I’ve had a wonderful life, born 56 years ago into a loving family. I understand that money was tight, indeed non-existent in my childhood, but I never noticed. Enough food, love and plenty of playtime equal happiness. I did enough at school to get by, always being capable of much more, but never sufficiently interested in mundane matters. I always aspired to having my own business and being successful, which to me meant having sufficient money to live and enjoy myself without having to count the cash. I’ve enjoyed good health and always felt that I had sufficient personal strength to beat anything if need be but I’ve never had to call on it. I succeeded in life like at school, in third gear with plenty of reserve if ever needed. I was never beaten in anything that mattered to me, and in my early twenties, met the most beautiful woman in the County, and, as I expected, she couldn’t resist my charms and we married. I adapted to married life very easily and continued to enjoy a wonderful, problem-free life.
Eventually I became a self-employed sales agent and always earned good money. We had three children, who we love very much, each of whom has grown up to be good, responsible adults. During the latter years, I consistently earned six figure salaries. We had a nice house, albeit with a mortgage. My eldest son received a car for his seventeenth birthday, and his own flat and a Cartier watch for his 21st. My daughter was doing us proud at University and my youngest son at private school. We bought another three properties, all with mortgages but easily affordable, and we all had new cars, and of course, annual holidays in 5 star hotels, all together and all paid for out of my commissions.
In between holidays, my wife and I went to most European capitals for long weekends, eating in the nicest restaurants, perhaps three or four per year, and always had Christmas abroad for a family holiday. I knew this could continue, but I needed something more. I wanted something tangible to pass onto my children (30 years, married with his own kids, 27 years and 19 years respectively) which we could make successful in the short term and then weigh in and all be in a position to retire together if we so wished. It would be a theme on my business with a slant. It couldn’t go wrong, after all, I’d been highly successful for more than 20 years, so with much fanfare, we’d take over a big new factory, with all the latest gizmos, and such was my confidence, I had no hesitation in signing personal guarantees of £1 million. I won’t bore you with details, but suffice to say it was necessary to close the Company after one short year. The experiences of what happened that year completely changed my mentality to life.
I was always certain that I could stand any pain or problem inflicted on me personally, but for what I had caused to my family really battered me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I had been so clever that to avoid various taxes, the Company was in the names of our kids, who were the directors and shareholders. My wife was joint owner of the properties, and because of their total belief in me, all co-signed the various guarantees, so all debts were joint and several, just because I had bulled them up into how successful this was going to be. As a result of my failure, for whatever excuse or reason I could give, my wonderful wife and trusting kids each lost their respective homes, cars, life-style, future credit worthiness due to each of them being declared bankrupt, and I feared, their confidence in me as a man. I mean, they were at rock bottom all due to me. We were within a whisker of being homeless, but thanks to two special mates that was avoided. My beloved mum, who passed away recently, who totally believed in me all of my life, had to learn of my demise, as did my elder brother and one of my sister, because I had to go cap in hand to beg in order to keep a roof over our heads.
From owning four properties and having a social life second to none, it took 12 short months to having each of the properties repossessed, watching the mortgages sell at ‘knock-down’ prices and rack up ludicrous charges akin to daylight robbery so that there was insufficient left to cover our personal guarantees, leading to subsequent bankruptcy. The bank’s valuation of my assets were sufficient to cover our indebtedness and yet when it came to realising those assets, and this was taken out of my control—all I could do was sit and watch other people making money from my situation—the total realised, once the price of the property had been slashed for a quick sale and then the extortionate charges had been added, which are not shared out amongst the creditors but are kept by the mortgage company, suddenly was not enough to pay our debts. These mortgage company charges were not fixed charges but percentages so that for instance £1 million property at market value was sold at £800,000 on top of this a further £100,000 was taken as part of a cost for realising the £800,000. Everything was in ten and twenty percents. Nothing was a reflection of the true cost of realising property.
Were we offered IVA and CVA type deals as a ‘solution’ to our debts, each of which would have been totally detrimental to our situation. I could not have ensured that I could have honoured those deals for any amount of time, let alone a five year payment plan. I felt they would only have prolonged the road to my personal bankruptcy.
At the same time I suddenly began to have dizzy spells. At first they were for a short time, and weeks apart, but as the months went by, they became longer and much more regular. For instance, I could go into Tesco with my wife, and half way round the store, I would become very light headed and only all my resolve stopped me falling over the display, or grabbing a complete strange to stop me falling down. I had to grasp the trolley to steady myself and walk with it outside, in a complete panic. Originally, this only happened in a crowded store, but then I found that it happened in the city centre when it wasn’t crowded. I became frightened of these recurring spells, and so avoided going to these places. At the same time, when I was driving I began to have sensations that the rear of the car was beginning to spin. I had driven hundreds of thousands of miles on the motorway, but now I was frightened to go near to one, even as a passenger. On quiet roads, I still had these sensations and had to pull up, especially whenever I noticed another driver following me. This was crazy, I realised I was falling to pieces. I visited my own G.P. and we found that my blood pressure was sky high. At first I didn’t realise what was happening, I just felt very down, very emotional and very irritable.
Everybody feels down sometimes but after six months of being close to tears and suffering from a constant headache, I realised that this ‘feeling down’ was lasting far too long. Little problems had become magnified, I was incredibly irritable and my mood swings became legendary within the family. The G.P. gave me a questionnaire to complete, I answered each question truthfully and on returning it to him, I found that I’d passed the test with flying colours to be diagnosed with severe clinical depression. I was horrified. I’ve never, ever thought of myself as somebody who’s prone to depression. The very nature of me is an optimist, that’s why I’m a salesman. There’s no doubt about it, bankruptcy knocked the stuffing out of me. For the last twelve months my life had been spent lurching from one week to the next and my old resilience escaped me during this time. In addition to the emotional issues, I also had various CT head and body scans which revealed a problem with my lungs so I initially went because of the dizzy spells but am currently being treated for the ‘new’ problems.
As mentioned earlier, I enjoyed a varied and full social life, which had now gone in that form, but I am left with the need to have a couple of hours in the company of men in the local pub several nights a week. These are the only nights that I get to sleep well, and even though we can’t afford this, my wife knows this and makes sure that I get these breaks. I can’t remember the last time she spent something on herself. We have two pet dogs that I take for a good walk twice a day, partly for their exercise and partly for mine, but I find this is a time that I go into deep inner thought and on many occasions I find myself blubbering openly, thinking about what I’ve caused and about my old mum. One this is for certain, as far as I’m concerned, all my illness problems are self-induced and therefore it must be that I can change the negativity into positive though.
I think it was that year that Charles and Diana were divorced, that the Queen in her Christmas speech said something like she had a bad year. I would say I’d had an ‘anus horribulous’ meaning I’ve had an ‘a___hole’ of a year. However, I can tell you that I’m going to fight back. I’ll get my blood pressure right, and immediately I’m going back to what I do best, earning big money, the first thing I’m going to do is pay back my two special mates, and the very next, I’m taking my wife on holiday. God knows, she needs and deserves it. Then, I’ll be thinking of my mum with a smile instead of breaking down like someone out of it. Then I’m going to see how long it takes me to get back every material thing I lost plus interest.
I know there’s only me who can do it but as I write this for Ladies in the Red, I’m getting stronger by the day and I’m sure in the not too distant future I hope I’ll be able to confirm I’m back up there, larger than ever.
My kids are all doing well in their own rights and I’m very proud of them. My daughter has bought me a new suit to make me feel good and get me going again. I’m beginning to wonder whether I was doing it all for them or perversely for my own ego. Whatever, it’ll all come better than ever. Wait and see….