(A complex and multi-faceted story).

Hi, my name’s Kaz. It’s short for Kasim (the only time it’s ever been used is on legal documents though), and I’m a 37 year old guy living in Greater London in the UK.

I’ll apologise up front because this is going to be a rather long-winded account of my life, because I really don’t know what’s holding me back and whether the difficulties I’m currently facing are recent or in the distant past.

The first thing I’ll say is that I don’t really expect there to be any easy answer, if any.

I’m going to have to talk about my entire life, but don’t read the first part and skip the rest, because though it may seem there are lots of early issues, there’s some pretty traumatic stuff in the more recent past as well, which undoubtedly has made me the person I am too…though perhaps those events only placed strain on an already fragile mind. I don’t know to be honest and FWIW, I don’t think I’m fragile…so…

I’ve posted this in the ‘purpose’ section, because I feel that’s most relevant to my current situation.

Early Life

I grew up in the Lake District in the north of England, in a small rural village, with two older brothers (the only people of colour for miles!) and my (caucasian) mother. I am the youngest of the family. I was a very quiet child and a bit thoughtful and in retrospect a bit sad I think. My parents were divorced by my fourth birthday and so I don’t really have any memory of living with my father.

My earliest memory is hearing screaming coming from the kitchen when my father was visiting and my mother (who it had to be said was always a little bit too melodramatic), was telling him that she’d slit her wrists if he didn’t leave and was holding a knife in her hand. Being the little boy I was, at the time I remember seeing my father as the bad guy and running through to bite my dad’s ankle as hard as I could!

My other earliest memory is of my mum in hospital. She had her first encounter with breast cancer around the same time, when I was four or so, and had repeated encounters with cancer for the rest of her life. It eventually won and she passed away in January 2009. I guess cancer and it’s influence on my life was pretty much a constant and I remember having nightmares about death and my own mortality during the single digit years of my life. I used to cry myself to sleep worrying about my own death and the nothingness that would come after. In retrospect I wonder if I was really preparing myself for my mother’s death.

In reality, my Dad was never really a bad guy, but probably didn’t realise how much face-time matters during the formative years of a child’s life. He was and is a bit flakey and not particularly responsible, but he probably tried his best given his age and cultural differences (he’s from Pakistan originally and was a bit spoilt I think being the eldest son). He’s still alive and in theory we get on fine because he’s old and a bit more measured I guess and I’ve always been fairly balanced myself, but in practice we don’t actually talk anymore because I don’t really feel like he improves my life in any way and though I definitely still possess a child’s need to be with his father, I know it’s something that can never really be satiated. The time that was lost will never be regained and even if I went to live with him for the next ten years, it wouldn’t change that. It’s the child that misses him and that part of my psyche will probably always miss him.

Anyway, my mother saw other guys and eventually remarried. Looking back I think I was very embracing of her partners. Definitely a little boy in search of a dad. In the end, she re-married when I was eleven and we moved to roughly the area I live in now, which is just South of London, a little bit past Wimbledon.

Moving here was a bit of a culture shock. I went from a school where there were thirty kids in the entire school to a school where there were 500 kids. Anyway, kids are pretty adaptable, and before long I was speaking with a faux-cockney accent (every kid at my school did, despite it being the least cockney area in truth…Surrey is a bit more well-spoken than that!). School was fine. I fitted in well enough, though was never really very motivated, and was repeatedly reprimanded by my teachers for being intelligent but lazy.

Independent Life

I guess independence starts as you reach adulthood, and you start to take more responsibility for yourself and your actions, but the truth is I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do at the age of 17. That’s the age in the UK that education becomes optional and I opted to study more (‘A’ Levels), get a part time job for some extra cash, and started seeing a girl I had the longest (two year!) crush on. Her name was Christine and I mention it because she ended up having a major influence on my life in both good and bad ways.

During those two years of pre-university studies, I spent a lot of time with my girlfriend and didn’t study at all in my spare time. I guess I was in love, but the lack of study was really down to a lack of good parenting. The habits that are needed to get your homework done should start at a far earlier age, and the truth is that my mother never instilled those habits in me, and never checked that I was getting things done. The fact that I made it though my GCSE’s (age 15-ish) with reasonable grades is down to luck more than anything else.

Anyway, looking back, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that I flunked my ‘A’ levels. Some truly awful grades meant that I had to go through a process called ‘clearing’, and so I randomly picked a university course on a whim, because frankly, whatever direction I was previously heading in, clearly hadn’t managed to motivate me. I chose Computer Engineering. As blind luck would have it, after leaving home for university I finally started to come in to my own and did exceedingly well in the end (top of my class).

During those University years, I was still in a relationship with Chris. Afterwards, I got various jobs, and eventually ended back in my own area where we settled down and bought a house. In fact, it’s the house I’m sitting in right now as I type this. We were very happy and I used to rush home from work every day because I was so eager to see her. In November 2004, we visited New York and I proposed to her on the Hudson pretty much on our 10 year anniversary.

Early Mid-Life Crisis

The thing is, I’d had some niggling doubts for a while. When we were together I was very happy, but we were just two kids that had grown up in each other’s pockets, and there were some things that weren’t really working for me. She was a bit too controlling in social situations. I could be little bit insecure in those situations too. The big problem was that we couldn’t really discuss anything that mattered. She’d always take even the most pleasantly toned discussion as some kind of confrontation and would end up crying, so i’d learned over time not to rock the boat…but it meant keeping a lot of my feelings inside and it wasn’t something that felt right or good and I couldn’t tell anyone about it at that time because I didn’t realise it myself.

Anyway, I’d always wanted to live and work in another country, and had been feeling that for a while, but that was impossible with the course I was on. It was clear that we’d be married in a year or two, and kids would soon follow, and I kind of felt that I’d settled down too young. That I’d missed out on too much other stuff. So again, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that when I was sent to LA in August 2005 on business, that I went a bit native. I was there for two weeks before I started to lose myself and I spent the following two weeks in the company of a friendly, younger lady (I was almost 28 at the time). I came back from that trip with the intention of leaving my old life and moving out there permanently. It seems silly now looking back, but that’s what I wanted. I don’t think it was about the girl. I think she was just a catalyst. An excuse to justify leaving my old life behind and a way to force the issue.

Anyway, that period of my life is a little bit unclear to be honest and I don’t remember it very well, because it’s also the start of the worst period of my life. I came back with a plan to be honest about my actions, but I wasn’t so naive to think I could just leave, so I was cautious about how I approached the subject. Unfortunately, Chris’ radar was fully on, and she quickly noticed the distance I was keeping and things got very heated very quickly and completely out of control. I’d been home for a little over 24 hours when she stormed out for the second time in two days, I assumed to spend the day with friends again. It was a Sunday and her body was found later that evening. She was a Vetenary Nurse and had access to a barbiturate called Pento-Barbitol. It’s what they used to kill animals that were too sick to heal. It was later discovered that she must have driven straight over to her place of work, where she hooked up a drip filled with the substance (apparently, it’s the only sure-fire way to guarantee success, as if you inject it manually, you’ll pass out before you can complete it, so you won’t necessarily die).

The years that followed were very hard. Any plans or ambitions that I had up to that point just weren’t relevant anymore. I was operating at a level where I just needed to keep breathing. For the first six months I pretty much cried all day every day. Slowly I was able to reel it in a little bit and I’d try to get it out of my system before work and after. Eventually more time passed, and it got more and more under control, until you’d be hard pressed to notice that anything substantial was troubling me, though of course it was, and still does to this day. Most of the time I’m just me, but it’s very easy for me to cry. A happy moment in a tv program, instant tears. A sad moment in a tv program, instant tears. Dwelling on pretty much anything significant in my life, instant tears.

Anyway, that all happened back in 2005 and over time I got better and went out, had fun, and luckily had my mother to talk to. We would speak on the phone every evening as were always very close and became closer out of necessity after Chris’ death I guess.

So it was particularly hard for me, when, in January 2009, barely more than three years after I lost Chris, my mother died. It wasn’t a surprise, as she had a stroke only a year after Chris died, and was in various states of ill health afterwards, but she was always a fighter, and it was all bearable because she was managing to hang on. Unfortunately I guess we all have to give up eventually, and I’m pretty sure she was just too tired to fight any more. I don’t blame her for it, she’d had more than her fair share of ill health (I should mention that the stroke was actually just a side effect of another onset of cancer which had gone unnoticed, and after having her ovaries removed, chemo, and making a pretty decent recovery, they eventually found more cancer in her other organs).

She was in a lot of pain in the end and the woman in that bed didn’t really look a lot like my mother, so I opted to say goodbye while she was still semi-capable of understanding me and told her that I couldn’t stay to the end. My brothers phoned me from her bedside a few days later to see if I wanted to say anything to her before she passed. I chose not to. It upsets me that she might have died thinking I didn’t love her, but in life she knew beyond any doubt that I did and I doubt she knew anything with all that morphine in her system. Still, my choice is hard to live with, even though I’m sure I’d make the same choice if I could go back in time…

Life After Death

Chris died in September 2005. My mother died in January 2009. Some other people I was close to died in the next couple of years that followed, but they’re not quite as important, so I won’t go in to that here (briefly: my step dad, my would-have-been father-in-law).

I carried on with the rest of my life, but by August 2009, had decided to quit my job as Technical Director / CTO of a games software company and start my own business. I’ve been working on it ever since and have basically spent the last five years by myself locked in my study, and so we come to the conclusion of the story and the real problem(s) that I’m having right now.

If I were to sum up, the following things are potential problem headlines:

– I’m single, but comfortably so. I enjoy the company of another, and like that feeling of intimacy, but I don’t entertain it as a valid option these days. It seems pointless and unrealistic.
– I’m unsuccessful, but again, it doesn’t bother me apart from my decreasing bank balance and the realisation that I’m going to have to do something I don’t like to make ends meet eventually.
– I’m not living my life. I actually do lots of little things that interest me, but I don’t take holidays. I don’t see the world. I’ve never lived in another country.
– I’m bad at maintaining my social circle. Out of site out of mind. Seriously. I’m so content by myself that I really don’t think of my friends or wonder what they’re up to.

Regarding singledom:

– I guess I’m the opposite of the young man I was, in that, I feel comfortable in my own skin and have more than enough confidence to talk to the opposite sex.
– I was at a wedding over the weekend and was sat next to a very attractive (single) woman. At no point did I feel like flirting with her despite her obvious beauty. I headed for the bar instead and chatted with random wedding guests.
– I’m very upfront about who I am, my circumstances and what I can and can’t do, as it’s important to me that I don’t pretend I’m anything I’m not.
– I’m always happy to walk away if things aren’t working.
– I’ve ended every relationship I’ve ever had…which is a little bit troubling.

Regarding work:

– I think I’ve probably burned my self out.
– I’m not really that interested in what I’m doing at the moment.
– I’m unsuccessful not because I’ve launched a product and failed, but because I can’t launch in the first place. The product is never good enough and now I don’t have the energy to make it better.
– I’d rather do something musical for a living I think, but is that realistic, and would it solve anything if I still end up having problems with final delivery?

Regarding adventures:

– I think it’s hard to seriously plan them while my work situation is a little bit unresolved. Actually, this point might apply a little bit to my love life too.

Regarding social circles:

– When I’m with friends, I’m social and good company, but when I’m not with them, I don’t think of them at all. If it were left to my impulses, I’d never see them because I’d never bother picking up the phone to arrange a meet up. Instead I lock myself away and enjoy making music (I’ve got a pretty nice recording studio setup at home) and doing other creative things that I enjoy.

Finally:

I’m sure I’d be happy earning minimum wage somewhere as long as I could have a peaceful life. That’s what I crave I think, and why I’ve spent so much time alone. It’s like I’ve got some form of PTSD and feel the need to avoid conflict in my life.

This might be the biggest driver I think, if we think about how those parts of my life are related to conflict:

– A relationship has the potential to introduce conflict in to my home life, something I value too much to upset.
– Working for someone else back in the industry involves too much discussion / argument to justify your actions. I like getting the job done with the minimum of fuss.
– Adventures? Not sure. Perhaps the conflict is the danger of the real world and unfamiliar surroundings? Perhaps I’m afraid of losing myself again.
– Social circles. Perhaps I keep to my self because it’s the rejection free option? which I guess is a form of conflict.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, give yourself a pat on the back and a gold star. Hopefully you can tell by my tone that I’m not shy, but at the same time it’s an odd thing because I once was. Basically, I learned to over compensate for how I was when I was younger.

Where I was once shy and afraid, I’m now bullish and fearless to a point.

The bullish thing isn’t great, but it’s the other things that I’m mainly concerned about.

I’m not sure anything you say will help, because I know:

– all relationships end.
– working for other people lines their pockets instead of yours.
– there will be time for adventures when other things are sorted out.

I’ll do my best to take your advice, but overly simplistic statements might have a hard time penetrating my hard exterior…

Thanks for your time!

Kaz