numb
I lost count of the clicks. Packed up. Drove out through the gates.
An empty void in my chest. I couldn’t remember the name of the house before I’d cleared the end of the road.
An empty void in my chest. I couldn’t remember the name of the house before I’d cleared the end of the road.
An empty void in my chest. I couldn’t remember the name of the house before I’d cleared the end of the road.
I needed to get numb.
That was my career. Twelve years photographing hotels, villas and luxury apartments across South Africa. And I was good.
Five years prior, Tuscany – luxury properties across Italy. I could read any room, any client, any brief, and deliver exactly what they wanted.
Before that, a decade of documentaries. Helicopters over Ireland. Inside the Pyramids. Driving across the USA.
2016, 2017, 2018. I couldn’t feel any of it anymore.
the world got smaller
My world got smaller as I tried to hold it together.
It doesn’t happen all at once.
It happens in the gaps.
No longer going out for meals. A distance opened silently in the bed I shared. The hobby I “just haven’t had time for.” For two years now.
I lied, it’s all ok.
Still functioning. Still showing up. Nobody knew.
Hanging on by fingertips. Performing as though I was holding the world up.
Is there still joy in it? Is it energising?
Or is it just something to do – a different location, same lack.
crutch
My crutch was alcohol. The functional kind – compromising my work schedules,
beer bottles out of the car window
and excuses that raised eyebrows.
Blacking out three nights a week. Lying to my wife.
Not present.
Damaging the reputation I’d spent a decade building.
The crutch could have been working 70 to 80 hours a week. The gym. Gambling. Scrolling.
nobody held a gun to my head and said, “DRINK”
I chose every drink
everyone’s mechanism is different
The feelings underneath are identical.
Loneliness, dissatisfaction, knowing there’s more to life.
the empty is the same
3 am
And the waking at 3am with the cold sweats, mind racing? I had them. The same stories going round and round.
Those questions that won’t go away and refuse to be answered.
What am I doing
Is this it
the moment
I realised I wasn’t coping.
Not the wine-and-dinner, not coping. The other kind.
That night I drove home with no memory of how I got there.
That close to killing myself. That close to killing someone else.
That is when mistakes happen.
Except it was not a mistake, it was the easier choice.
clarity
The pain of what I was carrying had become greater than the fear of dying.
November 2018. Two choices. No to the easier choice. I chose life.
Rehab, Kommetjie, Cape Town. I began to feel, to understand I could change – for me.
The doors opened six weeks later. Starting again from nothing. Raw, everything gone. A friend’s playroom was my new home.
A slow, uncomfortable understanding that I had no idea who I was when I wasn’t performing.
the cost
My marriage.
My home.
My reputation.
My clients.
My business.
The whole performance.
rebuilt
Leaving rehab wasn’t the end of anything. It was the start of a different kind of work.
What I’d saved from not drinking, I invested in two mentors.
AA gave me something I hadn’t known I needed: rooms full of men telling the truth. Not managing. Not fixing.
I got fit. Stronger than I’d been in years. Started to feel things without numbing them. It hurt. It didn’t kill me.
I wanted to feel. Resentment, blame and judgment had to go.
I dared to talk. To ask for help. To read. To have the conversations I’d spent years avoiding.
I was not shamed by others, I began to stop shaming myself.
I began to like the man I was finding.
Not the performance. Not the suit. The man underneath.
I still find him. In the honest conversations. In the quiet.
the man who listens
Two choices. Carry on with the destruction. Ask for help. Die or live.
I chose life. I had to do something I’d never done.
Who to ask?
For a professional man with clients, a reputation built over decades, colleagues, the stakes of it getting out are almost unthinkable.
The shame. The fallout. The story that writes itself the moment the wrong person knows.
Finding people who will listen is very, very hard.
Finding someone you can trust to talk to is even harder.
This is why I didn’t tell my wife.
This is why I didn’t tell my friends.
I asked somebody for help.
He didn’t judge me.
This conversation became the blueprint for The 13th Room.
The room I needed and couldn’t find.
what is the 13th room?
I created The 13th Room
because asking for help needs a safe place.
because he wants to be seen for who he really is, not what they want him to be.
because he wants to be heard – for what he wants to say, not what they want to hear.
A room where there’s no shame, no judgement.
2 Men. You and me.
When was the last time your life felt like yours?
You already know.