Me, my Past and my Journey

My name is Hanspeter Christoph Klein. I am a 42 year old man currently living and working in Germany. I was born in Grünstadt, Rheinland-Pfalz in Germany on 6 August 1981. My family emigrated to South Africa when I was six weeks old. I spent the first 20 years of my life in South Africa where I completed my schooling and Hospitality qualifications. In 2001 I moved to the UK for what I thought was only going to be 3 years to save some money and then move back to South Africa. This, like a lot of things in my life is not how it turned out, and I spent 19 years in total in the UK, with a brief 3 month hiatus in South Africa that made me realise that my future lay in Europe and not in South Africa. Two years after returning to the UK I met my now wife. We married in 2013. We remained in the UK until 2020 when the Covid-19 Pandemic hit and I was made redundant from my job. We then moved to Switzerland and worked in Nendaz for a year before moving to the Island of Sylt off the North Coast of Germany. A year later we moved to the German Mainland and ended up in Krefeld near Düsseldorf where we are now based.

Looking back on it now it has become clear to me that my Mental health issues started around 2003 when my relationship at the time turned toxic quickly and the woman I was with managed to manipulate me and turn all the people I thought were friends against me. This led to me drinking more and questioning myself, leading to very dark thoughts which led me to my first Suicide Attempt. Luckily I was found shortly after the attempt by my Boss at the time who got me to a hospital for me to have my stomach pumped. My Boss and I agreed at the time that we deal with it as Alcohol issues as I didn´t like the idea of being committed and thinking back my Boss didn´t want me to be away from work. I dealt with the drinking issues for a year and had honestly thought I had turned a corner. I got into another relationship in 2006 and all seemed well. This didn´t last very long and once again the relationship I was turned sour due to the fact that my Girlfriend had accumulated a lot of debt which I had stupidly co-signed for. She had assured me that she was paying it off, which I believed, and had hidden all the correspondence regarding the loans and Credit Cards from me. She eventually, from one day to the next, packed her bags and left to move home to her home country. This left me with the crippling debts that I was now responsible for paying. This led to me drinking again, getting arrested for doing something very stupid and a second Suicide Attempt. The suicide attempt was obviously not successful due to the fact that I had drunk so much that when I took the pills I threw them up and passed out because of the alcohol. My Boss, the same one as before, found me again the next morning and it became clear that I had some serious issues. I agreed to find help but I insisted on moving back to South Africa as I felt that was where I needed to be. Boy was I wrong. 3 months later I was back in the UK and as a result of everything that had happened I felt the best way forward for me was to become an island and deal with everything that was thrown at me on my own. In the next two years I paid off significant amounts of the debt and things were seemingly going well. I met my now wife towards the end of 2009 and because of my ´I am in Island´ it took a while for us gel and get together and for the first time in a long time things seemed to be going right. I took four years to propose because I was reluctant to commit but it just felt right. We got married in 2013 in the UK.

We did go through some rough patches mainly due to her Mental Health which put a strain on our marriage that she was unaware of, as I felt it was wrong to show how it was affecting me because I didn´t know how she would react and what it would do to her mental state. This lasted for a good 3 years but we managed to get through it and it seemed all was going well. Fast forward to today and the story is very different. Her Mental Health has improved significantly and she is much happier.

Apart from the 2 suicide attempts I have been struggling with further Mental Health issues which I have not addressed until recently. Not addressing them has led to issues culminating in me Burning out and being away from work for 4 months in 2023. I was still not prepared at that time to seek further help because I thought the time off would heal things. The time off did not work out as I thought it would, so I took another job and as it has been throughout my Career I threw myself into work, leading to me working stupid hours but it helped me focus my mind and I thought I had turned a corner. Luckily I realised that this was not a healthy situation and I ended up changing jobs again to one where I actually had a work-life Balance which has allowed me to get into more of a routine which has made some small improvements to my Mental Health. I am by no means fine but I know that my depression will always be there, as it always has and the fact I am now seeking and receiving help has made a huge difference. This will be a long journey and one that I am prepared to take head on but it will still take many years to work through everything that I have kept suppressed in my mind for so long.

This is the reason for me creating this Blog as I am better at writing than articulating and as part of my healing process I will be going into further details about everything from my formative years to my suicide attempts to my burnout and everything in between.

Until then……

H