This is all a joke, some kind of sick, twisted, fucked up joke isn’t it?

Those are the words my girlfriend said to me, as she grieved the loss of her dreams.

Life has been a hurricane of losing moments so far.

I’m hurting in ways that I can’t seem to pin down. There will be moments in the day where I feel like crying. Others when I’m OK and focused on work. But the deep wound inside will weep and suddenly, right in the middle of something, I’m grappling with troubling thoughts of failure and hopelessness.

In the span of a month, I’ve been hit with 2 extremely distressing piece of news.

The first, is that I am about to lose my job in 2 months.

The second is that all my research into building a home, investing in a future with my partner, has now come completely undone because of a family member pulling out of the project.

Right on the cusp of starting this project.

There is only so much a guy can take at once.

But … let’s contextualise everything before I start my wallowing in self-pity.

For the entirety of 2026, my partner and I have been discussing when we are going to move out. To take complete ownership of my personal failings, I have not done a good job saving money in my 20s. Now, as a guy in his 30s, I’m trying to make up for it.

My partner was never as stupid as I was. She’s been smart, switched on and saving hard since she first conceptualised a house.

So, in other to buy a house in Melbourne, I needed a bit of assistance from my parents to boost my savings. I originally asked them for 20K to help me, but they couldn’t find a way to do so, without redrawing from their mortgage.

I felt guilty asking, but I knew that I needed the help in some shape or form.

As I grappled with this, my parents came to me with a different idea. Tear down the original home and create a dual occupancy. Two homes, side-by-side, brand new, all the finishings you could want. Sure, the home might cost the same as my appetite for buying a home, but it’ll be worth a whole lot more because my parent’s home is in an affluent area.

It was an ingenious plan. Not only would my parents win, but I would as well, because I didn’t have to pay as much for a home, valued at least 1.5x the amount I paid to build it. It would set me and my girl up perfectly in life. We would have an asset worth a million plus, whilst only paying a much lesser mortgage.

We would get to build a new home, design the kitchen the way we want to, plot out how we would use the bedrooms, decide on floorboards, customise our sinks, entertain ideas about garage storage …. laugh about our bathrooms’ storage and really pour our hearts into this build.

This was going to be a dream home, a beautiful place that we can truly call our own. A privilege that so many people don’t get.

From a finance perspective, my partner and I were going to live on one side, whilst my parents and younger brother was going to live in the other.

And so … with that …. we put aside the idea of buying and put on the building hat. We went to countless house inspections. Met with 7 different builders. Talked to a broker, a conveyancer, a sub-division expert.

Every single weekend was dedicated to the house. We didn’t have a day go by, where we didn’t talk about the house. Do we want the kitchen this way? How many mm long should the walkway be? Do we want a floating staircase, a sink in the butler pantry? How do we feel about Miele, Bosch or Westinghouse appliances?

Just recounting all these conversations and the passion we had for them, hurts.

I was so excited for this as we kept getting deeper into the build. And if I was excited, my partner was doubly so. She poured so much into this project that I was in awe. She called up people constantly, asking questions after questions to make sure she knew all the details just right. She went to bed thinking about what kind of floorboards she wanted in the house. She talked to me about how our kids might go to a better school.

There wasn’t a single ounce of doubt in her mind. This project was going to happen. We were going to get ahead in life.

But (and there is always a fucking but) … as it turned out, my family did not do their due diligence.

The worst part of any dream … is the idealist who came up with the idea, but didn’t do any checking to see if it was feasible.

The most basic, bare minimum step was to check if everyone was on-board.

Everyone said yes initially. Mum, Dad, Younger Brother … but as things got more real, as my parents and I visited each display home, suddenly the price of everything cast the whole thing in doubt.

I told them early on, just how much this was going to cost. My parents said they were going to be OK with it. I told them to check with my brother …. and they told me, he was going to be OK with it. I took them at their word. I had no reason to doubt anyone.

After all, when my parents pass away, that home would be his. So, the split would work 5 ways. My partner and I, on one side, my brother, mother and father on the other. Everyone wins.

Live, Laugh, Love.

But as we got further through the project, I started to realise that there were massive communication problems.

My parents were slow to move and didn’t check in on me regularly. Perhaps my partner and I also moved too fast, thinking that everyone was on board.

The old phrase …. assumptions kills or when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me …. truly did rear its ugly head.

Whether it was my inexperience, arrogance or misplaced trust, I didn’t do my due fucking diligence.

I should have known better than to trust my parents, who have shown that they were dragging their feet in this project, through no real fault of their own. After all, it was my brief initial chat to them, that I was confused as to why my partner and I were doing the lion share of the work putting this together.

This dynamic, of doing all this research, trying to get the roadmap working for us, understanding dense and complicated processes and then me having to brief my parents was exhausting. It never really allowed me to switch off and get everyone in on one table.

Every week would follow the same formula …. I would spend my hours at work, calling up builders, town planners etc, and then organise a meeting with them in the afternoon or on the weekend. And then I would come back to my parents on Monday and update them.

It meant that for only one day, a Tuesday, I had a proper respite from this project.

However, as anyone can rightfully point out … no fucking wonder you guys didn’t cover the fundamentals and basics.

We never had a proper group meeting after our initial chat, about this whole concept and when you don’t meet regularly and actually hash things out in person … you are going to forget some very basic fundamentals.

It was two parallel lines trying to get to the same destination but never converging and arriving as one train. My parents were relying on my updates, going at 40 km/h. My partner and I were going at 100 km/h and frustrated with my parents’ lack of speed.

I never got a proper chance to join everything together, because even though I was the middleman, the project manager, I was too wrapped up in my own problems. Whilst I did see this problem … I never had the chance to fix it until it blew up in my goddamn face.

Because whilst my partner and I were zooming along, there was a very critical fundamental issue we overlooked. The panic and feelings of my younger brother. I mistakenly believed that my parents were constantly updating him, the way I was updating them.

But that wasn’t the case, because he was going through a whirlwind of hurt and panic on his side. His own partner was refusing to engage with this. She was appalled by the idea of living with my parents, afraid of the lack of the privacy and by the sounds of things, unable to see how it benefitted her.

Worse, my brother was going through a crisis of his own. His job was clearly too taxing for him, draining him of every dollar, every ounce of will to live and affecting his mental state. He worked way too long and was now in a prison of his own making. He’s refusing to seek help, because he doesn’t want to burden others. There was even a time where he was taken to the hospital, but we weren’t aware of it until a day after it happened.

The most awful part of this, is that because he is interstate, we are unable to go to support him.

“I’m not mentally stable right now.”

How the hell am I supposed to deal with that.

I can’t. I don’t know how to fix that, but all I can is swallow my rage and try to be there for him. Because he has definitely said no. He can’t be a part of this project and without his finances, my parents can’t fund the other side either.

So, despite three months of heart, passion and planning hours my partner and I poured into this … it has now been stumped right before we even start.

The fury my partner has felt at my family and I have been biblical and rightfully so.

All I can do is take it on the chin and apologise. But I know this isn’t enough. She is beyond hurt. She has been betrayed, led on and finally robbed of her dreams. She literally grieved when I told her.

Something inside of her broke, because I know that when you are in the depths of grief and pain, you may start to laugh absurdly.

My partner did just that. She cried so hard, that they turned to gut-wrenching sobs and then to cold, bitter laughter.

My whole support network, my best friend, my partner in life, my girl … now cannot stand looking at me, because I represent a family that failed her. This whole thing has put my entire relationship with her into jeopardy. It wasn’t just 3 months of work and emotional build up at stake here, but also my 4 year relationship.

Worst still, she cannot fully afford to get angry with me, because at the moment, I’m trying to find a new job.

And here comes the context to the second round of misery.

Whether it’s through complacency or perhaps there truly is something about me that the business doesn’t believe in, I’ve been forced out. Even though I believe I am a valuable member, a hard worker and have proven myself over and over, there is something that I am lacking, that my manager sees.

What that is, I’m not sure. Because it seems like even she can’t tell me, what it is, about me in particular that makes her want to drive me out.

But that is where the chips lie. I’ve been forced out.

However, my manager did give me a grace period of three months to try and land something before I am leaving in October. So I suppose there is that small mercy.

Whilst I was already looking for a new job, this news was an incredibly bad blow to my ego. I thought I had more time to find a new job, but now there is a three month ticking time bomb over my head.

And so here I am, looking at jobs, trying to think about my new move, my new work-home … and what I want that to look like, what I think I am good at and what will make me enough money to sustain my lifestyle with my partner and my hobbies.

It’s all so incredibly depressing to have to think about yourself in this way. On a day to day basis, we never evaluate just how much are we worth?

To ask the question “what is the sum of who I am?” is so exhausting.

You have to try and sum up who you are, and then sell it.

And I’ve failed to sell who I am 5 times now.

5 interviews …. 5 failures.

Every single one, another nail in the coffin that I am trying to get out of.

And the panic is starting to build more and more.

I suppose this is the part where I start my self-pity party.

But I’ve been robbed of doing so for so long now. Half my mind is solely occupied with trying to work out a way to get out of this gargantuan mess. The other half is furiously trying to regulate my emotional state.

I’ve never felt more alone, more lost and more empty in my entire life.

Nothing I’ve ever done has quite prepared me for the absolute bottom of the barrel I’m experiencing right now.

No job. No house. No confidence. Potentially even no girl, if I cannot fix things.

This is truly the darkest hole I’ve ever been in.

I can feel myself staring balefully upwards in this prison that life has thrown me into, a deep dark hole that resembles the pit of Lazarus as seen in The Dark Knight Rises.

The light is so far away, but I need to climb so very far to get out.

As I am writing this, I’m applying for jobs, and praying that someone will accept me and see the talent and skills I can deliver.

I realise now, what a gift it is, to stay with a company for a very long time.

But what a curse it is too, to stay at a level where you never grow.

I know that I’ve outgrown my workplace, that there is nowhere for me to advance, that I’m starting to show signs of boredom. It was inevitable that I was going to leave and in some way, this is still on my terms.

Yet the timing of this all, could not be worse.

It’s so hard to regulate one’s emotional state when you’re always panicked, always despairing and just trying to catch a breath after all the shit that has been thrown at you.

It’s even harder to do so, when I know that I need to give my partner space and that I can’t talk to her until she’s healed a bit more.

So right now I’m all alone. Alone to deal with my parents, my brother, my girl and my own problems. I know it’s bad because right now I’ve resorted to listening to the L.A. Noire theme over and over again. I haven’t heard this theme in a very long time, typically reserving it only for the most bitter moments. Back in my younger years it was the theme I liked to associate myself with, when I was in the darkest of times. When I just wanted to stare out in the distance and try to process everything.

As I’m writing this, I’m struck by how much more processing I need as I get older. I know that physically you take longer to recover, but it seems that emotionally that is also the case.

Emotional wounds don’t heal quite as fast, even though, yes you got a tougher skin, more capable of taking on critical or mean feedback, but the moment something hits through your armour … it takes a lot longer to heal. What was once something that my ego merely brushed off, is now something that marks me for a lot longer. I get flashbacks to the incidents or worse still, I repeat the same mistakes that led to that mental scar.

Because changing is harder as you get older. And all of this happening right now, is forcing me to change.

And not just at my comfortable pace. No …. at a rapid speed. I need to shed all of this baggage and emotional desolation and somehow transform it into something useful.

While yes, I’m tired, exhausted and clearly a bit unstable, I know that I have to push through, that I can’t let all of this break me. Because whilst I’m not 100%, I still got plenty of things that I can do, because in all honestly, the only way to climb out of this dark mental prison, is to work my way through the list.

• Repair things with my girlfriend
• Help my younger brother get better
• Find a new job and fast
• Start pivoting to finding a good home
• Learn to forgive everyone involved
• Start saving as much money as possible
• End things on a good note at my current workplace

The list goes on and on, but like the epiphany I had the other day, even just doing one of those things is a much bigger and more important task than I think it is.

Sometimes, even the smallest and most trivial tasks can rob you of the most precious thing you have …. time.

And time is always going to be against me.

So I guess I better stop this stupid meandering shit and get to work.

In the eternal words of Nancy Sinatra’s You Only Live Twice …

You only live twice … or so it seems.

One life for yourself … and one for your dreams.

You drift through the years … and life seems tame.

‘Til one dream appear …. and love is its name.

And love is a stranger … who’ll beckon you on

Don’t think of the danger … or the stranger is gone.

This dream is for you … so pay the price

Make one dream come true … you only live twice.

I guess I better choose which dream I want.

~ Damocles.