In our last installment we’d reached the start of my uni adventures.

I’d been accepted into a Computer Science degree at Club Mac which was sweetened by a $5k a year scholarship. I’d also managed through a lot of hard work to lose most of my weight dropping from the mid-nineties to low-seventies. My body self-image hadn’t really followed that trend though. Which is unfortunate, because much of what happened may have been avoided if it had.

So I started uni, doing the degree I “wanted” to do. Although that want was more derived from external pressures and expectations than I care to admit. At many points I’d made choices about subjects, electives and hobbies based on things like what was “gay”, or what was a better possible career based on potential financial outcome, or just what people thought the short, fat nerd should do.

I was miserable. My emotions varied from depressed to angry to lonely. Sure, I had “friends”, but they were more like acquaintances I hung out with. Its not like I shared anything deep with them (take note, as this will be a recurring theme). My life was basically just attending classes, hanging out, and sitting at home playing games or guitar or with myself. There was no interest from girls, which I chalked up to being the short, fat nerd (even though I wasn’t fat any more).

By the time my 18th birthday came around I was ready to push stop.

So I did.

Or at least I tried. With booze. Lots and lots of booze.

Since it was my 18th, I knew that if I was successful people would say it was a tragic accident rather than a suicide. Which gave me the courage to actually go through with it as I knew the impact on others would be less than a typical leaving a note type suicide.

I drank all night, all kinds of alcohol, with every gulp of beer being followed with a shot or 3. I then stumbled into bed knowing that I wouldn’t wake up.

Expect I did. My body somehow got itself out of a alcohol induced coma and threw up, removing the “poison” and keeping me alive.

I didn’t even get a hangover, and I ruined my favourite flannel shirt.

….a bunch of irrelevant stuff happened.

Then, I was born, 26 years ago last Saturday.

Not much happened for a while, at least not much that wasn’t purged with my underage record. The only real interesting points would be that sometime during high school I got it into my head that I was great with computers.

More specifically, despite showing talents in many other areas (including art, design, science and pretending to work while playing quake) I chose Computer Science as the future path I was going take.

I was also a Scout. This contributes to me being able to start fires in almost any situation, as well as being good with ropes…. a skill that can be useful in ways that I could never conceive of while in scouts ;-)

It also allowed me to be exposed to the “rock music”. The key event in this was the Australian Jamboree I went on (the 18th in Springfield, Queensland) where my group spent 10 days listening to Metallica….. we may have participated in some of the interesting events, like beta testing the new vending machines by hacking them for free cans and “observing” the Girl Scouts.

After this I purchased my first heavy metal album, ReLoad.

As for my religious views, I was what I’d call a apatheist. I didn’t really care about it, hadn’t been raised in anything specific, and hadn’t really thought about it.

The other possibly relevant fact, I was fat, and always had been.

These various and sundry facts give you a kind of primer of where I was at when I started uni, which is where the plot thickens (while I do the opposite).