ABOUT

A five minute history

1968 - Born in Lancashire, England.

1976 - (8) Suffers maternal abandonment.

1979 - (11) Starts smoking cigarettes.

1982 - (14) Hospitalised in Belgium for acute alcoholic poisoning.

1985 - Starts smoking cannabis regularly.

1986 - (18) Accidentally takes gigantic life changing amount of magic mushrooms.

1989 - (21) Leaves university with 3rd class honours in chemistry.

1989 - Cannabis causes panics, whilst his life feels wasted, so he begins learning classical piano.

1990 - After a year in his 1st job, he leaves it due to feeling anxious and paranoid.

1992 - He leaves his 2nd job after extensive bullying, but the derogatory voices in the 3rd person part, had been unreal.

1992 - (24) He's admitted to a mental hospital with schizophrenia. Then living on benefits, he volunteers in a local Edwardian mental asylum.

1993 - He risks his income to be an MSc in computing student, but by chance they find him a grant.

1994 - (26) Starts seeing Clare from the MSc, a much older women. He graduates shortly afterwards.

1994 - Suspicions and distrust remain innate. He lasts three days in a commercial programming job.

1995 - Clare gets him weekend work piano tuning, in a large Dickensian like warehouse.

1995 - Twice he annoys the brilliant, elderly piano player/teacher working there, who he idolises. He verbally annihilates Michael, who is admitted again.

1997 - (29) Gets a job where he did his MSc.

1998 - Suspicions/ paranoia rise again, especially about Clare. He's hospitalised, hopefully for the last time, as lifelong lithium is prescribed.

1999 - Converts to Catholicism after reading C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity", and because Clare plays the organ at weekly Mass.

2000 - He's given nothing to do at work for a decade, but finds some meaning in life by writing poetry at home.

2010 - Made redundant and placed in the DWP's ESA Support group. His extra free time means his poetry and English improve greatly, and he becomes increasingly serious and prolific with verse.

2012 - (44) Square one: Clare dies. He's alone, unemployed, with low self-esteem, on £500 a month, and caring for his incontinent elderly dog, that he's no heart to euthanise.

2013 - He begins walking dogs voluntarily for the RSPCA weekly.

2014 - (46) Psychology sessions highlight avoidance. He is "prescribed" a local writing group. By reading his better poems, he gets his "foot in the door".

2014 - Michelle "winks" at him on match.com, because of his RSPCA dog walking.

2014 - They quickly begin seeing each other. Michael proposes. Soon after Michelle becomes pregnant.

2015 - (47) After six months together they get married, and share 12 week baby scans at the ceremony. A later scans reveals tragedy. Rose Megan, their only child, has severe spina bifida. After second opinions she is stillborn.

2015 - Their marriage survives. They have happiness, not least because of the 1 in 10,000 chance of Michelle being bipolar too, an irony that is perhaps their first real piece of luck in life.

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i wish you Godspeed on your own journey.......