My eyes are bloodshot and full of psychic tears, I cannot see the words clearly that I am typing as it is like opening your eyes underwater in a swimming pool.  Everything is blurry through a thin mixture of water, salts, antibodies and Iysozymes.  My heart is racing and I feel physically sick and my legs are still shaking and are struggling to carry my body weight.  My stomach is in absolute knots of pain and discomfort and I have had diarrhoea twice this morning already; it’s only 10am.  I’m angry and short tempered and have already slammed the fridge door simply because there is no milk.  My heart, besides from racing in it’s operational rhythm, is physically aching, I mean actually and physically aching.  The dull pain in the left hand side of my chest has been there, non stop since October 2016.  I am finding it hard to concentrate on what I am writing here and keep staring aimlessly out of the window into the neighbours kitchen across the driveway of the carpark to the flats where I am staying with a friend.

I have just had a nervous/emotional breakdown, not ten minutes ago.  I’m 45 years of age, Male, strong, fit, healthy with no (other) medical issues.  I served for 17 years in the British Army.  I am educated, intelligent and have good professional qualifications as well as a friendly disposition and helpful and kind nature.  I don’t look 45 and am often told I look 35.  I have friends who love me and care for me……..

……..So why have I just spent nearly an hour on my hands and knees on the floor of my “care of” address bedroom, half naked, crying, sobbing, begging and pleading with the spirits of my parents and others to make this all stop?  I have had enough and my body has once again just let me know that I am at breaking point for the 3rd time in my life. This happened once on December the 14th 2016, again in April of 2017 while in the shower, and once again at 0950 this morning.  I have nothing left in the ‘main tanks’ and am now running on reserve again.  I know that I will get through this today, as simply writing here is drying the weeping tears and is bringing some focus to my tired brain.  The nausea, diarrhoea and heart ache (it is real by the way, not just a word – it IS physical) have not subsided since October 2015 when she walked out.  My brother explained the depression as a “Roller Coaster ride”, in that, some days during it you will be ok and either climbing up, or at the top of one of those lovely old fashioned wooden and steel structures that used to grace my childhood holidays in Blackpool.  You can see for miles and the air is fresh, the sun is out and things are indeed looking up.  Other days however you are either on your way down or you are being forced into your seat by Sir Issac Newtons theories and the effects of positive G.  Right now, I am at the bottom of that hill being forced, half naked to my bedroom floor in a total flood of tears and heartache.  I feel as if I can sink no lower.  I’m hurting badly.

I suppose it’s my fault as I opened Pandoras box this weekend and I am now struggling with the memories and heartache of past events that the box has just sparked life back into, in my long term memory.  A multi million to one chance event happened this weekend that is so remote, it is literally astounding.  At about 3 am on Saturday night, I had finished helping my friends at their North London pub and had just settled into bed in their spare room.  I opened my laptop wanting to just put my eyes to sleep and I randomly started thinking about certain items that I had no longer owned due to me selling and disposing of everything I own to stay afloat, back in Aug/Sept of 2016.  Without any thought about why, I randomly typed into eBay a particular item to see how much it would cost to replace.  Well, I found a few new ones and then a second hand one came up about three listings down.  I looked at the small photo and mentally remarked to myself how similar that looked to the one I used to own. I selected the item and to my amazement saw that the floor and the bed the photo was taken on was instantly recognisable.  Also the location it was being sold from was instantly recognisable.  My heart started to pound and my blood pressure rose immediately.  It was an item of mine, I was sure of it.  I did not recognise the eBay user name so looked at the sellers past history… I then saw lots of my personal items had either been sold or were on the auction site right now.  Three particular items were for sale on a 7 day sale and had 6 to go as I looked.  I literally had to double take as my mind orientated itself to be inside the photograph.  I knew instantly where the photographer was stood and the orientation of the entire building, outside of the frame of the photographs.   I knew the bedroom those photos were taken in intimately as it was my Ex partners home.  She was selling my items that I had left in her loft a few months ago on eBay.  In rage, I jumped up out of my bed and headed over to the window to get some fresh air, ripping off the toenail from my third toe on my right foot on a protruding nail from the old fashioned floorboards below, as I did so.  With blood streaming from my foot, I cranked up the window and breathed in deeply like I was emerging from retrieving black, rubber bricks from the deep end of Barney street swimming baths, in my pyjamas as a 6 year old child.  She had already sold some items and they were long gone, but what are the chances of randomly finding, on eBay, on a random day, in amongst it’s many millions of users, my own kit being sold by my Ex.  If she had put them on next week or the week earlier, I would never have been the wiser.  If Yin and Yang are believed to balance out forces, I seriously need to buy a lottery ticket today.

An Email followed immediately simply asking for all my stuff to be returned as I had left quite a few things there at her home.  To my absolute amazement, my phone ‘pinged’ only minutes later – She was awake at 0400 and the Emails followed through the night with her initially pretending she didn’t know what I was talking about.  Until Email number 4 … where I attached a screen grab of my stuff for sale, on her page.  The mood changed and she began to rant about how she was making up for lost monies during our relationship etc.  My heart sank that she she could say that sort of thing and how she could stoop to those levels.  If she wanted to get rid of my things, surely a text/email or carrier pigeon could have been sent asking me to come and collect them.  The email exchange ended at 1020am on Sunday morning, after no sleep whatsoever the following night, with just three lines of horrible text, tearing the already broken, but healing heart of mine, once again apart.  You know what hurt me the most?  The simple line she wrote in the eBay listing that read “Having a clear out“.  To my mind, it spoke volumes more than the actual 4 words.  It broke my heart all over again.

Sunday was a difficult day and I struggled to even raise a smile.  My headache got worse despite an inordinate amount of Paracetamol.

Monday flashed past and I can hardly remember what I did.  I remember helping to clean a sink in the pub, I took a train journey back and only remember watching the green English countryside zip by in the unusual sunlight of the day.  I don’t remember buying the ticket or walking home after leaving the station.

I woke up this morning with the weekends events piled high on top of everything else that is going on at the moment, at my mental closet door.  The closet door burst open at 0950 and everything it held is now spread far and wide across the floor of my heart and soul, just like my tears on the floor of the bedroom.

The death of both my parents, resigning from my job because my employer would not stand by me, facing criminal charges, police interviews, losing my home, having to sell my belongings, her actually leaving me at that tremendous low point, having to see a psychiatrist, struggling to finish my new professional qualification, dealing multiple times with a government department who have put me in this bankrupt position due to the time taken and inability to sort anything out, and the actual bankruptcy itself – it all pales into absolute insignificance.  The power of what a human being that you love dearly can do to you far outweighs anything that can be devised, produced or that is taken away from you in natural circumstances.

I was researching while writing this and found a website that listed 8 common signs of a mental breakdown.  There is only one that I don’t have or that I don’t feel.  I’m not done crying today, I can feel it coming on again and I’m afraid.