My Story - How To Find Purpose Amidst Chaos
Welcome! I’m glad you’re here. This journey is about more than just coaching; it’s about connecting and discovering the right path for you. In order to help you find your purpose, I need to explain how I found mine. My story is not for the faint-hearted so buckle up!
A Bit of a Rough Start
Like many of us, I didn’t get the best start in life. Not even close. I was conceived by accident and, without much hesitation, my father decided that raising a child was not on his to-do list, so he left my mother to raise me on her own, never to be seen or heard from again.
When I was 2, she re-married and, to cut a long story short, less than a year later, this bloke decided he didn’t like evidence of my mother’s past life running around in his house, so he did his best to make sure my older siblings went back to their father, which they did, but unfortunately for him, I didn’t have a father to go back to, so he proceeded to spend the next 12 years of my life torturing me instead.
Whilst I thankfully don’t recall a lot from the first 4 years of my life, I know from what I’ve been told and from simple, logical conclusions that I wasn’t having a great time. It’s near impossible to reason with any child let alone a 3 year old, so all I would’ve seen is this big scary figure enter my life, start yelling and carrying on, my big brother and sister disappear virtually overnight and, when my little brother was born when I was 4, the entire attention of both the remaining constants in my life drawn away from me.
Now that last bit, I do actually remember, and on reflection I’ve always thought of it as my “second abandonment”, however as I’ve gotten older I’ve understood more and more why this was isn’t necessarily the case and, more recently, since becoming a father myself, it’s shaped how I show up for my son and how I will divide my time between him and any future future children. There’s absolutely no reason for any child to feel like they’re not loved any more because another sibling has come along. In reality, the mother will be fully absorbed with caring for the new addition, and that’s where the father is supposed to step in, which didn’t happen in my case, though it is likely for the best all things considered.
Homeschooled and Isolated
Kind of ironically, religion was a big part of my upbringing. My mother met my step-fatherthrough church and likely bonded over the scriptures of the Bible. His overly negative views toward the influence of the education system and society in general, combined with his controlling nature materalised in the decision to homeschool me. The problem was, however, that neither of them finished school, which by no means is any measure of intelligence, but in this case, should have been a consideration if they had any intention of seeing me through high school.
A good tutor and effective socialisation to mitigate the negative aspects of homeschooling are always recommended, but I didn’t received either. The risk of external influences was far too strong for their liking; as far as they were concerned, they were the only influences I needed.
To further reduce the risk of external influences, listening to music as well as watching maintstream movies and TV in general were strictly forbidden. To say I grew up under a rock is an understatement, though this didn’t stop me from pinching my mother’s walkman in the night and flicking through radio stations.
Cheating to Escape
Neither of my parents played an overly active role in my homeschooling other than to leave me to my own devices and simply mark my work at the end of the day or week. I took full advantage of the lack of monitoring and cheated any and every chance I got, especially with maths. Luckily, my mother got me reading and writing well before school age so English and grammar came naturally and cheating wasn’t really possible when it came to writing. This meant I could finish my work in around 2 hours.
Despite my parents vehemently “protecting” me from external influences, one of the few luxuries I was afforded was the ability to leave the house unsupervised and roam the streets; I guess they assumed I wasn’t socialising with other kids. This was great because I instinctively knew that even the streets were safer than my home with my step-father around, so the sooner I could finish my work and get the hell out of the house the better off I would be. I was a true latch-key kid from an early age, which allowed me to learn to communicate with adults before anyone my own age and, more importantly, get a shitload of Vitamin D while every other kid was stuffed in a classroom!
Betrayal
Learning to communicate with adults was a blessing and a curse. Some were nice. Some were downright mean. Some were alcoholics. Some were really good at pretending to be nice. One in particular really passed my guard so to speak and, before I knew it, I was being regularly molested by him. Sorry to just drop that on you if it’s a trigger, it’s become a very necessary part of my story, and it will become a necessary part of yours if you’re so unfortunate.
There was no shortage of kids wagging school and the sorts of kids that wag school are not the sorts of kids you want to run into on the street when no one’s watching. Especially when they’re older than you and have weapons. I was a pretty wimpy kid so I took my beatings and got on with my day, often having to outrun kids on bikes to get away. Somehow, my own bike never got stolen. I knew if I let that happen I wouldn’t get another one. Between home and the streets, the betrayal just never seemed to end.
Strapped for anyone I could trust, I became self reliant very quickly.
Early Work Ethic
My step-father spotted an ad in the job listings section of the daily newspaper from the local newsagent who were looking for paperboys to work early mornings doing 1 to 3 newspaper routes around 1km away from my home. Rather than letting me enjoy my childhood, I was essentially told that I was going to go and apply. This might not sound out of the ordinary, but my age is some helpful context; I was 9. No matter to me! I naturally saw it as an opportunity to escape home!
That same day, my mother drove me down to the newsagent. Initially, they were put off by my age but she persisted and they agreed to just pay me in cash and keep it off the record. I know right? It befuddles me to this day that they would make such an agreement, but everything happens for a reason.
For the next 6 months, I would get up at 3am, have a shower (oh yeah, I was a chronic bed wetter, I’ll dive into this another time) to wash the smell of piss off me and rode down to the newsagent in rail, hail or moonshine. I didn’t miss a single day. After a while, they gave me the same amount of routes as the older kids working there which meant I was bringing home around $60 a week. Not bad for a 9 year old! Luckily for me, my parents were tightasses so saving it was mandatory. We opened a bank account for me and that’s where my pay went every week. All good things must come to an end though.
The reason why I picked up one of the routes I did was because one of the other kids got sacked for performance related issues. In his infinite wisdom, he decided it was my fault; perhaps he saw me working his old route and thought he’d connected the dots. Anywho, one morning he followed me and, without warning, pushed me off my bike and flogged me. When I got home and told my mother, she decided for me that I wasn’t going back there and that was the end of that. It transpired that he was already well known to police, but nothing ever came of the statement we made to them about it.
The Fruits of My Labour
Despite only lasting around 6 months, I was able to save almost $1,000. Before I left, one of the other kids I’d befriended at work had invited me over one morning after work to show me his new computer. I was used to an old clunky white case with a floppy disk drive and Windows 98. This machine was black, sleek, had a DVD player and was running Windows XP which had only come out the year before. “How f’n cool” I thought. I wanted one.
I enlisted the help of my mother to source a new computer. We found an ad in the same newspaper for a guy who built and sold custom PCs in a neighbouring suburb, and after a few phone calls back and forth, we went and paid him a visit and I picked up the coolest looking PC I had ever seen. Black and sleek like my mate’s one but with a windowed side through which you could see all of the most fascinating hardware. From this began a fascination which still hasn’t left me.
I found myself hoarding PC parts from old computers left on the side of the road which I hauled home on my bike. I had it stuck in my head that one day I would find a way to combine all of these parts to create a monster PC. This never happened. Fortunately though, I learned how to build, repair and navigate computers from early on which translated very well into my adult life and eventual career where I now find myself as “the IT guy” wherever I’m working and get regular comments on my computer literacy, specifically my ability to look for the most efficient way to navigate through tasks, often finding hidden tools and shortcuts before anyone else does.
Always Looking Up
The final piece of the puzzle which lends some explanation to the man I’ve become is my lifelong love of all things aviation. For as long as I can remember and even to this day, a plane flying overhead has never failed to get my attention, even if it distracts me from something important. This had a tendency to land me in hot water as a kid, as I was often tasked with helping my step-father mow lawns for cash and I recall several times he would send me to the car to get something, only to come looking for me 5 minutes later and find me completely distracted because I caught a glimpse of a plane flying over my head and forgot what I was doing.
There’s definitely a lot more going on behind the scenes there but we can get into that another time. The point is, I was fascinated by planes and flight, and this would go on to shape my life in very profound ways.
The Great Escape
After well over a decade of putting up with his shit, my mother finally decided enough was enough, and hatched a plan to take my little brother and I and escape my step-father to start a new life.
An opportunity presented itself in us being given a notice to vacate our rental. Packing all of our stuff could be done without any suspicion. She reconnected with a family in Canberra who we’d previously alienated for their beliefs but were gracious enough to take us in on our escape.
The morning of our escape, my step-father had to take his mother to the doctors. My mother had already told them of our plans and reasons and they agreed to hold them up as long as possible. She had also organised with a very kind neighbour to store our belongings in her garage until we had somewhere to move them to. We somehow managed to get that done in our VW Beetle.
Once that was done, we took $20k out of the safe, drove to a train station, parked the car, posted the key back to my step-dad, caught the train into the city, did some shopping then caught the overnight bus to Canberra where we stayed with our old friends for a few weeks while we found a place to live in Brisbane. My older brother had been living there for quite a few years at that point and found us a rental.
We moved into our new place in November of 2007, not long after I’d turned fourteen, and our new lives began. Oh and by the way, the bed wetting stopped the day we left. It’s amazing what stress can do to the body.
My Angsty Teenage Years
Unfortunately, I was naive enough to think my struggles were over, and nobody warned me that just because I’d gotten away from it all, didn’t mean that was the end of it. As I would learn over and over again through the years that followed, your past will always find new and improved ways to come back and bite you on the ass.
Being that I was essentially the man of the house now, I had to go and get a job. This meant I quickly wrapped up Year 10; barely even finishing it. I got myself a job at a local car wash as a car detailer and, to this day, have still not had a worse boss than the one I had there, but I stuck it out for quite a few years.
Not long after we moved, I decided I wanted to lean into music some more. I developed a keen ear for music through the regular late night theft of my mother’s walkman and eventually having figured out how to use Limewire to download songs then store and listen to them on my Nintendo DS, and my taste in music gradually shifted from 90’s and 00’s bangers to heavier and heavier rock and metal. One of the earliest instances of my asking for forgiveness instead of permission ensued and I walked to the pawn shop conveniently located across the road and bought my first electric guiter and a 10w amp. A no returns policy ensured my mother had no choice but to let me keep it, and my first true creative passion was born.
I quickly became the weird “emo kid” at work and was bullied daily, I guess just for being different, nothing out of the ordinary. Another curse, as it turned out, of learning to communicate with adults before anyone my age. I eventually caved in certain ways to “fit in” such as drinking and smoking, but I learned the hard way that this doesn’t result in the kind of respect that you want or need because it comes at the cost of your integrity.
Dating was a struggle because, again, I had no idea how to talk to anyone my own age. This resulted in pursuing relationships online, the long distance type, over anything in person, mainly because the sorts of girls who were on the other side of the chat box were likely cut from similar cloths and perhaps preferred the protection of a screen and keyboard dividing us. Despite being overly extroverted in nature, I found myself becoming introverted and closed in, likely because, for the most part, I felt completely misunderstood and like a complete outcast.
The culmination of my first serious long distance relationship came at the age of 18 when I decided, the day I got my licence to drive a car, to hop on a plane and move back to the city I grew up in to pursue a love interest I had been dating for around 2 years. No plans, no idea what the hell I was doing, just true to myself taking a massive risk and basically winging it to see what would happen. This entire relationship was built on a terrible foundation. Her parents were stricter than mine ever were and absolutely forbid her from having any relationships. Obviously this didn’t stop her. I, on the other hand, was a free agent, but unfortunately, without realising it was even happening, had manifested many of the same traits I saw my step-father exhibit throughout my adolescence. Jealousy, coercion and anger for the most part. As a result, this relationship only lasted another 6 months or so before she’d had enough and bailed.
Early Adulthood
Despite my relationship ending, I had started to build a little life for myself so I stayed put and kept at it. I’d secured my dream job at the time which was as a baggage handler for a contractor handling many different international airlines. I know what you’re thinking. That was my dream job? Yep. Low standards = less disappointment I guess. It had a lot to do with my love of aviation, but it had always been a genuine desire of mine, and I’ll always own it. How many people can say they landed their dream job at 18? All you have to do is lower the bar! I’m joking of course. The bar is yours to set, however high or low.
Unfortunately, crippling loneliness set in very quickly as I had gotten used to having a girlfriend, even if it was mostly virtual. I found love again, this time in a friend of a cousin of mine, but again, in another city. An 8 hour drive away. What followed is one of the worst examples of thinking with your dick instead of your brain that I think I’ve ever seen, if I do say so myself. For the next 6 months, I put this girl on a pedestal, making her the most important thing in my life, despite that fact that she was bad news, and I knew she was. I called in sick from work for up to a week at a time citing back issues, a complete and utter lie, and drove up to see her, staying with my cousin and my aunt in order to spend time with this new girlfriend.
Eventually my employer saw me as a liability and started sifting through camera footage to look for a reason to fire me, and they found one. They called me in and sat me down. They proceeded to show me a video of me hooning on a baggage tug, yanking the handbrake on and sliding it into a parking space before jumping onto and sliding off the bonnet and over to a set of baggage containers which had just arrived off an major international airline. I then proceeded to rip one of the doors open and, rather aggressively, empty around 40 bags onto the belt in under a minute. Impressive to some, but not to my employer. I was fired on the spot.
I packed my things and drove up to where my girlfriend lived that same night. I told her I’d quit because I wanted to move closer. Another complete and utter lie! When I arrived, she was in a mood. I had expected excitement and appreciation for my bold move, but got nothing of the sort. In my infinite wisdom, I decided that wasn’t good enough, packed my stuff again and continued on up to where I’d moved away from in the first place, where I proceeded to shack up with my best girl friend of some years at that stage. Let this be a warning: do not date your best friend unless you’re prepared to risk losing them forever. It took me less than a year to lose mine.
At around 20, after 2 years of running around trying to find myself and learning every single lesson the hardest way possible, for the first of many times I moved back in with my mother. This was a pattern that would continue for 5 or so years. No matter how bad a position I got myself into, she was always there to bail me out. In hindsight, while her intentions were good, I know that had she just let me fall over once or twice I probably would have figured it out sooner. Let this be a lesson to parents: sometimes you have to let your kid fall over and let them figure out how to get back up. Failure to do so is only starving them of a necessary exercise in character building.
My small circle of friends at the time, while good natured, had a pension for smoking pot, a habit I eventually picked up. I don’t regret it at all as it was likely to either have been that or alcohol and I like to think I picked the less harmful of the two. Many signs that I should stop would come over the years, all of which were ignored. For example, an opportunity arose to get back into baggage handling with a major airline. I knew a drug test would be mandatory and I knew well enough in advance to just stop in enough time to pass the test, and I did stop, but I never made it to the test because I walked into that interview expecting to be given the job simply because I had prior experience. This attitude must have been evident to the seasoned, older gentlemen who interviewed me as I would find out later that day I had not been successful. It was a Friday. You can guess exactly what I did that night with my mates.
Fast forward 2 weeks and I get an email inviting me back for another interview. To this day I am convinced it was either a mistake or they didn’t get the numbers they had hoped, either way, everything happens for a reason and off I went knowing exactly what to expect and having completed enough self reflection to know precisely where I went wrong, and not to mention freshly humbled, totally aced it and found out that afternoon I would have to submit to a drug test. In two days. Off I went researching ways to pass the test, which I did successfully, which only served to further cement the cheating mindset fostered earlier in my life.
Nevertheless, I got the job and thus began slow but sure career turning point.
First Serious Relationship
Not having anything resembling a father figure can wreak havoc on a young man’s life and I was no exception. It has only dawned on me in recent years during self reflection that my sense of entitlement in fact reared its ugly head a few more times throughout my early adult life. Deep down I felt like the world owed me something for what I’d been through. Victim mentality was alive and well.
I met my next love interest via a dating app while on a weekend visit in, wait for you it, the city I grew up in. So guess what I did? I’ll spare you most of the story because it’s really no different to the last instance, except that I was able to transfer through my employer to work at the airport down there (again) and I moved in with her. Very close to the suburb I grew up in. I was too young, naive and knew nothing yet about the long term effects of childhood trauma. To say that relationship was a disaster would be an understatement. We were both messes. She had just come out of an abusive relationship and I was still yet to come to terms with the first decade and a half of my life. Not a combo as it would turn out.
We had a lot in common, but unfortunately not a lot of it was positive. We both developed a daily habit of smoking weed. I somehow never managed to get caught for it at work. For me, this was probably a good thing, because as I would later on discover, negative attachments are a thing, and driving past or through the same areas where it all happened without having processed any of it was a recipe for a bad time, and weed had a mostly calming effect on me which helped dampen the almost daily reliving of trauma. The numbing effect was useful in the short term but would cause ill effects in the long term.
Luckily, this only went on for less than 2 years before I decided to end things and get the hell out of that place. I prided myself on being able to just pack my life up into my car and go anywhere, and that’s exactly what I did. I must give special credit to a close friend of mine, who is quite a bit older and wiser than I, who planted the necessary seeds to make me realise what I needed to in order to make the decision to leave.
Mental Breakdown and Beginning to Heal
Within a week of moving in with a friend back home, unable to escape the self reflection, an overwhelming feeling that I was actually the problem swept over me and there was no amount of bargaining I could do to make it go away. Again, special thanks to that same friend for helping me navigate this, but it completely broke me. The realisation that there was something seriously wrong with me and that something would have to be done about it in order to move on from it. This began a long, painful journey of connecting dots and healing.
I was recommended a good therapist to go and see, which I did, and spent the first session laying it bare. Many tears were shed as I came to grips with the fact that I had been abandoned, abused and betrayed in so many ways for all of those years growing up. To his credit, my therapist didn’t mess around and cut straight to the chase, telling me that the only way forward was to forgive. Where had I heard that word before? I didn’t resist though, and he took me through an exercise, first forgiving my father for abandoning me and then forgiving my step-father for all that he’d done. An important lesson I learned here was that forgiveness can be intrinsic, extrinsic or both or, in other words, you don’t necessarily have to say to your abuser’s face “I forgive you”; this may be impossible for many reasons and you should not be starved of the ability to forgive simply by their absence. In subsequent sessions we went down the list, forgiving my mother for failing to protect me, that old man for molesting me, those kids at the end of my street for getting me to close my eyes before pouring a concoction of god-knows-what in my mouth (my mother insists I smelt like petrol when I ran home crying), and perhaps most importantly, myself for letting all of this get the better of me and mistreating people as a result.
I learned enough from this therapist in a few short months that I was set free with my new tools to go and conquer myself. That was the plan anyway. I would spend the next few years in a cycle of letting things get bad, whether it was work, friends or romance, then taking a step back to analyse, usually too late to salvage anything.
How to Find Purpose
Conclusion
That bit of backstory should be all you need to know to start to piece together the bulk what made me who I am. I could keep writing, but if I was to do that I might as well write a book, and I’ve got no plans to do that any time soon. Adult life is what I’m pitching to help you navigate so you will find out plenty more about how I’ve navigated mine once you start to get to know me. There will be stories aplenty. On that note, if you want to change your life for the better, you should definitely consider joining my community and get in touch about my coaching services. Hopefully I’ve shared enough with you for you to feel comfortable telling me your story. Remember though, it’s never a competition as to who’s “suffered more”, it’s a fact that everyone only knows their own threshold for pain and suffering. After all, it is all trauma at the end of the day. See you here.
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