In 2022 I thought I had reached a milestone buying a house with the girl I thought I loved, planing to propose the following summer.

Within 5 days she moved out accusing me of cheating and turned every single person we knew against me. She later went into psychosis which everyone blamed me for. Turned out she had been cheating for over a year, even before she asked me to buy a house close to her family and friends. Left me for the guy she had most recently cheated on me with. Dealing with the psychosis and what I can now see was quite extreme emotional abuse over the year I developed quite extreme PTSD.

This was made worse by the fact I started a new more senior job at a new company during the chaos and wasn’t able to focus. I was also left in a house in the middle of nowhere, 3 hours away from my family and friends, without a car or even public transport on weekends.

Because our original plan involved her car and family spare rooms for office days I had to commute to walk for 3 hours each way. As we had spent every penny on the house, which we now couldn’t sell as interest rates skyrocketed I had to live there. When she came down she agreed to pay her share until the5 year fixed term ended as long as I remained.

I can tell you now nothing breaks a man more than all of this while hearing all the neighbours celebrating their new lives and families.

I had just enough money to decide between being able to see a friend or have a therapy session once every 2 weeks. The rest of the time I would remain frozen on my sofa not working or doing anything. As my new job started off so badly and I had PTSD I continued to struggle for nearly 3 years.

I ended up buying a second hand car at the peak of their price following COVID for £7k, it broke down 6 months later and constantly broke every 6 months on the motorway. My family, while supportive in the beginning and saying I had been through something some of them would have survived, slowly lost their patience and expecting me to get over it. I felt they lost a lot of respect for me as a person and was a failure. Most of my friends walked away as they were either joint friends or couldn’t deal with someone struggling with a severe mental illness.

In 2024 I was threatened with a forced sale going against our agreement which meant I would now lose all the equity I had built, on top of the tens of thousands spent on trying to make living there work.

I ended up moving back in with my mother and putting everything in storage. At 37 I was living in a city I never wanted to, broke and struggling mentally. My plan was a new development being built in August 2026 and would require me to obtain a bonus salary rise at work which was agreed with my management team the previous year and I was on track to meet most objectives.

My work was going through a restructure and one of the roles I was the only qualified candidate for and really interested in this career path was given to someone else where most colleagues and even our senior leader felt it broke fair hiring practise. I was also given the role that nobody wanted and I thought I had no interest in.

I was at my lowest point in December 2025 and suicide consumed my thoughts most days. I returned from a holiday and my car needed £1k in repairs. I remember pulling over and screaming ‘what do you want from me??!!!’ to whatever is out there that seems to want me to struggle so hard.

I had a colleague who was leaving , she was a nice older lady and said had a feeling to buy me a book but wasn’t sure it was appropriate. I was open to learning about anything. Turns out it was a book about prayer. I read some chapters, nothing really impacted me but for the first time in my life i got down on my knees and asked for help. I also wrote down exactly what i wanted in my dream flat on paper.

I had stopped looking at flats months ago as I would get upset window shopping and knowing I was so far away. One weekend I was so fed up and had a random urge to look. By some random chance a friend I don’t really text back and forth with a lot (we meet up to chat) was messaging me. I sent him a few and one I thought was average, which he said to look back at.

Without going into too much detail this flat represented a 1 in 10,000 opportunity due to reduced monthly costs. 3 days later I went to see it and 5 people would have first choice over me. None of them took it so I could. If I had looked week later it would have been gone.

What i find odd about it is everything I had written down I wanted in a flat I would not have been able to get now having gone through the process. The fact interest rates have shot up and my work changed their policy so I was no longer eligible for a bonus rise too. I would have ended up somewhere I didn’t want to live.

I also finally made it to the top of the list for ADHD treatment and started medication. It turns out my inability is in focus or start work as I became more senior was partly because of ADHD. I’ve suspected it my entire life and ignored it despite how bad it got.

The combination of getting the job no one wanted, which is very systematic and being medicated meant I could drop into flow and ended up really enjoying the work. People commented how well I have taken getting the job no one wanted 😂

I moved in 3 weeks ago, and to celebrate went to the casino. It’s not a regular thing I do but one in a blue moon. I ended up turning £200 into £30k in one of the craziest runs the dealers have ever seen. I put that money away into savings and investments so have a safety cushion.

I am now living in my dream flat, loving my job and have some wealth. 4 months ago I had none of this.

Never underestimate how quickly things can turn around. I’m still shocked this is happening.