For a long time, I've struggled with self consciousness. I've spent a great deal of my life hiding from others, and what others might think of me. I've found it incredibly difficult, at times, to just let people see me for who I am, and what I do, or have achieved in my life.
A turning point came for me about 25 years ago, when I was so profoundly depressed after the breakup with a girlfriend and a subsequent feeling of failure and uselessness, that I got very close to ending it all, and taking my own life.
A part of me just couldn't, though. Even though I didn't really understand what was going on, and I felt so helpless, a part of me saw life as too precious to simply throw away. So I came to a reckoning with myself, and made some decisions that would impact my life in ways that would reverberate through my life from that moment on.
If I was to kill myself, I figured, I might as well face some fears before hand. I might as well, as it were, live my life even if it meant killing me.
As a child I was terrified of everything. You name it, I was scared of it: water, heights, sex, girls, my father, school, failure, looking foolish, other people, getting hurt, death, hurting someone else, making an enemy, losing face, poverty, loneliness, betrayal... I was a Mummy's boy, a nature boy stuck in books and TV, living in a fantasy world while other boys my age were doing exciting things like riding bikes, joining the Cub Scouts, swimming, playing football and enjoying school. It was the other kids that had girlfriends, and won prizes, or did well in class, or were soccer captains or lived adventurous lives.
I didn't. I played with my toy cars which I'd carefully put away in their boxes after car chases and bank robberies and crashes and races and building fires, when my Simon Snorkel fire engine would come to the rescue, or Batman would chase down robbers who'd stolen my Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman, or I'd be an American millionaire driving my speedboat down to the lake (the bath), towed by my gold Buick Riviera with real headlights and tow bar. I lived in my imagination.
But my reality was bleak. I had my cat, a tortoiseshell named Pudding, and my books. But I really had few friends. My oldest sister was away in university, another sister was my enemy, constantly bullying me and making my life an absolute misery whenever she could. My parents marriage was awful: they had no love for each other. My father was having affairs, probably saw prostitutes, and I became my mother's confidente and therapist before I could barely speak.
So you get the picture. Lonely kid, no confidence, shy, scared, too stupid to see he was as messed up as he was.
But then, at age around 13, I discovered drugs.
