Deep within, there was always a yearning for more … almost like there had to be more to this life than what I was being shown. There was love in my home – I felt loved by my mum, my brother and sister – and yet it still felt that something was missing. My father was never around, which no doubt contributed to my sense of unrest, but it also felt much greater than that.

I believe it was this void within that helped guide me unconsciously into many different situations throughout my life, from fear-based anger, which fuelled armed street altercations with whom I can only assume to be other disenfranchised young men and products of broken homes, through joining the Royal Marines, with the intention of inflicting my own vision of pain and suffering onto others. Whist serving in the Marines, I was deployed to Afghanistan, where practically every day there was news of soldiers being killed in action or very seriously injured. 

In 2007, I was shot during an exchange of fire with the Taliban in Garmsir, southern Helmand province, and for the first time in my life I was made aware of my mortality. It sounds strange, but I had always viewed death as something that happened to others, or which I hoped I could inflict onto others. Yet there I was, shot and wounded, becoming aware of my own mortality. It was in moments like this, compounded by my earlier experiences, that left me asking the question: what is the point of life?

You don’t even have to go to war, get into street battles or bear witness to the dysfunction between your parents to see it. All you have to do is switch the news on to see the apparent pointlessness of life, lack of love and suffering playing out on your TV set.

This question replayed pretty much constantly in my mind, but however hard I searched for the answer, it continued to elude me. At this point, I decided that if I was going to risk my life on a daily basis, I should probably get paid more for it. I left the Marines in 2012 to work in the private security sector, at a time when I became aware of a deep loneliness within, which led me to search for fulfilment and meaning in relationships with women.

In these relationships, I found that even when I was loved by amazing, beautiful women, it always felt that something was missing; and with the women I chased, but who didn’t reciprocate my feelings, on some level, be it consciously or unconsciously, they were aware that something was missing from me, and it repelled them. So, again, I asked myself: what is the point of my life? How was I supposed to find happiness, when with the women who seemed to want me, I didn’t feel complete; and when around those who I felt sure would make me feel complete, something about me turned them off?

I see now more clearly than ever that it was the same void within me that guided me unconsciously as a child, young man, soldier, unsuccessful lover, and all the way through to the revelation that finally laid bare the truth of why I, and all of us, are here.