Twenty years ago, I was living the high life or, so it felt. I had recently finished my studies in Electrical Engineering, I was employed by an international finance information company and was making over six figures which is great money for most people let alone someone just two years into their corporate career. I had bought my first property as well as my first car and life was great.
I worked hard, in stressful and high-pressure situations that is the financial world, with loads of overtime and weekend work and when I wasn’t working, I was partying with my friends. This meant lots of alcohol, smoking, junk food and late nights. We lived the maxim work hard, play hard and for that first year I was having the time of my young life.
At the end that year, everything came tumbling down. From being carefree and living it up, my life as I knew it came to a screeching halt. It all started with a bout of food poisoning which should have been over in just a few days, but it turned out to be the beginning of a year of misery and recurring health problems.
I must have abused my body to such an extent that when the food poisoning came along it was the last straw. I am still not certain exactly what the problem was however I was unable to handle eating most foods and certainly not the foods I had been accustomed to eating, let alone drinking anything other than water. Almost everything I ate would bring along some sort of digestion complication and discomfort so much so that I didn’t feel comfortable going out any more and my socialising ended abruptly.
My life became a routine of work, home and ongoing doctor appointments trying to figure out what was happening and how to fix it, but to no avail. I must have gone to about 10 different doctors from GPs to specialists, had numerous diagnostic procedures all with no conclusive diagnosis nor any remedy.
The illness started wearing me down, I became more reclusive and more depressed, and without answers, I started losing hope. I felt helpless and alone. My friends, who I had spent so many nights partying with, I felt, had abandoned me. My family lived far away, and I believed, were unable to help me anyway. And so, I struggled on for most of the following year on my own, in silence, talking to no one as I felt too embarrassed, weak and helpless to open up to anyone.
Eventually, I hit rock bottom, the depression had really got hold of me, emotionally I was drained, physically I was weak, mentally I was exhausted and all I could see around me was darkness and despair. I couldn’t see how I could move forward, and I had lost all hope. I was tired of the constant pain and I just wanted the suffering to end once and for all. One particular dark night I began having THAT conversation, the one about ending it all, as that seemed, in the absence of all hope and any type of solution, the only way to end the suffering and my only way out.
As far as I was concerned, in that moment, talking my life seemed the only solution to get me unstuck, to end the pain, and to move forward, even if it wasn’t in this lifetime! At that time, I owned a 9mm CZ75 pistol, and I remember sitting down on my sofa, holding the weapon, cocked with a round in the chamber, pointing it at my head and I recall searching for reasons to find just one as to why I shouldn’t pull the trigger andnd I came up with nothing, not a single reason not to do it…
At that point though, something happened that stopped me in my tracks. A vision, a picture, of my Mom popped appeared. It felt as if it was in in front of me and it made me realize straightaway that if I ended it here, I wouldn’t only be ending my life, but I would effectively be ending her life as well. Then I thought about my father, my brother and my sister and I decided that I couldn’t go forward with it, I couldn’t hurt them all in this way.
And so, I put the pistol down and walked into my room, collapsed on my bed and fell asleep, while praying over and over and over for help.The next day I woke up and decided I had to move forward, and I had to find a solution and I did. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t quick, but slowly and surely, I recovered and became stronger and began a new life.
Twenty years later, I am happily married, with 2 kids, I am financially independent, and I am doing what I love – working with men. I live on a beautiful island and I get to travel regularly across the world following my passion of personal development and travelling to beautiful places.
It all came about by taking 100% responsibility for my life and progress and it took discovering and immersing myself into personal development and as they say, the rest is history!
