900,000 words that give complete transparency about who I am and what I've done. I have no privacy. I live in the public eye - everything you could ever want to know about me, including my very worst, most embarrassing and most unflattering moments, are documented here in unflinching detail. This is what happens when you embrace the post-privacy world that we live in.

What do you want to know? Do you want to see my pornography viewing habits? Do you want to see secret webcam screen recordings of me masturbating, or maybe just picking my nose and scratching my testicles while lying on the sofa in a pile of my own filth, watching crappy TV shows? If you want to know what a person's really like behind the mask, I'll give it to you. Guess what? We're all a bit pervy and none of us is perfect; we all have flaws and stuff that we'd be embarrassed if anybody knew, but it's there - we're all basically the same.

Google does not yet read the text on images and make it searchable in the same way that it will for this word: googwebcamasturbdex. Try searching that word tomorrow, and you'll see that it's Google's top search hit. Try searching my email address and you won't find this website, however... which is how I want to keep it until the world finally accepts that we're living in a post-privacy era and we can see that we ALL have flaws.

I'm taking a HUGE risk having all this stuff about me out there on the public internet. I risk my reputation, my business, my income, my livelihood. I risk becoming unemployable. I risk being black-balled, because nobody wants a homeless bankrupt junkie alcoholic with mental heath problems working in their precious corporation. I'm risking it because it was exhausting, trying to keep my privacy in the era when privacy finally became a thing of the past; a relic.

Does privacy help you? Is it a big deal that Facebook leaked 4% of their users' data? Would you have paid for Facebook if it meant that your data was secure?

I think in time you'll come to see the world like I do - secrecy is hard work and life is better when you're transparent and open. I can highly recommend uploading yourself to the public cloud for safekeeping.

Tags: #socialmedia #privacy

This is a story about pseudonyms...

I've moved house. I now live at the following address:

Mr Nick "Manic" Grant
Number One
Wales
United Kingdom

Send me a letter. I'm sure it'll get delivered. Pay me a visit sometime. Search for my address on Google Maps to see where I live.

The man who has nothing has nothing to lose.

I got used to the anonymity of London; the urban solitude; the crowds. I got used to my life being completely destroyed. I was always closer to death and destitution than I was to recovery and happiness, so I didn't care about my privacy. In fact I really did care about my privacy: specifically I didn't want to have any privacy, because I wanted the world to know all the reasons why my life was falling to pieces. I wanted witnesses. I wanted people to understand why I was dying or dead.

Things are different now.

When I recovered in London and got off the streets and back into civilised society, I still wasn't part of a community. In fact, I lost the community that I belonged to. I used to be a member of the homeless community, but then I got a nice apartment and I was no longer homeless. Twice I got myself off the streets and into a place of my own. Twice I dug myself out of a deep hole and sorted myself out... perhaps even three times. Each time everything fell to pieces.

I leapt at the chance to move to Manchester because I was homeless and bankrupt. I found a kind of community in Manchester... a community of addicts. That wasn't good.

When I was offered the chance to move to Wales, I was homeless and running out of money fast, and I was a patient on a locked hospital psych ward. In Wales I have found a community. It's a small place. People know each other. There are fewer degrees of separation. There isn't the anonymity of a giant city with millions of inhabitants. London has 9 or 10 million people. Manchester has the best part of 3 million people. That's more than the entire population of Wales.

I've made numerous assumptions about people's ability to make connections. I've assumed that by not mentioning names, places, dates etc. then I've managed to obfuscate anything that would allow anybody to be identified. I've assumed that nobody would have any idea who I'm talking about - or ever be able to discover who I'm talking about - when I write "my friends" or "my girlfriend" for example. I've steered clear of using the initial of the first or last name, or anything else that might be vaguely identifying.

Having lived out my life publicly on the pages of this blog for the best part of 3 years, I'm quite used to having visitors from all over the world reading my stuff. It's quite normal for me to tell the entire world all the gory details of my murky past and dodgy deeds. I'm pretty transparent; an open book.

Somebody from where I work has found my blog. I've upset some people who are very important to me, inadvertently, by writing something that I have subsequently deleted. To refer to these events is a risk. Those people will be able to identify themselves even if nobody else would ever be able to discover who I'm talking about. I guess my work colleague - for example - is thinking "how the hell?" and feeling a little spied on. My justification for writing whatever the hell I want has always been that you chose to come here and read all about me, which kinda means I'm allowed to know that you've been reading. If you have an opinion about me, I'll have an opinion about you... and I might share that opinion, although anonymised so only you know who I'm talking about.

Upon reflection, I've got too much to lose. I like my friends, my girlfriend, my job, my apartment. My life is going OK and we're coming into spring. My mood is improving. The future looks really great. Things are going really well now that I've overcome a whole heap of super-duper stressful stuff. Upon reflection, I'm no longer the man who has nothing, who has nothing to lose.

When I was down on my luck, I had no responsibilities because I couldn't handle any responsibilities. I didn't owe anybody anything, because I didn't have anything. I'd lost everything, which liberated me. I'm no longer liberated. I have to act responsibly.

I need to treat friends with respect. I need to treat my girlfriend with respect. I need to treat the local community with respect. I need to treat my colleagues with respect. I need to treat my profession with respect. My conduct needs to completely change from the kind of conduct that was appropriate for a destitute homeless guy with mental health problems, into conduct more befitting of the fine upstanding member of society that I'm now supposed to exemplify.

It's a transition period. I need to move from the old world to the new paradigm, where my life is improving and I've got lots of good things that I want to hang onto. I'm bound by the Official Secrets Act, as if to remind me that my old life of writing whatever the hell I wanted is now over.

I'm not sure how I'm going to use my blog as a healthy coping mechanism anymore, but I've just been through one of the most ridiculously stressful periods of my life, and it literally nearly killed me - I'm not being hyperbolic. I hope that I'm naturally not going to need to write "cry for help" or "angry rant" type pieces to dissipate the negative emotions and avoid killing myself. I hope that one day this might change from being a suicide note to something else. I have hope. I'm working towards a brighter, happier future.

There are going to be bumps in the road, I'm sure, but I really don't want to piss off my friends, girlfriend or work colleagues. Obviously, I have those people in my life and it might be unavoidable to mention them using those anonymised monikers, but I'm not going to be writing about them if you know what I mean. It'd be nice if can hang onto some of the good things I've gained in my life. It'd be nice if I can start to grow my group of friends rather than continuing the destructive patterns.

I doubt I'm going to write under a pen name; a pseudonym. I'm loud and I'm proud. This is the journey I've been on and I'm good at what I do. Why should I hide? Why should I be anonymous?

However, I appreciate that most other people are at completely the opposite end of the privacy/openness spectrum from me, and don't appreciate even the tiniest little things being splurged all over the pages of the internet, no matter how anonymised they are. Though I can't fully relate, I can respect those wishes and attempt to change my wicked ways. Sorry.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #homeless #wales

This is a story about high stakes...

This time tomorrow I'll have almost everything I need for a happy contented stable ordinary humble modest little life. I can park my car on my driveway. I can sleep in my own apartment. I can drive to my job. I can do my work. I can get paid. I can see my girlfriend. I can pay my bills. What more does a man need in life?

A person who's more risk-averse than me would probably ditch this blog and my Twitter and Facebook pages, and hide their digital identity. It makes sense for me to cover up my chequered past. Nobody needs to know that my path to this point has been non-linear. Nobody needs to know that I've had my difficulties during the last few years. I can erase myself. I can expunge myself from the archives. I can ditch the world's longest suicide note and pretend like I've been fine all along.

I must admit that I Google'ed myself, just to check that I'm safely buried deep in the depths of the internet, in some dark recess that nobody would think to look for me. Sadly, it seems like I appear on page 2. I guess that means that somebody would have to be doing some very determined digging to find me... they'd have to click on the "next page" button, so that's pretty hard to find, right? Also, I'm wearing a disguise in my profile picture. In real life I look nothing like my profile picture, because of my cunning infallible disguise.

I tried hard to bury my blog by writing a whole load of really boring stuff, so that anybody who found it would quickly decide that there was nothing interesting to read. I mean, there isn't but I'm pretty exposed and vulnerable. If somebody wanted to dig dirt on me, they'd find it pretty easy. There's a lot of stuff that would encourage deeper digging. If you want to discourage anybody from looking too closely, it's best to put a layer of really boring crap on top.

I tried to steer clear of putting anything on here that was specific and would make me identifiable. I don't - for example - mention the exact place I live or where I work. I don't mention names, except my own of course. Why would I write under my own name? Surely that's madness. Well... it's something I've always done. I hate that the internet has made people feel like they're protected by the screen, hiding behind their anonymous avatar. I'm me - it's my face and it's my name, except for my cunning disguise, of course.

Things are really high-stakes. I can't afford any major setbacks. I don't want to jeopardise my livelihood; my financial security. I don't want to risk a domino-like chain of events that would cause my whole life to collapse. I've almost got all the things I need in life... so damn close.

I've written blog posts where I've given very precise details about my financial situation. Sometimes what I've written has seemed a little vulgar; a little boastful. That's not what it's about. I've been really suicidal because of the ludicrousness of the situation where I can work and earn a lot of money, but I'm being blocked and thwarted. I find it unbearably frustrating when I'm not allowed to get ahead in life. I need to have this record of the insanity of the situation. I need people to be able to understand my frustrations in the event that I killed myself.

For the record, I think my suicidal thoughts are driven by circumstances. I think my depression is driven by circumstances. I think that my thoughts and feelings are a sane response to an insane world. Things in my life are good, and so I don't feel suicidal anymore.

It might seem like I'm oversharing, but it's immensely beneficial to me to have people share my frustrations - my highs and lows - and empathise with my situation. It's immensely useful to not feel alone. It's immensely helpful to have people who care able to see what's going on with me: you can dip into my world any time you want. Most people who read my blog are trying to help me. Only once or twice have I ever suffered prejudice and discrimination because my honesty has been used against me. I think it's unethical to use something like this against somebody. I don't write anything that would breach any code of conduct or otherwise present a problem for my employers. I don't bring my profession into disrepute or otherwise comport myself in a way that would justify being disciplined, dismissed and/or tossed onto the street like a piece of trash.

The ethical dilemma falls on the reader. What are YOU going to do with the private and personal information that you've obtained? It was your choice to come here. It was your choice to read. It's now your responsibility to use the knowledge you've gained responsibly. If you want to use anything you've read here against me, how are you going to sleep at night? It's immoral to cyber-snoop for stuff that you're going to use against people. It's immoral to discriminate.

I'm just like you, but I write my stream-of-consciousness down on a public website. Use it wisely. With great power comes great responsibility.

In the era of post-privacy this is the future. I've got a head start - an 850,000 word head start.

Tags: #writing #privacy #socialmedia

This is a story about a sick man...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #suicide #career

This is a story about national security...

"I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands". I suppose any of our creations can take on a life of their own and have unintended consequences, and I'm certainly catching some flack as a result of my 3-year daily writing experiment at the moment, which is not entirely unjustified.

My daily writing habit is a useful exercise for me, so I'm sure I'll continue to write in some capacity, but I'm almost at the point where my blog has given me the therapeutic benefit of restoring me to stability, health, wealth and prosperity, and I have to tread carefully so that I don't undo any of the good work.

I started writing when I had my back to the wall. I started writing when I didn't feel like I had anything particularly to fall back on. I started writing when I didn't feel proud that I'd achieved anything - my life was incredibly fragile. Nobody could argue that this blog hasn't anchored me in the world, bringing me into contact with many lovely people and providing me with a creative outlet, a sense of accomplishment and some routine in my otherwise chaotic and stressful life.

I doubt very much that I'll be able to change my habits completely, but I do need to adapt to my present paradigm - I can't keep writing as if I've got nothing to lose, because it's not true at the moment.

Perhaps I'll have to start keeping a private journal, because I've been using writing as a mechanism to flush out all the bad and stressful thoughts that have threatened to overwhelm me, but a large part of my present worries revolve around imposter syndrome. I make no secret of anything, but I'd still prefer it if my colleagues and other important gatekeepers in my life didn't read what I write - with my defences down - and leap to the wrong conclusions. It's been hard enough to date girls when I'm so easily cyber-stalked.

Given the choice between a digital identity, or a healthy set of local relationships, I would have to choose the latter if I was forced, although having the former is very useful as a fallback option. Three times I've lost a lot of friends due to a break-up, with one of those times very nearly costing me my life, and the other two not exactly faring much better either. I've not been very successful at building robust local social networks in the last few years. I need a group of friends I see and speak to regularly, that wouldn't be affected by any breakups. I need that safety net. In the absence of the time, money, energy, transport and a number of other things, I've not progressed things very far yet, so I'm very grateful for my online social network and I always will be, but I do need healthy local face-to-face relationships too.

Getting a girlfriend can be a quick-fix when you're lonely, as it's so easy to be the +1 and tag along to all of her social events, and ingratiate yourself into her social circle, but it's a dangerous strategy. It's too much of a dependency on one person. It's a mistake. Thankfully, I have valuable and important local friendships that predate any of my dating shenanigans. I need to continue to make friends of my own, and establish a pattern of social engagements which are not couples-only events.

Work colleagues and a great team environment can make a huge difference, and sadly that's been lacking in my life recently. Hopefully that's going to be rectified really soon. There's a slight danger in mixing personal life with work too much, when you're in the position I'm in, where I'm trying to get myself back into the respectable world - some of the recent events in my turbulent life are not office-gossip friendly. I've not got anything to hide, particularly, but I'd rather not challenge anybody to be open minded, if it's at all avoidable.

I'm treading a fine line between trying to do what I have to for my own sanity and stability, balanced with the needs of those who I have relationships with and my responsibilities regarding confidentiality, secrecy, discretion, professional conduct, respect of privacy, not causing shock, alarm or distress. It's a fine line between keeping my support network informed of what's going on during a time when I'm very vulnerable, and saying things that're going to paradoxically make me more vulnerable. It's one thing to confide in friends behind closed doors, and quite another to write publicly on a website.

Me being me, I doubt I'll be able to make a sudden overnight change, and I don't want to lose this valuable therapeutic tool, but I do need to start changing my behaviour in light of my new circumstances.

I doubt I'm going to be writing about what I ate for breakfast and live-blogging about the fresh paint that's drying on the walls, but things might have to turn a little more pedestrian for a while... at least until things are more settled.

Presently stressed out of my mind with the transition from one life to another, but hopefully everything will work out and go smoothly.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #career #friends #relationships

This is a story about helping people...

I'm a bit of a work-in-progress. I was on a psych ward in Manchester after a suicide attempt - homeless, jobless, single, friendless (in terms of local friends) and estranged from my family (except my sister). Then, I was plucked out of that dismal life and brought into my friends' family life on a farm in Wales. My friends are aware of my suicidal distress; my depression; my wretched situation. My friends are helping me to get back on my feet.

To leave the psych ward was an immediate improvement to my life. To have a quiet room of my own; a double bed - these were luxuries not afforded on the psych ward, where I was in a 4-bed dorm with only a curtain for privacy. I was unlikely to make new friends on the psych ward - my fellow patients were profoundly unwell and I had no plans to stay in Manchester. I didn't really have anybody to talk to. Now that I'm embedded in my friends' family life I can chat to them and the members of their immediate and extended family - I've been welcomed into the fold... instant social life.

It was my choice not to be sectioned or have the home treatment team - part of the community mental health team (CMHT) - involved in my care. It was my choice to not take lamotrigine, sertraline, lithium or sodium valproate. It was my choice to travel 1,200 miles away on business, and to go back to work in London for an investment bank. I have my reasons for making these choices, but they put my life in jeopardy - the choices are hard to understand. It seems reckless, arrogant and irresponsible to risk my life.

I'm earning money and I'm dating. In some areas, my life seems to be improving a huge amount. In other areas things are every bit as desperate as they were back in September/October of last year. At least when I was on the psych ward I was relatively safe. When I was on the psych ward I'd put myself in the hands of the state - they were responsible for feeding me, housing me and keeping me safe. I didn't feel bad about relying on the state to look after me, because I was so vulnerable. Now, my friends must feel very responsible.

At face value, my depression looks treatable. At face value, my problems look trivial. At face value, I appear to be very functional.

To treat my depression could trigger mania. To protect me from mania - with powerful medications - could leave me unable to work. Without work I will never regain my self-esteem and independence, which will lead to depression and suicidal thoughts. Without self-esteem I won't be able to find a partner. Without a partner I'll be lonely and depressed and suicidal. To meet somebody special and start a new relationship could trigger mania, or bring a whole heap of feelings of inadequacy that could trigger me to seek medications - I want to be full of energy and happiness with my new romantic interest. For example, there's a feeling of pressure to have a rock hard dick and be able to have sex multiple times a night. How do I even function without medications? Uppers and downers, antidepressants and mood-stabilisers, antipsychotics and tranquillisers, sedatives and sleeping pills, erectile dysfunction drugs and refractory period suppressants... things to help me feel good. I so desperately want to feel good.

There's another risk that I don't talk about so much: Relapse into drug addiction. This time last year I was pretty hopelessly addicted - in the clutches of supercrack. Foolishly, I was looking for some Bitcoins I hadn't spent and I found them... on the Dark Web waiting to be used to purchase narcotics. I resisted temptation, but I spent a few days thinking about self-sabotage. It's been 8 or 9 months since I was a drug addict, but that's not very much time at all - it was really recently that drug addiction was wrecking me and everything I held dear.

I've got a fairly simple strategy for avoiding relapsing into drug addiction: To kill myself. Addicts die as demons; despised; hated. Addicts are blamed for their bad choices - the architects of their own destruction. My solution is simple: Die while clean, sober and sane, so that nobody can demonise me. I just want to have some dignity. That's all I ask for really... some dignity.

So, my problems are not really mental health, but they're not really addiction either. I don't take drugs or medications, I'm not mad and I'm not bad. I'm just trying to live a normal life: to have a home, some friends, a girlfriend, a job, cat(s)... a few things. Not much; I don't ask for much.

My friends have helped me. I've met somebody who I really like, but it's early days... don't want to get carried away. I'm working and I've done a good job and the client wants to extend my contract. I've battled with my mental health and addiction demons, and to all intents and purposes I'm winning. I'm a bit of a success story, in a way - an example of what you'd hope would happen if you got involved in somebody's life, with the intention of helping them.

I have been helped. I am stubborn and I do things on my own terms, but not without good reason. I'm glad - for example - that I'm not doped up to the eyeballs on medications that would leave me emotionally blunted and anorgasmic. I'm enjoying the pleasure of a little oxytocin as I cuddle my sweetheart. I'm glad I'm feeling stuff.

There's been a suicide. I can relate to the victim. I also feel super bad that my friends are having to deal with the aftermath of that suicide when they know I'm a big suicide risk: it feels like they must be additionally worried about me, and I don't really know how to talk to them when they're dealing with that suicide. It's no secret that I'm having regular suicidal thoughts. It's surely too much for them. It's too much for me. My instinct is to withdraw; to remove myself from the situation.

I feel a bit ineligible for life. I shouldn't have friends; I shouldn't have a girlfriend; I shouldn't do anything, because I'll probably fuck it up. Whether I kill myself or relapse into addiction, either way I end up dead, so I'm not allowed to have nice things, like friends and a girlfriend; I'm not allowed to have self-esteem... I should just sit and rot on a psych ward.

I feel like running away. I feel like I should put every penny I've earned into extracting myself cleanly from the situation. Nice people don't deserve to get hurt and don't deserve to have to deal with the aftermath of unpleasant stuff.

That it would cause pain, whether it's suicide or relapse, is not something that's going to stop it happening. We can't beat people into submission. I need a reason to live - friends, a girlfriend, independence etc. I need my self-esteem and the natural endorphins that lift my mood, through healthy social contact, sex and other things like that. Nobody ever got better without those things. You can't 'get better' first and then build a healthy life.

My friends took a big risk trying to help me. Any girl who'd tangle with me is taking a big risk. The risk doesn't make me less likely to do myself harm. If anything, the risk I pose is something that adds a great deal of pressure, which is exhausting. What should I do? Should I exclude myself from society, just as most parts of society would very much like to exclude me? I'm a modern leper: The escaped mental asylum patient; the junkie; the tramp; the alkie; the washed-up loser.

I look back to September 9th, when I begged the staff at the Manchester Royal Infirmary not to treat me: No activated charcoal, no gastric lavage, no intubation, no resuscitation. When I lost consciousness, they helped me anyway, in the way that they're trained to help people. They saved my life, even though I made it explicitly clear that I didn't want to be helped - I wanted to die, in no uncertain terms. What if I go on to hurt my new friends? What harm would there have been in just letting me die? I'm going to die anyway, one day.

If I seem ungrateful for the help I've received, I'm sorry. This is the truth of the matter: I'm living a part of my life I didn't expect to have, but I'm not automatically grateful for it. It makes it harder, in a way - I didn't plan on being alive this long. I'm not sure who I'm alive for, because it's certainly not for me at the moment.

I'm one of the lucky ones. My situation is improving. It's quite hard for me to mess my life up any more than I've already messed it up. It's relatively easy to make improvements to my life. It seems as if I can fix things up quite quickly, depending on your definition of "quick".

I guess it seems short-sighted to kill myself when I don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. There's always a chance that tomorrow's going to be better than today. There's always a chance I'm going to wake up and feel glad that I didn't die on September 9th.

People kill themselves when they don't think their life is salvageable - there's too much damage: too many dashed hopes and dreams; too much shame and embarrassment; too much loss of status... too much disappointment. A person kills themself when they're a hard worker; a high achiever; they'd worked hard to get where they'd got to, but it seemed like it was all for nothing - they were potentially going to lose everything they'd ever dreamed of having. It can't be overstated, the devastating impact that it can have, re-adjusting our expectations when we're thwarted. You might say "it's only money" or "it's only a job" but you'll find that those things are pretty important in modern society. Try going anywhere without somebody asking you "what do you do?" and "where did you study?" and "do you own your own home?" and myriad other questions that will remind you that you've crashed and burned. Try doing anything when you're poor and you'll find it's really hard - money really helps, and you can get quite used to having it and not having to stress about it anymore. Who'd really want to go back to being poor, if you've experienced poverty and debt, and worked hard to get out of that pit of misery?

Every day I face the same thought that pushed me over the edge, causing me to attempt to commit suicide: I can't do it; it's too much work; it's too hard; I've reached my limit; I can never overcome this. Of course, we feel that all the time, but when there's an event that suddenly creates a huge problem to be solved, or something that's potentially going to be life-ruining, then it's too much to handle. We're all right at the limit. None of us has the spare capacity to deal with some mountainous pile of shit being dumped on us, when we're reached the maximum of what we can tolerate.

Of course, I'm a little fragile. It's only gonna take a few bumps in the road to cause me to push the "fuck it" button. I'm delicate; vulnerable. The only solution is to act positively - to go out there, work hard, keep trying, take risks and aim to regain the things I need and want, hoping that nothing super bad happens. It's luck. I just need a run of good luck. I have to hope my luck holds, because I don't have the spare capacity to withstand a whole lot of bad stuff happening.

It's Valentine's Day, and I'm aware that my sweetheart might read this. It's early days. She should run a mile. There's too much to handle here. I'm putting it out there anyway.

My friends are dealing with the aftermath of a suicide when they haven't even managed to 'fix' me yet. I am I going to remind them of the person who successfully committed suicide, every time I talk to them?

We can't 'fix' anything. All we can do is try to leave things better than when we found them. Should we help? It's hard to not do any harm when we try to help.

Tags: #suicide #addiction #relationships #sex

This is a story about copycat suicides...

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

I'm repeating myself. Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm sorry this is so repetitive and cryptic.

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

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

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about invasion of privacy...

I've lived my life online since the nineties, writing using my real name on parts of the internet which are preserved for posterity. Many websites have ceased to be maintained and entire online communities have been lost, along with myriad digital identities and all the words that were written. However, there's always the chance that something shared publicly might become permanently recorded. Sometimes, the internet never forgets.

It kind of goes without saying that I write mindful of the fact that people I care about might not appreciate being splashed all over the pages of a website. A friend writes a blog where he refers to people by the first letter of their name, but I tend to prefer not to write about my face-to-face relationships at all. It's a strange kind of double-life, where bloggers follow the trials and tribulations of each others' lives, but I have a completely private part of my life which I don't write about. It might seem like I'm a completely open book, and I certainly don't keep any secrets per se, but I do respect the privacy of my friends.

I've written in the past using the personal pronoun "her" to refer to my [ex-]girlfriend, but I wasn't broadcasting intimate details of our relationship. At my lowest ebb, when I was extremely unwell, I did share some stuff on Facebook - restricted to just my friends - which I regret and I deleted when I got better and understood that it was a stupid mistake. I enjoy the public scrutiny of my life, but it's not my place to share the parts of the story which overlap with other people. When something's very important to me, and I'm not able to write openly about what's bugging me, I write cryptically and I hope it obfuscates precisely who and what I'm writing about.

Being an open book and living a life that is unflinchingly candid, honest and authentic, is very important to me. I think I'll always write this blog, because it's been the best thing I've ever done to help me with my mood stability and generally regain control of my life.

I worry that I'm becoming a bitter, twisted, poison pen writer sometimes. Anything that's upsetting me and otherwise causing me emotional distress, gets written about here. Writing is a great way to work out my frustrations, without being snappy, bitchy or sharp-tongued with anybody. Writing publicly means that I write more considerately than I would if I felt my words would only ever be read by my intended recipient.

Because often times, private correspondence is now being shared far and wide, there can be unintended consequences for shooting your mouth off when you think it's just between you and another person. The more public scrutiny I'm under, the more my behaviour moves in the direction I want it to. There are things I'm incredibly hurt and upset about, and there simply isn't any way I could communicate healthily in 'private' because my blood boils. Writing publicly is brilliant, because I'm forced to be fair and reasonable, keep things civil, and I know that my words don't fall on deaf ears - even if my intended recipient ignores me, other people are reading and that means that those who have upset me are held accountable, so I feel satisfied that my point has been made. I feel like I've finally managed to get my tormentors - the bullies, the abusers, the oppressors - into the dock and I'm having my day in court. It feels like justice.

The unintended consequence of having a large digital footprint - a social media identity - is that those who are in your life who do not live their lives in the same way, have to be treated separately. It would be unfair, for example, to share the gory details of how my dating is going, or the particulars of life embedded in my friends' family (see The White Wolf and the Black Sheep).

Perhaps it's a good omen, that an increasing proportion of my life is off-limits for my blog. I won't write the name of the client I'm working for at the moment, although it's pretty obvious that it's an investment bank. I won't write about how I spend my weekends. I'm not documenting the details of relationships that are beyond the realm of social media and the internet.

It does pose some difficulties, that some of the things I really want to write about have to bubble and boil away until I burst into an incoherent rant, which hopefully could never be connected to the real-life events that precipitated it.

So, I'm not being quite as open, honest, candid and authentic as I could be, but I do have a responsibility towards people who don't want lurid details splurged all over the internet, becoming an unwitting part of the Nick "Manic" Grant show, although I do occasionally receive extremely angry messages from people who felt that they very much should have featured.

In conclusion, I'm pretty happy with the balance I'm striking. One of my closest friendships was tested, but I think things are all better now. Generally, it's better to assume I'm not writing about you.

To save you a lot of digging, you might be interested in reading So Lonely if you want to see the kind of stuff I write about other people.

Tags: #relationships #writing