“I’ve been depressed since I was 18 and it’s led to a lot of self-destruction, to the point where I’ve thought, I don’t want to be here any more.”
Bryan was married for 25 years in a relationship he says he shouldn’t have been in.
“I got into it because I was scared of no one else wanting me. I was so down on myself it was a relief someone liked me. I knew early on it wasn’t right – you know when you don’t love someone, don’t you – but it became my life. But those were the feelings I never looked at, I locked them away. Life’s about making decisions and I’m shit at making them.
“Looking back at the early days, she must’ve clocked things weren’t ok: she got pregnant twice and we terminated. That really upset me.”
Despite this, when his future wife was laid up with an injury, Bryan decided it was time to commit and organised their wedding.
“It wasn’t a loveless marriage, it was a limbo marriage. After our second child, I got involved with someone else, which I wasn’t expecting. She left her husband for me, but when she gave me the ultimatum to leave, I couldn’t do it, I felt too guilty. My wife never suspected anything, but I went off the rails after that, playing avoidance.
“I lost myself.
“I went out all the time, developed an expensive cocaine habit that I thought was a cool thing to do, and yeah, it’s really nice but it fucked me up. My Mrs never knew about the drug thing but I built up a big debt. I thought I could get out of it if I sold the house and split up. I think she thought we’d separate and get back together, but I knew that was it. I was still hiding from my problems but at least that was one thing that I couldn’t fuck up any worse.
“So now I had the drug thing going on and more money to do it, but really I was lonelier than ever. I used escorts. Sounds like quite the rock ‘n’ roll life and maybe that’s what I was after. All it really did was reaffirm to me that a sexual encounter can be as little as half an hour or as much as several hours, but it’s gratification and gone. It was a wild, purposeless state and I got to the point of suicide.
“Trying to solve the loneliness, I went on a dating site but my experience was that it’s just a place where people with meaningless chat and baggage come to fuck. I like to spend time getting in someone’s head, I couldn’t be with someone I didn’t have a connection with. Saying that, the last person I matched with is now my wife. On our first date, I thought I was being cool and offered her some cocaine and she was shocked. That’s when I thought, you’ve gotta sort this out.”
In that moment, Bryan decided to move to a new, safer city away from his bad contacts, kick the habit and even pack in his job.
“In hindsight so much change in one go was scary and I wobbled hugely at first without my crutches. To the point where I set up a one-bed flat away from my wife and quit my new job, but eventually, they talked me out of it. It wasn’t an overnight resurrection, I’d call it a slow burn to recovery.
“I knew I needed to change but I find that really hard. It’s my weakness. I relate to writers who go out and experience stuff to find out more about themselves, it’s good for self-awareness and I certainly learned a lot about myself. I like myself now – I didn’t then – and I like to think other people like me too. I definitely wouldn’t be the person I am today without living through that.”