Letter to the Editor: I Have Just Stepped Off the Hamster Wheel

To send a letter to the editor, simply write in. You’ll get a reply and we’ll anonymise any blogged version.

Reader H writes:

Dear Robert,

In June 2016 your book saved me. I was burnt out after years of struggling as a single parent and working three jobs: cleaner, teaching assistant, and weekend shop assistant. As well as having ongoing counselling for a traumatic childhood.

I was trying so hard to make a life worth living. I ended up on antidepressants as my doctor suggested it was depression and not, as was the case, burn out. The antidepressants made me feel worse, unable to get up, washed, dressed. I felt I was at the very bottom of a deep black hole trying to claw my way out.

A friend forced me out of the house in Southampton and dropped me in the middle of Reading high street while he made sales calls in the area. Unable to face people, I found the nearest bookshop to hide in. The assistant asked what I was looking for?

“Anything about escaping life without hurting the people I love?”

Looking perplexed he led me to the “positive mental attitude” books. I searched and searched until a title caught my eye. It was called Escape Everything!

I read your book over and over. I was in that bookshop for three hours and he left me be while I read it over and over. It was exactly what I felt… life had become one long struggle of trying to make ends meet. Nothing else.

I arrived home a different person. I came off the antidepressants, wrote up my escape plan and worked my bollocks off!

Fast forward through some incredibly hectic years. I have renovated many unloved properties (my passion), giving them back their dignity and mine. I have just stepped off the hamster wheel And have many creative ideas still to pursue!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for dropping a ladder into that hole.

To this day it is my bible. I am free to live the life I want to live and life is bloody amazing!! 😘

Thank you.

*

Foof. It’s hard to know how to respond to this one other than to say thank you for taking the effort to tell me. You’re welcome. And your new life sounds beautiful. You’re the one who did it though: you planned and acted, which is what it all comes down to. Congratulations.