The Confessions

The following are extracts to a friend written during a time of depression (possibly caused by nicotine withdrawel). "A bearing of my soul". The "friend" I'm writing too is someone I knew (platonically) five years ago for less than four hours.

I feel bored all the time. Do you feel bored? I mean I'm just bored with everything. I don't eat out in the evening because it's just, boring. In the evening I read newsmagazines, but they're boring. So I sit and try to think what would thrill me, what would give me some pleasure, and I just can't. I mean, I could hit it really big. I write a book proposal and it sells a million and I personally make a million US dollers and I can go anywhere and do anything, and I really don't know what I'd do with it. I mean, I can't think of anything that would make me happy. Is that wierd? I can't imagine anything being good; I can't think of anything I want. What do you want, fundementally?

Where do you see your life going, ten years from now? Are you happy when you see your friends? What are ther things that make you happy. When you get up in the morning, do you wake up happy, unhappy or neither? What's your normal mood, from morning to night, are you happy most of the time or none of the time? If it's none of the time then what do you need to find joy again, what in the world? where is it? Am I alone going mad alone or is everyone living gloomy days of unfulfilment?

I don't speak to anyone now. It's just the way I am. Today for example, I went out to eat and said "egg, toast" etc. and ordered my food in about fifteen words. When I finish here on the computer I sign my name in the members book and say "Thanks" as I leave. Then I'll go to the shop and say "bread, cheese, two bottles of water" - perhaps twenty-five words, then I'll go home, read news magazines and sleep.

But yesterday also, I ordered food in ten words in the morning, said "thanks" at the business centre and said "bread, cheese, two bottles of water" at the shop.

And the day before the same.

And before.

Now the last conversation I had was a man called Rajiv Singh I met on the way to Bodhgaya just before new year. I knew him for one night. Before that I spoke to my parents when they came July to Nepal. Before that I can't recall. I think it was christmas 97 when I met my parents again in Goa. I mean between January 1997 and July 1999 I didn't have a single conversation except to phone my family, on average every six weeks. Now we all use e-mail maybe I'll never have a conversation again?

When I lived in England my parents had a pub. We had our house in the town, kind of the suburbs, but the pub was far out, like twenty-five kilometers and pub hours are 11am. to 11pm. So I would go to school and come home, get my own food, go bed and they would return around 2am. In the morning my father left very early before I was awake and Mother was still sleeping when I left.

When I was about twelve years old my Father was stopped for drink-driving. The police set up road blocks and use a breath machine to see if anyone's been drinking. If you get caught it's six months in prison or a fine. Well, he got the fine but they take away your licence for five years and you're not allowed to drive.

There was no way they could use taxis and Mother didn't weant to drive like that so they moved a bed into the office and stayed there overnight. I mean, their pub was in a kind of huge site set over hundreds of acres owned by a millionaire called Sam Makness. There were lakes and rivers with boats, hundreds of caravans that people could rent for a day, week or month, a mini-railway, shop, restaurants, theme pake, rides, arcades and racing games. It was a bit like, I don't know, I guess Disneyland but much smaller. So there were baths and showers there because of all the people living in caravans. My parents could wash there, use the laundry. There wasn't any point coming back as the taxis were so much trouble.

So it was decided that they would go and live there. My sister would come once every fifteen days to clean. She would bring an envelope of money from my parents for me to buy food. And I would stay in the house by myself.

I thought it was great. I gambled most of the money on horses and stopped going to school. Eventually someone from the school started writing so I just pretended I was sick. There wasn't much anyone could do as the school didn't have the address of the pub.

I think the whole problem started then; life was too easy. I just stayed there for years. No one ever came round as I was a loner at school. I had a TV, computer and alcohol and so I "dossed" as they say in England. I just dossed for years. It was like now. I mean I work now, but I would say for about six years I hardly had a conversation.

One day I bumped into a friend from years ago, Matthew Topp. He was going to college and we got talking and I said I wanted to return and finish schooling. I did, plus I went to work for charity in a shop. I was perhaps nineteen when I met him, so it was about six or seven years I stayed in the house. I saw my sister twice a month and said hello to a man who cleaned the windows every two months. But apart from that I stayed in, read, wrote, went shopping, played music - and had absolutely no contact with other human beings at all.

Well, I finished college, then signed on to do courses to get to university, but there were too many night classes and I didn't like the people - I got really depressed. A business called George Mann accepted a non-fiction book I had written about religion. I was over the moon, but it went bankrupt before it could either produce it or pay me. That was too much of a disapointment and I left the country in despair, vowing to stayt away, for better or worse, forever And that is a vow I have so far kept.

Why am I telling you this? I don't know. I mean the way I live now just might be a part of my karma/fate. The funny thing is that whenever anyone tries to talk to me I only answer in monosylables and cold shoulder them. People annoy me generally and when they're with me I just wish they would go away. But when I think about how little contact I ever have with people it bothers me. There are all these images of "everyone" and 'regular people' or "the world out there" in films and magazines and TV. People, everyone, goes out, has a circle of friends, nice neighbours, lovers, children, hard days at the office, holidays on rivers - messing about in boats, making picnics, pet cats that scratch the furniture but are ever so cute, carpets, fitted kitchens, lots of clothes, laptops, smiles, telephones, and....... just lots of things that I don't have, haven't had and can't ever imagine having.

Every time I look at a magazine or film I feel incredibly abnormal. I mean I sit here typing now and I look out the window and I can see foreigners whom should be just like me and they're nothing like me at all. They dress in a way I don't, do things I can't. Outside this room I just saw two people laughing, climb on a motorbike and drive off, I see them and feel like an outsider as I never laugh, wouldn't climb on a bike and don't know anybody.

I think there's something wrong with me, as a human being I mean. Right from the start. I always hated other kids coming to see me, I was a moody five year old and Mother would force me to invite kids in the house but I really hated them touching all my things. I was about five years old when this joint problem started, I had to go to the hospital when I couldn't walk but the X-ray didn't show any damage and they said I was lying and they made me walk round.

Oh God! What am I going to do? I feel bad when I don't get to speak to anyone for months, but when someone trys to speak to me I hate it and wish they would go away. I'm completely insane and nothing makes me feel content.

I think negative thinking is massively under-rated. If you always expect the worst things to happen, the worst part of people to manifest, bad luck and constant unhappiness and calamities - you're never going to feel disappointed. That might be the problem. I was living this hell in England, but I had the general idea that everything would get better. I thought that one day I would carry on and have a life like the people in magazines or on TV.

Oh THAT'S ENOUGH!!!! I mustn't keep whinning on like this. It's awful and I'm going to depress the both of us.

Sorry for all this gloom.

Love

Let's talk about love, going right back again to my past. You know at this rate, you're becoming an excellent therapist! You know I'm Asian don't you; I can't remember if I mentioned it. My mother is a white European, but my father was from Kenya, but of Indian race. So in other words I'm Eurasian (half-Indian - half Caucasian). I mention this as I grew up in a town about 60 kilometers north of London. The further away you go from London, the less black or Asian people there are. Well anyhow, English people can be funny about race and it became a big deal. I was very aware I was Asian.

Well I'm not sure how it happened but I became obsessed. You recall how unhappy I was at 16 years old, I was about to spend the next fours years barely venturing outside the house where I lived alone. I got the idea in my mind that I would find happiness by renouncing England and becoming "totally Asian". To transform myself I would marry an Asian woman, we would go abroad, I would learn to speak her language, wear foreign clothes, etc. I thought that the source of my unhappiness was England itself!

Once I had this idea it really was a true obsession; I thought about nothing else. I started eating only Asian food, watching Asian TV programs, and basically went round thinking that I would marry some Asian woman and we would go off and I would become a transformed and happy individual rather then the pathetic recluse/hermit that I was in reality.

And I did this for about four years. Now in all that time I had one male "friend", and didn't actually know anyone else. My friend moved away to Wales (a small country next to England) and then I knew no one again.

I mean, for all that time I stayed in, I stayed in because I had to. I had some kind of phobia or something. When I went out I would kind of tremble, feel I would panic and run away. When people spoke to me I froze and couldn't reply. I was insane probably. I mean in even got medicated for it in the end and I sort of slowly recovered.

Anyway, I lived this absurd life, finished college and then came to Asia. I came with the specific idea of settling down with an Asian woman. I was still obsessed with this. Well I arrived in Asia, traveled about, taught English, and didn't really meet anyone. I was like I am now: I just traveled round alone. Well, I did meet one woman I lived with for a couple of months but it weren't right, we didn't even like each other.

I was 23 by then, and had "known" exactly one woman (I know, that really is pathetic) and I ended up in Penang, Malaysia, not far from where you used to be. I stayed in this hotel where the owner would bring me food. I got really depressed there. I mean really depressed and I started getting nervous in public again, so I stopped going out. The only time I'd go out was after 10pm. I would go sit on the front step, and once a week I went to the bank. I found it really hard to get to the bank, I mean I'd tremble and hardly be able to sign my name.

From this point on, the whole story turns awful - but I really have to write this. An English woman (white) turned up. I should have been suspicious as she was travelling with a man called Richard who was so thin he looked like a skeleton and was a drug addict. He openly admitted that and heroin was about the only thing he would ever talk about. They weren't lovers, they had met recently and checked in together to save money on the room.

Anyway, she started "showing an interest" as it were, trying to get me to go out and attend a yoga class with her. I didn't want to go but she was amazingly persistent. I would sit out on the step alone at night for hours and she would do the same. But there was something weird about it, I mean it felt like we were acting. She talked me into travelling on with her to Australia, we became lovers (though it was repulsive). We did indeed go to Australia. She wanted to work there for a year.

Once we landed everything changed, she hardly would even look at me. It slowly dawned on me that she had planned this whole thing, as she was fearful, I mean she was fearful of travelling alone. In fact, she often recalled anecdotes from her past of other men she had met and pretty much done the same thing. She would just have to travel somewhere, got scared, found a man who was... "mentally unstable" lets say, and start a relationship that would last as long as,.... well, until she was settled. So I was duped, living in Australia where I could hardly afford to eat anything, in this awful room with an awful woman who wouldn't even talk to me.

Oh but what the hell, that doesn't matter, I'm over it. It's what followed.

I would spend all day walking round feeling awful and one night an Englishman was going out with a load of people and invited. There was about six of us, we went to a Jazz club. I was seated opposite a Japanese woman who was staying where I was. We talked, went home.

Next day the Japanese woman checked out as her Mother and sister were arriving to visit her for a couple of weeks. A few days later I wrote her mother a silly letter for a joke and they phoned and invited me to lunch, which I attended. I left but agreed to meet her at the same Jazz club when her mother had left in a few days.

We met up. This was the first time we were alone, and we just got on really well, I mean like no one I've ever known. I told her about the English woman I was living with, our troubles. She told me of an Iranian she lived with for two years in Canada where she had been studying English, he was married but he lied about it for two years so she had been duped as well. At present she had a boyfriend in New Zealand and they were going to get together in a couple of months when he saved enough money.

I didn't see her for a few days. I was at home with the English woman, we were having as terrible time right then, and then it turned into the happiest day of my life as the Japanese woman turned up at the door! We went out just the two of us. The English woman didn't care as she had already given me a deadline to get out the room.

The Japanese woman and I went to the Jazz club, then started meeting on as regular basis, then on 5th November 1993 we stayed out all night at a club, in the morning we went to the bank at 10pm. Then went home and became lovers. I mean we got on so perfectly;

I was in Paradise.

The minute we finished... well, you know, ... sex, she told me she still wanted to stay with her New Zealand boyfriend and would only be able to have a short affair with me. I was devastated but I had to agree, as I couldn't leave her.

We checked into a room together and lived there for about 20 days. It was blessedness. She had a job in a restaurant, I was writing. We would cook breakfast together, talk all day, hang around the shops, in the evening we would sit up on the roof of our hotel and talk, talk, talk. I felt like she was my soul, if I examined my inner-being it would be her. I would tell her I loved her but the Iranian had hurt her too much and she would say she can never love anyone, not even the boyfriend in New Zealand. Eventually she decided she didn't want me to go but wait until her boyfriend came over and the three of us would discuss what was best.

At this time my brother arrived in Sydney for two weeks so I had to fly and see him. While I was away I wrote to her every single day, all I thought of was her. My brother left and I went to the post office to pick up my mail. There was a letter from her. It said her boyfriend had phoned her very upset and she had agreed to stay with him and only be my friend, She had moved to a new smaller room but said I could return but I'd have to sleep on the floor.

Of course, I couldn't do that. I returned, didn't go and see her, then bought an air ticket back to Asia. The night before I left I bumped into her by chance. She was with one other Japanese woman and a black man, We went and ate, talked for ages, then she went home.

Next day she came, we went to the airport, stood outside just looking at each other and crying. Then I got on the plane.

Her boyfriend arrived in my absence. They went to Japan together and lived as lovers. She would write perhaps 6 times a year and send small gifts. About two years later I was in north India. I was just falling asleep but suddenly my soul/consciousness was pulled from my body, I was looking down at my body from the ceiling. I went flying through a tunnel and suddenly was in a dark room. I looked and realised my Japanese friend was there. She was crying and there was an awful sense of gloom, then I returned to my body and woke up. The sense of gloom stayed with me for about three days, I just walked round and couldn't shake it off. Absolute blackness and I couldn't explain it.

In her next letter it turns out something awful happened between her and her lover (she wouldn't say what) and he had left, their relationship was over.

Since then I still write often, she writes twice a year, she stopped sending gifts. She traveled Europe a few times. I only write, we've never phoned, or met. She doesn't love me; she considers us friends.

But I haven't stopped loving her; I don't think I will. I know it's stupid, but I can't help it. She was the only woman that could fill my obsession and I lost her. Its six years ago and there's not a day that I haven't thought of her. I've not even slept with anyone since I left her, Six years! I'm never going to recover.

And now it's been so long, I've got sick and turned crippled and I suppose I'm feeling bad as I begin to accept that life can never be like those short weeks again. I can never find someone I would feel the same way with. All I ever wanted, I found it, and lost it.

Recently she sent me a photo of her in France. It was the first time I had seen her since Australia. I opened the envelope on the beach and just sat and cried, even now, all that time ago.

So there you have my pathetic past. Someone broke my heart and it can't be mended and life can never be good again. They say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, I wish THEY would tell my why I keep praying I can die in my sleep.

Past

I've just sat here fort a couple of minutes trying to think of a confession, and finally something has come to mind. maybe if I keep confessing like this you'll get freaked out and BLOCK SENDER, though I hope not. Here goes!

My Mother's mariage to my father was unhappy. She suffered from depression and tried to kill herself once. The marriage broke up in 1977 when I was eight. Father moved away and we didn't see him again. Mother moved in with a white man and they went into business together. Nowadays they're pubicans/restaurant, but then they were stall holders in a market selling electrical goods, like torches, fans, that kind of thing.

The man she moved in with didn't really like me or my brother so my brother went to "boarding school" which is a private school where you live at, I had to go live with my Aunt. My sister was already 18 and married.

Anyway, my aunt lived about six kilometers away in the town centre so Mother agreed to at least pick me up each day after school and drive me there. She was always really busy and so was late. I mean, school would finish and everyone would leave, their parents were waiting and my mother would come two hours late, I was always the last. It looked so bad that strangers would keep coming out their houses to invite me inside as they felt sorry for me. Ohter times we had sports days or parents evenings where the parents had to turn up, and only mine were ever missing.

I've just sat at the keyboard and again tried to think. I mean, how much of this mess should I vomit upon you. You see, this is what happens when bored people wake at 3:00am. in the morning.

I was living still with my uncle/aunt for some years. I was about 12/13 when my uncle got spinal cancer. It was awful, they moved the bed in the loungue as he couldn't walk, he screamed in pain all the time, they gave him loads of morphine painkilller but it didn't work. One night we were playing cards and he died while we watched.

That was about the same time I stoped going out. I refused to go to school again and acted really wierd. Mother came round and beat me about the head but I still wouldn't go out. My brother came back to live with my aunt and I went back to Mother's, but of course by then her house was completely empty so I had to live alone, and this is, at least a large part of, the story of how I went insane.

When I was an adult there was a fight and I didn't see Mother for about three years but then we bumped into each other in a cafe. Funnily enough we got on alright then, I was about 19. We would meet every week and talk for ages. I would show her my writing, and we were just OK. She apologised for all the trouble we had in the past, she said she had made mistakes and regretted them. When I got depressed and made arangements to leave the country she completely supported me, and has ever since. We're just fine now - so don't get me wrong or anything.

Oh dear, is this all to much for you? Well, it's much later now and I think the restaurant's open; I'll go and get some breakfast. Thanks for listening to me.

Pain

There's no kind of love that comes without the risk that it could all be lost. You know, if that woman that I loved in Australia walked into this cybercafe right now, alone, and wanted to start it again, I wouldn't know what to do. I'd be trembling with joy at the thought of being in love again, but shaking in fear at the thought of losing someone a second time. If it didn't work out and she walked out the door, and I knew I would be alone the next six years again. Oh I don't know. You have this pleasent time with a lover, then they leave your life. and all those pleasent memories turn to sour vinegar throughout the following years as you lie alone at night recalling the happy times, now long since gone, never to return.

Oh God, I don't know, I don't know. Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Did I ask you that before? I mean, did you ever have someone, then lose them?

What is happening?

Work

Everyone I ever worked for has either cheated me or not paid me. I failed.

There, I only notice now as the editor of The American Novelist Monthly asked me to write 600 word article in March, which I did, now she's published it and completely ignores me when it's time to pay. It was the only decent piece of work I sold for ages. Absolutely everyone I deal with does this; I haven't been paid a single penny.

I used to really love completing a big piece of work, sending off a whole load of marketing letters to publishers and awaiting their replies. I would skip down the stairs each morning and tear open all the envelopes like they were presents on Christmas morning. There was rejection and rejection and rejection - but it was all OK as I knew deep-down it would be the next one that would make it big for me.

And I'm tired of it now. I don't sell anything. Nobody pays, everyone cheats. I have a new novel outline and a piece of non-fiction that's coming together, but it's all hard work and I used to enjoy it. I've stopped believing now. It isn't going to be alright, I'm probably not going to make it. How long does a person need? I've had long enough. But what else to do? I have no other skills.

The only thing I love is the web-site. I loved doing it and I love updating it. When someone sends me an e-mail and says they loved it or it changed their lives (it still happens) nothing could make me any happier. I look at the counters and together all the pages have 9000 visits.

But it's free, no one pays, it gives me no income.

I have to keep asking everyone for money. When I left the country I gave my brother my savings and told him to invest them, but I've no idea how they're doing. I stay in South Asia because I can afford to live well, but I'm trapped here in a way. I couldn't even afford to live in a way. My family probably haven't made provision for me (why should they?). so their handouts won't last forever and I could well end up destitute.

There, this is a good confession. I've screwed everything up. I have no job, success, skills, qualifications, prospects or hope.

I stay in nice places, hotel rooms I mean, but I don't own anything. I have a small shoulder bag full of stuff and that's it. Clothes, wash bag, one little book, a $20 camera. Since I was robbed last time (off the train you recall, the fifth time) I didn't replace anything. It's just like finding a lover isn't it, the pain of losing them outweighs the joy in loving them, as love, so possessions. It's nice not having to carry very much and I feel free, but these bare rooms are depressing sometimes.

I mentioned earlier that I got depressed when I gave up smoking, but I've thought about it and it's an excuse really. I've never been quite right. I told you about when Mother tried to kill herself but I don't think I mentioned that I did the same thing did I? I don�t really know why. I had been alone in the house for weeks, I suppose it was just boredom. There was one bottle of alcohol in the house and if I drank it I�d be in trouble but it was so tempting I thought it would be worth dying for. But I get depressed on a periodic basis and used to regularly mutilate myself. There�s something badly wrong and it probably needs to be medicated but I don�t speak to anyone so it can�t even be treated. Yes, so I�d say that I have a life-long periodic depressive illness that probably can�t ever be cured. It�s maybe twice yearly I go down on an average and sometimes can�t function. But not only that, I�m completely mad as well. I make a huge world in my mind and live it. When I�m at home I find myself gesturing and talking to people who aren�t there. I think I go down when I�m forced to face reality and live in the real world. So either I�m living in these mental worlds of opulence, health happiness and fantasy characters or I�m here drinking myself to death and traipsing round the streets wearing a death-mask so gloomy that people will actually point me out to their friends.

I hope you're doing better than I am.

Two Years Later

My friend went to live in Holland. I was in Kathmandu. Everything had gone wrong. She sounded like she wanted me to let her go.

How are you? I had a terrible night last night. Another one. I sat and wept. About everything. I fell asleep but had a nightmare. Mother was with me and had offended the mafia. She had to go and live in France and so could never have contact with me. So we had to say goodbye.

Later, I kind if woke up. The sun was just coming up, so maybe it was five in the morning. I Became conscious, but my body was still asleep. I prayed to be dead. A black shadow appeared at the foot of the bed and started to lift me out of my body. My legs started rising up, but the head end was stuck to the bed.

I went to a Mexican place for breakfast. I just can't face work. I sat and tried to think what to write to you. I called the bill and went to the toilet. My bowels went, plus I was sick everywhere. I feel really awful today.

I went to a bookshop. It's a really expensive, huge place. In Medan there are lots of places which are quite Indonesian, but there are western places, like KFC and stuff. In South asia, everything is local. But this bookshop is modern. It's the only modern thing here. It reminded me of London. I haven't been there in ages. I just wandered around aimlessly. I wanted to feel like I was somewhere else. I didn't want to be in asia today.

Then I came to the computer. I tried to think what to say to you. You remember when I was dowm in Delhi, ages ago, and I told you everything. I kept all of that. I looked at it today. I had forgotten I'd told you all of that. It's everything I was going to say now. But if I've already said it, there isn't much point, is there?

Just recently, I've lost everything. My life has fell apart since Christmas, which is kind of ironic as your life has worked out since Christmas. I had such a fight with my brother we're likely never to talk again. I think my Aunt's given up on me. Last I spoke to her she sounded so tiered, asked me if I'm having any luck with publishers, she said she hopes it works out for me, but she said it with such resignation. She won't give me any money anymore. Mother said don't worry. But my brother said it's time to admit that I'm not going to make it as a writer. He said I have no self-respect and should do something else.

So I've tried to think what I can do. I tried to set up the domain so I can start web-reselling, and of course, I've completely messed that up. I've finished the ebook, it's on-line and for sale. I've put the demo version right across the Internet. I had a fight with all these people on a Thai message board, they were really horrible to me, they barred me, I got upset.

But whenever I log into the bank, the balance is always zero dollars and zero cents. Maybe my brother's right. My web site has over 42,000 hits. People write all the time sayng it's great. One woman wrote a poem in my honour. I've councelled and helped many people, so many, I helped someone who was suicidal.

I spend so much time on the site, all for free, so I put a donation button there. But nothing. Out of all these thousands of people, not one penny. Recently a man wrote to me. He said he had everything in life except happiness and could I help? So I spent the afternoon helping. 2000 words (over). I do everything I can for people but get nothing. When I had the fight with my brother, he kept asking me what I'm doing. I told him about the site, but he just kept shouting, but what good is that doing you?

It wasn't meant to be like this. I left England just to live abroad for a while, find some happiness, but most of all get married and just be normal. I can tell you all about the past obsessions, but I just read back and saw that I've already said everything. Life isn't what I thought it was. No one wants a man like me. In Perth, she chose someone else becausde he had more money, could speak Japanese, had a Japanese work visa, I was poor, selling stupid pictures and articles.

And you don't want it either. It's true. It's time to face up to reality. No one wants me. She wrote to me all this time because she's polite. She made her choice and it was someone else. You only knew me for four hours, or less, there's no way you could want me on the basis of that. What would you have felt if I was an Indonesian? I lived in Medan or Bali. There had been no chance of us being abroad. You only wanted to be abroad. I always knew it deep-down, But I'm lonely and I hate myself, and I need to have these illusions in my life. Up until just now, I used to get two letters a year from Japan. I put off receiving them. Once every two years I open them somewhere. I go to a church or something. I cry. But I have this illusion that I was normal, a person.

Every now and again, I get an e-mail from you. You've read what I've written and are responmding to it, and for a time I can feel normal, that there's someone in the world who knows me.

But the whole thing is tingedm by fear. It always has been. I always wondered when I would lose it all. Every time I get a letter iI make myself sick with worry in case it's the last and I lose my illusion. Everytime you sent me an e-mail, I felt less alone, but was always aware that I might open one one day and you say that's enough, it's too long, or maybe you found another way to get abroad,

And now all my fears are realised at the same time. Just at the time when everything falls apart in my life and I have to be treated for depression, the things I've alwasys deeply feared have happened at the same time. There you are. You got what you wanted. You are abroad. You don't need the dream anymore. You keep on giving me opportunities to let go, because it's what you want deep-down. You think I do but you're wrong. All I ever wanted was someone like you.

But you're waking up to reality. You're already there without me. You made some joke about meeting someone at school and staying there, hahahaha, but that's it isn't it? You have woken up to who and what I am. You misunderstood me when I said I need to be rich. I meant I need to make enough to live on, which I don't. So I'm scrambling around from idea to idea, trying this and that. The book is out and no one buys it. OK, so now I'm going for the publishing idea. But everything is such a long shot. A best-selling ebook by someone else sells 500, most less that 100. Even if I take on twelve authors and they all do well, it won't be enough to live on. So I'll write another synopsis too, and try and sell that. But I've never sold one before. It's just one more attempt.

But I hate doing it now. I'm so tiered. I started writing, well, sending things to publishers, at sixteen. I used to love it. I'd run downstairs every morning and open all the letters, hundreds of them, absolutely certain that soner or later there's going to be a contract and a chack rather than manuscript and rejection.

I don't expect it anymore. I question if I can make it. All my passion has gone. I'm waking up. Even if I sell it, I haver to market it, do book-signings, public apperances. I don't want to do book signings and public appearences. I don't want to do what I do anymore, but can't think what else there is. Maybe there's nothing.

I've just looked back to everything I wrote you before and what I said so far is almost identical. It's the same thing. All that time ago and nothing is any better. It's just thing after thing after thing after attempt after attempt after attempt, and I never get anywhere.

I've come to the conclusion that my life is completely unmanagable. I've always known I was weird, but with all my running away from life and illusions, I managed to get by. I sit every day completely by my own, nit speaking for months or years... becasuse I'm the intellectual thinking eccentric. But really I'm not the intellectual hinking eccentric. I'm the lonely man that's never been able to make any friends. I didn't stay alone becuase I'm a loner. iI was desperate for everything, passiionate and endearing love that lasts forever. To join in union and be whole. But it just hasn't turned out like that. Women want a success and I've failed in life.

I can't think what to do but give up. I've tried all this time to sort out the problems in my mind. Psychology. meditation, therepies and now medicines. I've published my own theories and methods and they've helped other people. Through my site people who are sad down and broken contact me for help, and I lie to them. I pretend I'm someone I'm not. I pretend I haver all the answers and I help them and turn them around, and they are OK again. I don't tell anyone I'm completely broken myself. No one knows how bad it all is for me except you.

You remember when you first left home and went to Bali, and it was really bad for you? You mentioned it yesterday and got upset. You didn't eat for a week because there wasn't even one cent. I hope I didn't upset you then, I wasn't suggesting I have less than you. But I remember the way you wrote to me then. You kept mentioning God and saying you'd be looked after and be placed somewhere. But before then you never made any reference to spirituality, and since then you've never made any reference to spirituality. You see, then, in Bali, you lost everything at the same time and there was no way out iof your situation. All you could do was turn inwards to The Light, because there was nothing else.

And look, you're OK. You got the CD job, and there you are in Holland, with a brother in law who's generous and you're going to school.

I've lost everything in the same way. I really have lost everything. I don't even have my work now. Aghes ago I told you I have nothing, except my web site and writing, which I love. But I hate it now. There's nothing I love. I can't get my mind straightened out. I can't get my life straightened out. I can't think of any way iout of this situation. I can't think of any way I might find happiness (I've started crying now). I can't think of any way to make a living that I could live for. I can't think of anything to live for full stop. I hate it here. I hate being alive. All I can think to do is is to keep doing the stupid things I do. Help people for nothing, market an ebook that no one will buy, set up a publishing company, and I hate every minute of it, and all I really want to do is die. So I wake up every morning and do the things I hate and UI try asnd be like you in Bali. I just pray to a higher power, this is the misery in my life. These are all the problems in my mind and I'm a mess and I can't get anythign solved. I've tried at wholeness and success my whole life and I just can't do it and I just hand the whole thing over to you and I humbly ask you to cleanse me and place me somewhere that I could live with. I pray this coonstanjtly. After a whole life of struggling, all the fight is drowned out of me and I just let go of the whole thing and pray because I, try as I might, solve anything.

It's all coming to a head now. I left England on the 22nd February 1993. So this Febuary it will be ten years. I'll have to speak to my brother again at Christmas. If you recall, last time I did that it left me under the covers in a dark room for a month. Really, it hasn't cleasred completely since then, and is largely the reason I ended up getting medicine from the doctor, so often I just can't change my mood.

I pray so hard and I work so hard and I'm so nmiserable. I think if there's no significant progress by Christmas, I might let go. (I'm really crying now, but this cybervafe is empty so I don't thuink anyone sees.) I can't spend any more time like this. Day after day. I think of ways out. I lie drunk on the bed and I think what it's like to cut your wrists open. I imagine doing it in the bathroom. But I catch myself and hand all the pain over. But the life I lead can't go on.

I pray, and my faith is good, sometimes... but it really is a longshot. My whole life was a long-shot. And you want to be free of it. You started asking what I wanted between us since you had the chance to first go to Holland. Why shouldn't you? I have these immense problems and such a tiny chance of success, and you're over there doing OK. Any man you might ever meet is almost certainly a better man than me (unless you end up working in psychiatry).

And you're WRONG, WRONG, WRONG about me. You think that I never really was interested in you. I know you keep on giving me opportunities to let go. I know you're waking up to the fact that I'm likely, try as I might, to not be able to sort my life out. You asked me to phone you to hear your voice. But it wasn't your voice that I was supposed to hear, but the tone of your voice, how tiered you are. I give you nothing. You give me everything. I don't ever remember your birthday. This year, you alone remembered you.

No, you ARE wrong. To let go of you is awful to me. I have no one else. I have mother, but I could never talk to her the way I do you. I could never send all the confessional emails because she'd get upset. She knmows deep-down I'm depressive, but when she asks me how I am I say I'm OK. Yesterday I told you I grew up with my aunt and you already knew that and it's no big deal, but I told you somethingages ago and you know that about me, you read it, it registered, you still no it, and no onme else knows anything about me.

I used to go and sit on a park bench in Hyde Park in London. I couldn't go so often bcause it was expensive, but I used to go maybe every four months. I sat on a bench in Kennsington Gardens. It was really quiet and there's a big lake called the Serpentine to look over. I was sixteen and still optimistic. I'd dream of leaving the contry, working, getting married and being a success. I thought that when I do that, one day, I vowed that I would return to the bench with my spouse, new mind and new life and give thanks.

More than ten years later, I'm abroad but alone in Kathmandu and doing worse than ever. It was meant to work out. My Aunt begs me to come home, or at least she used to. But I messed my life up in England. I got really depressed and nearly let go, but mother told me to follow my dreams. So I did, but it hasn't worked out. That's why my Aunt has given up on me. Never even an e-mail. She thinks I don't go back because I don't care. I stay because I had no life there and I left to make one. It isn't working out but to return is failure. Return to what? I'm in exactly the same situation as when I left.

I didn't know, until yesterday, how upset you were that I never came to Bali. But I've lived this whole time, since I was sixcteen, that I'l just about to make it. It's the book I'm working ion now that is the one, publishers will love it, it'll sell and make a million and I can return to Europe in a blaze of glory. I know you don't believe it, but I would have come to you first. I return to my country and family a whole and balanced success.

But it didn't work out. And now I'm trapped here. And it's likely the last year that I can try. It needs a miracle. One day mother will go. She cannot be here forever. Most days I look at the inbox and there's an email from her. And she says don't worry, and she says work less, and she say's I'll make it but it takes a liong time, sometimes she refers to me as a genious (but that's a bit far). There's only the last thing I dread left to happen. I come to the e-mail. There's nothing from her but my brother. She's gone. He'll be mad. I'll sign out of the mail box and stumble out in shock. I'll go and sit in the restaurant and that is it. There will never be another e-mail. I'll never see her again. I'll never hear her encouragement. The onlty person who comkpletely believes in me is gone. I'll sit alonje and stare at the gtable completely alone and no ione around me wikll know what's happened. If I still don't make enough, then there won't be enough money to live here. But if I go back, a failure, there's no where to live. I know no one. I can't walk far enough or stay on my feet lon g enough to do most jobs. The entire situation is unthinkable.

But the situation is inevitable. people don't live forever. At some point I will be here, alone, with dwindling resourses and not much I can do about it.

Oh, but this is just talk, talk, talk. You want me to go. You think it's the other way around and you're wrong. I'm probably not going to make it; there's a good chance I can't dig myself out of this mess. I can tell from the chat, from the phone, you want me to go. So I'll go. But don't ever think that this was nothing to me. You're wrong. Why am I sick this morning, with my bowels gone? Why am I walking round a shop trying to pretend I'm not here? I think back over the years. I think to the sweet letter in Madras. I think to all my confessions. I think to sitting alone by the beautiful lake in Pokhara and telling you how weird I am, and you sent me an e-mail called "the weirdo returns", and you made me laugh about something that usually makes me cry. I remember when I got upset about... her, and you said "sometimes things you want and things get not same", and it made me smile and it was so true and i told mother and she told me to listen to it. I think it now sometimes. I think now of how I'll be without you. I live here and there will be no one to say everything to. I have to lie to people who come to my web site and I have to tell mother I feel OK. If I let go now in this e-mail, then it is the last time I can open my heart and just say everything. After this I'm alone. You think it all meant nothing to me but it meant everything to me. This wasn't the plan. I was supposed to make it. I could have come back someone with my life intact. I didn't mean it to be like this. No. I wanted you. If I could have got my life together then I would have wanted to spend it with you. But I didn't. I've made this mess. I've ruined it. And it's my fault and not your fault and you shouldn't be punished for it. I go. But there really is a huge hole in my life. I can't make you unhappy any more. I'm completely alone without you. But you've got somewhere in life and I haven't and I'm broken and probably as good as dead and you have a chance at happiness and this is just the way things worked out. I hate writing this. I've needed a drink to face it. I can't even face spell-checking it and send it. I'll have to save it and see how I feel tomorrow.

Six Months Later

Even worse, in South India, completely washed up. I've told her I can only be friend. She got funny about it and phoned Mother in England, who wasn't so happy as she was busy. I'm supposed to phone her in Holland but just can't face it. The following was written to an on-line help group. You've heard it all before, it's the same story, just a little more desperate.

I'm writing because I'm in a situation which is very hard to see away out of -- which I suppose is pretty much the reason for all the e-mails you receive I suppose.

I'm from Northampton, but am abroad right now. I really hate to whine on with a life-story, bur it's very difficult to explain the problem without some background as I think no one quite lives a life like me and I've probably gone mad.

Both my parents are foreigners. They divorced when I was about seven and I saw my father rarely for a couple of years, and then not at all, which is OK as he was a bit quiet and we never really said much. Mother had been really unhappy and took an overdose of sleeping pills. So I had to go and stay with my aunt, and uncle, who were childless. My brother, elder by ten years, got married and moved out -- my brother went to boarding school, but I was in the state school as there was less money by then, I think Mar slept in a van sometimes when she did the markets.

They ended up as publicans. I went back there, but it was a bit stormy between them. Plus I'm Eurasian, they're both white, but sometimes he'd make a comment that made me uncomfortable. I went back to my aunt's for a few years. I was about twelve and her husband got spinal cancer. She couldn't admit it and kept talking about "when he gets better". He got worse and worse. In the end, he was screaming in a bed in the living room. One night he breathed strangely, all bubbles came out his mouth and he died.

I made a fool out of myself at the funeral and cried. Afterwards, all these distant relatives I didn't know came. My Aunt told them all the times I wouldn't catty the shopping or didn't wash up or was supposed to help lift him and just ran away instead.

Then there was a different uncle who died of a heart attack. His wife stayed with us for a while, then went home and died in a fall.

I went back to live with mother them. They had a house in the suburbs, but their pub was half an hour away in the country. They came home really late. Then he lost his license to drink drinking and so they decided to move into the pub. So I lived aloe in the house. I was thirteen or fourteen. I stopped going to school. Letters came and people kept ringing the bell, so I just closed all the curtains and never answered the door. My sister came once a week to clean and do bar towels and give me money from Mar. After a while, I didn't like going out so then she started bringing food.

But it kind of developed into agoraphobia. It stopped being that I didn't like going out to not being able to go out. Then I couldn't have the curtains open, then I didn't like being downstairs or even awake in the day because I didn't like the light. My brother doesn't like being Asian, maybe because he was at private school and there are less to identify with -- so he pretends he's white. As a kid he was always shouting at me to roll my sleeves down, not to take my shoes and socks off, to stay out of the sun because if I get darker "it'll be harder at school and I'll regret it". All his friends are white and he sits about with them making racist jokes about our own people -- which is pretty pathetic as he's fairly dark and his second name is Asian, people laugh at him behind his back; I don't think he knows how silly he looks.

I took an overdose about then, when I was trapped in the house that is. I lived (obviously). Mother took a day off and we went to London, but it was really hard as I was getting strong anxiety in public. I had to see a psychiatrist, but I only went a couple of times. I think he had more problems than me actually. So everything kind of went back to how it was before, with me alone in the room with the curtains closed.

But I read a lot. Religion, psychology, meditation. I read much about exposure therapy but didn't quite get how I could make it work.

One day, when I was nineteen, this kid I had known at school turned up out the blue, though I'm not sure why. He was going to this music concert, camping for three days but didn't have a tent, did I and would I like to go? Well, I couldn't of course, but I mentioned it to my sister, who mentioned it to my aunt, who sent up a load of valium and stuff she got when her husband died.

And I did manage to attend this concert. with loads of medicine and booze. But I'm weird, I wasn't able to make conversations with his friends, I just looked at them when they spoke to me and they avoided me. At the end, I didn't see him again.

So I went how, but now I'd been out I couldn't stand being there. I drugged myself and went to the doctor. He was really horrible, but I showed him everything I'd taken and got a load more. I went up to live with my Aunt.

Then I volunteered for Oxfam. The first day I took so many diazepam I couldn't even answer the phone and take a coherent message. But I got used to it and in the end could work there without needing any medication. Then I trained in a factory for a time, but I was the only Asian and there were really hostile. So I went to college and padded in English and photography. I wanted to be a writer. I wrote a novel and about five book proposals. I gad spent so long studying and experimenting with psychology and Eastern religion I was able to write about it.

But, although there was sometimes a bite of interest, I just collected files of rejection letters.

I really hated living at my Aunt's. We had a fight. First of all about food, then she said I smoked too much. I wasn't allowed to smoke in the bedroom, then not in the house, so she moved the furniture out in the garden and outhouse. So I was pretty much lining outside all the time I wasn't sleeping.

I hadn't seen mother for years, but I bumped into her one day and we arranged to meet in a cafe once a week. It was really nice. We got on great and talked for hours.

But I got really depressed. I couldn't see any way I would really be happy and started planning suicide. I got rid of most of my possessions. I told mother in the cafe. I was crying. It was nice, in retrospect. She told me about the time she had tried to take her own life and how much she had hated being married. Then she listed all the things she had ever done to me , and basically apologised. I didn't blame her or anything. It was just something that the said and was really nice. She told me to do something drastic, but not that -- just anything else.

I came to the conclusion is was England. ON e night just before Christmas, I went to the Indian shop for samosas and my fingers were so cold I could barely count the change. I thought I'd live abroad. I'd saved money, sit would be warm. People would be the same colour as me, and I'd have a place to live and be alone.

So I looked into it. It's possible to live abroad teaching English. If you have a degree, which I don't, you can go to rich countries and make money. If you have no degree then you can go to poor countries and get by. My reasoning was, it's either this or suicide. If I go for suicide, I'll be in the afterlife. If I go to Asia and don't like it, just pretend it's the afterlife and pretend I'm already dead.

So I went down to Surrey and did a two week course 9in teaching English. I'd been writing since I was fourteen, book proposals, but also diaries detailing my experiments in psychology and religious methods to become sane and transcend. Plus there was all my photographs. I put the whole thing in a lockable trunk, asked Mother to look after it, took loads of valium, and went to Thailand.

I really didn't like it; it was noisy, dirty and I wasn't like the people around me. I lost my first job because I couldn't control the kids. Then I got a better one teaching adults.

It was hard though., I started to realise how weird I am. I've spent so long on my own that I have all these stories and dialogues going on in my mind. Once, I recall being back in my aunts hall and I heard her say to my brother, he's gone mad, he paces up and down like a caged animal." it's true, I do get involved with all these thoughts and fantasies in my mind and I forget there's a world around me. Sometimes students would shout at me and I'd realise I'd stopped mid-sentence and got lost in my thoughts and was staring into space.

I was robbed at gunpoint; lost all this stuff. I met this woman who helped me get through it, then she saved in as she didn't gave any money. We became lovers. I'm too; weird for it to be normal though. Like we used to go to the bar and drink beer. I'd turn my back on her and stare at the wall living out all the dialogues in my mind, and she'd either just sat there or would take to other people. I think she stayed as it was better than going home (just). She got pregnant. We got engaged. She went home for Christmas, miscarried on march 3rd, corresponded for a while. then her mother stopped it.

I went south for a while. I stayed in this place being run by an American staying there illegally. I used to do the beds and man reception for food and board. I kind of got trapped there. Although it was nowhere near as bad as before, I started feeling anxiety in public. The boss brought me all the things I needed, so I just stayed in.

One day this woman checked in. She seemed really interested to "rescue" me. She was always around me, asking me what's wrong, why don't I go out, why don't I speak to people. She wanted us to get together and I couldn't understand why. Obviously, whatever we end up with is going to be dysfunctional. We ended up living in Perth as she had a pre-booked ticket. I wrote for a newspaper. As soon as we got there, it became obvious that the had made such an effort on me because she couldn't travel alone. Once she was settled, she wasn't interested. She wanted to be sociable and make friends and I frighten people.

I fell apart a bit as it's stressful being there. Someone saw I was down and invited me out in a small group. I met a Japanese woman. She was with someone else and we had an affair for ten days. It's so hard to explain what this was like. For those ten days, I was normal and happy. Like people tried to talk to me and U would just stare at them and so we didn't know anybody and she didn't mind. At night, I pace up and down and mutter without realising it -- and she would laugh and refer to this obvious mental illness as "cute". We got up, cooked food, went to work, came home and talked all night on a rooftop. I washed her clothes for her. We did stupid things like dance in the street where there was no music. She loved everything I wrote and always wanted me to do more. I started selling photographs as well as write. We went to the cinema, played backgammon. She bought me a ring as a surprise and we went to church to put it on. I was human, like everyone else for ten days.

My brother wanted to see Sydney so I had to go. I wrote to her every day. My brother was argumentative and put me down. He hated it because he was with friends and I can't talk in crowds so I just looked at them and was a frightening, creepy person.

When I went to collect my mail, she'd written that she'd phoned her lover, he was broken when she told him, so when I get back we'd have to sleep separately and be friends until he arrived and we could all discuss the situation. She told me where to meet her but I didn't go. I bought a ticket back to Asia, but then bumped into her on the last night. We spent it talking. She invited me back to the room, but I'd paid for a dorm. The next day she came and we went to the airport, both of us stood there weeping. I told her to stand there and went towards the plane. I looked back and she was running towards me. I ran through the gates and got on the plane. This was nine years ago.

My life kind of stopped then. On the plane I had this feeling I was going to break down and start screaming and I had to just keep repeating to myself that I'd see her again.

We're still in touch now. She writes every New Year and birthday. I write often and send stupid gifts. About two years ago I was in bed and had this strange experience where I came out my body and went to her. She was on a bed crying in a darkroom, saying she was sorry and I could palpably feel her regret somehow. I walked round dazed and it took me three days to get over it. A while later she wrote that her lover had "done something horrible" and they had broke up, the same day I had this experience.

I came to live in India. I wrote three novels which didn't sell. I wrote an extensive web-site for writers, a database of paying mar5kets, updated by writers themselves via the online chi form. Also a site about happiness methods of obtaining it, philosophy, techniques ect. This received 45,000+ hits and is in Google. It generates a lot of mail, usually compliments, but people ask my advice and to help them, it's kind of a free counseling service.

I got sick in 97. It started with a pain in my left hip and a click each time I walked. It got worse. Within seven days I couldn't stand. I spent a whole day in bed until I could even limp to the bathroom. It got well enough for me to get out, but over the years has spread to all joints. I get really stiff. I can't get up and down off the floor. I walk with a limp. I can only go so far before the pain forces me to sit. My shoulders have come out the sockets a few times. Sometimes it completely freezes, I have to sling t and sleep in a chair. If I lie down more than twenty minutes I wake up in agonising pain so I sleep in a chair. Much of my family have something similar and I first went to the hospital when I was five as I couldn't walk, but it didn't show up on X-ray so they didn't believe me. But looking back it often hurt in the cold and I could never do things like push a car. By the time it came in severe I hadn't eve had a conversation in years and so there's no way I could get it treated.

Last Christmas there was a really horrible fight with my brother. I ran out of money. He told me to stop writing, that the web site did me no good. That I had no self-respect. I got depressed, physically ill. I spent New Year weeping in a church. I stayed in a dark room having nightmares. I kept thinking about the people falling out the window in 9/11. I stayed under the covers for about a week.

So to make more money, I got a domain and commercial web-space, to sell design, space, ebooks etc. It all went wrong. The company were no good, nothing would work there and I got a refund from the bank.

I finished a non-fiction ebook and am selling it electronically, but it's from a free site. People keep complaining it won't download properly. A few readers contacted me saying it was good and they want more. But it doesn't sell so many. I'm making a new central home page to link everything together and do as I planned, an online bookstore, selling digital art like ebook covers which I can do myself. But this free host is really slow space and there's loads of advertising. Sometimes there's a pop-up advert for anti-virus software that says YOUR COMPUTER MIGHT BE SPYING ON YOU. But this pops up just after someone buys a book and has put their credit card number in the computer. It's insane. It's a wonder I sell anything.

I've been able to feel a lump in my throat for a few years now. Then got one in my tongue and a painful on in my ear. I got really worked up about it. I took a load of tranquilizers and went to see a really expensive doctor. He said he couldn't see anything in my throat or tongue, the thing in my ear is a cyst and the pain is hard wax.

Then he pressed my stomach and I doubled up in pain. He asked if I took drugs and I said no. He asked how much I drunk, I said a half a bottle to two thirds a day, at night in the room so I don't walk round all night talking to myself and slapping myself. He said to stop no matter what, even better to have sleeping pills because "it might not look that good there". He asked if I'd ever been diagnosed as psychotic, so it was nice to know at least he wasn't listening to me. Then he wrote a diagnosis of depression/anxiety and gave me Prozac. A couple of weeks later I was in a restaurant and he walked in, looked horrified and ran out again. Actually, that's pretty funny isn't it? Maybe I should have gone after him making animal noises or something.

But I'm not sure if I can live anymore. I keep having nightmares that my Aunt dies. She's had a stroke and heart attack. She wants me to go back and AI really can't imagine living in that house. Things are so expensive. I couldn't afford to do anything. I couldn't sign on. The damage to my joints would almost certainly show up on tests now, so if I could drug myself enough to get through them all I could get disability. But then what for? No web site, no writing, no chance, I make no difference in the world.

These letters and cards keep arriving from Japan. I haven't looked at them for the past two years, but I sit and cry about them, I've thought of her everyday and it didn't work out. There has been no one else since. I'm crippled and failed. The whole time I was dreaming of a huge book deal, get a nice place to live and send her an invite, and now it can never be. She must have someone else by now. It really hurts to see her post. I'm insane about the whole thing. Sometimes I see a Japanese tourist in the street and I think I'm going to cry.

I started coughing up blood too.

I finished a print book proposal too and have just received thirty rejections.

I really can't think what to do. I decided to end it a few days ago. I was a relief and I was really happy in the morning. In the afternoon I went on the Internet to find out how to inflict a wound to do it, and was really surprised how hard this is going to be. A razor is really ineffective. I keep managing asphyxiation, pressing my throat to imagine what it would be like. I could go to Belgium and ask for euthanasia for mental anguish and incurable creepiness, but they'll want joint and liver tests and I 'm too weird for normal conversations let alone something like that.

On 22nd February it will be ten years exactly since I left. The next day is her birthday (in Japan).

All I can think to do is go back. If the stress doesn't kill me, go through the diaries, photos, my entire past, scan it all, send the whole thing to Japan so I don't own anything. Put a note on the web site that I'm not available for counseling, take down the payment buttons on my book and make it for free -- then go somewhere and finish it with a blanket. It's also difficult because I don't want it to be in England. I had such an awful life there. What if I go back and the stress doesn't kill me but I get sick really quickly, don't have time to get out and end up in the NHS without the means to finish it myself. They'll watch me dying slowly and say it was my fault.

I haven't had a single conversation since March, when I met someone and chatted about computers for a few hours in a restaurant. Before that it was years since I talked. Bits of my teeth have gone black and fell out and I'm too weird for the dentist. This is how I've ended up. I'm a mad man, completely alone wandering round the streets muttering to myself, slapping myself in the room, possibly dying anyway. The most isolated person in the whole world running a web-site that coaches people to be happy.

I can't think of anything I could possibly want that could be worthwhile.

Any ideas?