Over fifteen years later and I’ve not forgotten my life living with a sociopath. Your mind will do what it needs to in order to regulate your mental health. Blacking out events is just one way.

Life’s opportunities and what we do with them.

The choices I make on a daily basis and how I feel about them shape the memories I will have for the future. Thankfully, I’ve been able to make some really lovely memories. I’ve got my recent memories of the time that Hayley and I have spent together and those less recent, but just as important to me. They’ve all shaped who I am.

It is so difficult to know if you’re making the right choices in life because you just don’t know where that Choose Your Own Adventure page selection will take you, and of course whether or not by the time you get to the end point, your values have remained the same. For example, one could argue that as a young person you really valued and enjoyed not having any responsibility. The way you lived your life would be to avoid situations that required responsibility – relationships, stressful job or job progression, persistent education or children.

In ten years, if your values have remained the same, that being you’re happy trading the things that go hand in hand with responsibility – a family, more money and various opportunities for a life with far less stresses, then you’ve lost nothing and you’re effectively still happy.

But what if your values have changed?

Having to deal with regret is real for all of us, but we all live our lives one day at a time and it’s something that I constantly remind myself of.

“Did what I do today make me happy?”

“Will I regret my actions of today in years to come if this behaviour continues?”

From retail to a cadetship with a sociopath.

Working in retail for years got me feeling very empty. It took me years of this day in day out cycle to realise that I need to do more. I wasn’t under any illusion that it was my destiny to do greater things. I just wanted something different at that point. It was as boring as one living in the relative luxury of the developed world could think of. I spent my entire day standing in a kiosk in the middle of a shopping centre on hard floors making and selling popcorn. Something had to give.

I was stupid or naïve enough to fall into a sociopathic trap set by a mastermind of selfishness and egocentrism. You’d have thought that alarm bells would have rung as soon as I found out that his boys were named after heroic historical figures – Alexander the Great, King Leonidas, Ares, the God of War and that his daughter was named after himself – Alana (his name was Alan) to realise there was something very wrong with this man. Sadly, he had also brainwashed his wife so thoroughly, she believed and endorsed his selfish behaviours and his financial schemes.

After looking for an accountant for my mum’s business, I was offered work with him.

I’m not going to go into all the details right now and, while I only saw the topmost scrapings of the icing of the cake that was his business activities, I’ll be using him as inspiration for my further writing. It really is true. Truth is stranger than fiction. It’s hard to make this stuff up.

The sociopathic trap I speak of was two years of my life that I’ll never get back. I’m not exactly sure if I do want them back. It certainly shaped me in ways that I think has added to the complexity of who I am. Early on in the piece, after I got out. I kept thinking,

“I am in the best position now to be able to spot these kinds of personalities now and it’s never going to happen to me or anyone I care about.”

I’m not sure we should be approaching life this way. Looking back, I see huge flaws approaching new friendships and social encounters with my guns drawn, so to speak. We need to offer kindness. We need to offer compassion. And we certainly need to give people chances.

I’m not ready to give this guy his second chance.

Why would I? I need to think of all those things he did to me, my family and other people as fuel for my creative mind while I write. Look, don’t get me wrong. He isn’t on my mind all the time. It doesn’t feel like one of those cases where it’s me being able to let go so I can move on with my own life. It’s just there. It happened. My mind’s done enough to rub out bits that needed to be rubbed out to protect me. I don’t think of those things. I don’t really know what’s been rubbed out.

And that’s for the best.

All the best,

Nick.

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All content is original and belongs to @nickmorphew. [29 June 2018]

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