It’s pretty difficult to make working in tech support sound interesting, so I’ve never really tried. Even when I’m no longer one of the minions on the help desk, it can be difficult to be seen as anything other than that. There’s nothing I can do about the fact that some jobs are seen as more interesting than others and I’m actually fairly happy to live with it.

What does get a little annoying is when everyone assumes that you’re always available for that level of support that friends assume comes with the territory. For the record, it doesn’t. Of course, that doesn’t really seem to do anything to stop me being asked, it just gives me a little wiggle-room to complain about it while I’m doing it anyway. I suspect that, if these friends had to pay my hourly rate, they’d faint.

While I am only twenty-eight, I’m very good at what I do and my current employer has come to recognise that fact. I only did eighteen months on the help-desk before I got my first promotion and now, I’m the head of the support department with twelve people under my command.

My software engineering degree has served me well, helping me with a deeper understanding than this job really needs. Everyone knows that I’m over-qualified, but I’m happy doing what I do.

While we might be considered the support team for a fairly normal company, all of our software solutions are highly customised and mostly written and developed in-house. It’s something that gives us an edge over our competitors and has allowed us to grow into a fairly large world-wide operation in just a couple of decades.

It just so happens that one of our primary centres for development is right here on the Isle of Man. Our office has a considerable contingent of programmers working on some of the key software components of our management suite. It gives me close access to them and has allowed us to become the primary training centre for support staff across our global offices. Staff regularly get seconded to my support department to learn their trade in fine detail.

Ultimately, this means that my job description – IT Support Manager – is a bit misleading. I’m certainly that, seeing that our dozen support staff continue to do their job locally, but I’m also responsible for making sure that visiting employees get the best possible training and then ongoing support at a higher level, once they return to their home offices.

I’m also the point of contact for the software teams, helping to liaise with them about recurring interface or operational issues. We’re going to spot the problems as they are reported to us and then I have enough knowledge to diagnose and pass on the distilled information for them to fix bugs quickly and efficiently.

I don’t ever look at the code, there’s no need for me to go that deep and these days, I only code for fun, but I have a pretty good handle on how everything works under the hood. Enough to find Derek or one of the other senior programmers asking me for advice on an almost weekly basis.

As far as I’m concerned, my job is varied, interesting and relatively stress-free. Throw in the fact that I get paid very well and I have to consider myself fairly happy with my working life. If only my personal life could be as comfortable.

For much of my life – and certainly for all of the aware part of it – I’ve lived in this place that is a haven of calm in a world of uncertainty. I didn’t tell anyone I was gay until I went to university, but that was as much a response to those who had already come out at school as to anything else. I didn’t fancy being associated with any of them and could just keep my head down and say nothing. Hiding my identity certainly had nothing to do with where I live. The Isle of Man moved swiftly from deeply-entrenched homophobia with laws to match to being at the forefront of progressive acceptance.

I didn’t even tell my mum until I came back for Christmas break with rainbow-painted nails – I’d really gone all-in on the whole thing – but she wasn’t actually very surprised at all. My rainbow-queer phase hadn’t lasted very long, however, because even I thought I looked a bit of a twat.

Mum’s great, but bringing me upon her own was more of a struggle than she would care to admit. We were lucky that her parents were always there for both of us. I’ve no idea, to this day, how she managed to find extra cash to send away to me while I studied, but she did, keeping my student debt to a minimum.

Grandma died three years ago, but I’m still very close to Grandpa. He’s always been there as that father-figure that I would otherwise never have had. He struggles a bit with orientation-specific manly advice, but he’s somewhat from another age and I don’t need him to lecture me on safe sex.

Mum always made it clear that I was far from an accidental pregnancy. She always wanted to have a baby, but wasn’t all that interested in being married or in a committed relationship. I’ve never really asked her about her sexuality, but it’s clear that she isn’t driven by the need for either sex or companionship. She had been comfortable enough with my father to decide that he was genetically good enough and never had any intention of telling him she was pregnant with me.

To give him credit, he was smart enough to do the math and offered to be a part of my life if I wanted him to be. Mum made it clear that she wanted nothing from him, but agreed to let me decide when I was old enough to ask about him. By the time I did so, he was married with two more children and I really didn’t feel like I fitted in, no matter how open and welcoming he tried to be. Mum and I were a team and we didn’t need any more players.

When I finally came back home, freshly printed degree in my hand and an offer of a job with the company that I still work for, I came back with one more thing. A boyfriend.

I’d met Mike in my second year at university and we had taken quite a while to realize that we were more than just friends. Being flatmates moved into being roommates and a very different way of living for both me and him.

We were, however, very different from one-another. Where I was determined to get a good degree, he just bumbled through his history course, doing the bare minimum to get the coveted piece of paper and, hopefully, better prospects.

As graduation approached and I received my conditional job offer, he had nothing to look forward to and with nothing to recommend him to prospective employers during an ongoing recession, he decided to come back to the island with me and find work here.

We seemed to be in a committed relationship by this time and I could do little other than see this as a good idea. I pointed out that he would have to work – even if it was at McDonalds – because he would not be entitled to benefits from the Manx Government. The Island is pretty easy-going about immigration, but you need to be a tax-paying resident to be eligible for social security.

“You’re always telling me it’s a full-employment economy,” he told me when I pointed this out to him. “There’ll be plenty of opportunities for a hard-working graduate like me!”

I should have seen the red flags right there. In what universe did he consider himself to be hard working? In bed, maybe; in the real world, not so much. Still, I thought I loved him, so I kept my peace and accepted that we’d be moving back together.

I’m not going to suggest that Mum ever gave the impression that she didn’t like Mike, but I had no intention of the two of us living at home with her and had the beginnings of a suspicion that it would make her uncomfortable. I tasked her with the job of finding me a place to live, at a sensible rent and big enough for the two of us, and prepared for my new life.

I fell quickly into my working routine and loved every minute of it. I’d made myself work so hard for my education that real life felt so much less demanding than my time at college had ever been.

Mike, on the other hand, didn’t. While he never actually worked at McDonald’s, he did have a stint at pretty much any and every other make-do job that would take him. He just never lasted for more than a few weeks at best, returning to his favourite spot on the couch in front of the television for longer and longer periods of inactivity.

With my first promotion, there came an opportunity for me to make my first move up in the world. I made an offer on a nice two-bed apartment on the sea-front in Douglas and had it accepted. It was going to be small and it was going to eat into my small amount of savings for the paperwork, but it would be mine. Even though I had basically been supporting Mike for more than eighteen months, I could now just about afford it. It had helped a lot that Grandma had left me a little in her will and this filled the gap and ensured that I could afford the legal fees.

By the time the day had come for me to sign the papers and take possession, I’d come to realize that I wanted to move into my new home on my own. Life in the flat had been going downhill fast.

Mike had now got to the stage that he didn’t even do any housework or even consider preparing food for us, even if I worked late and he was just lying in front of the television.

There’s a point when even love can’t support a free-loader and I now saw that this was what Mike had become. Somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I’d known this for long enough to have kept my purchase a complete secret from him, even though I’m not sure I had a conscious thought about doing so.

I told my landlord that I was moving out and suggested that he keep the deposit as another month’s rent. When he asked about my boyfriend, I told him that he wasn’t coming with me and then went home and carried on packing.

I’m not quite sure how it worked out so well for me. Mike had, for the first time in more than a year, decided that he wanted to go and visit his family for the weekend. I happily bought him a plane ticket and explained that I was too busy at work to go with him this time. The grunt of acceptance spoke volumes. In hindsight, I should have only bought a one-way ticket for him, but I wanted to hide my plans.

I managed to get him out of bed and into a taxi in time for him to head for the airport on that Saturday morning and then put my moving plan into action. I owned pretty much everything in the flat, but had already decided what I wanted to take with me and what I was prepared to abandon.

Grandpa borrowed a van from one of his old workmates and, with Mum in tow, was outside by ten. I’d recruited a couple of my work colleagues to lend a hand with the promise of a few beers and it took the five of us only two hours to get everything that I wanted loaded into the van and away.

I left my set of keys on the hook by the door and made sure it locked behind me as I left.

Coming home to an empty flat must have been a shock for him, but I’m pretty sure that what broke him was the fact that I’d taken my TV with me. That and the fact that I’d also had the internet disconnected.

I spoke to him on the phone, but I really didn’t have anything to say. I tried to explain that I wanted a life with someone who pulled their weight and that apparently wasn’t him. In the end, I hung up. He’d descended into that moaning self-pitying stage that I really didn’t want to deal with. I knew there was no point in telling him that what he needed to do was get a job and pull himself together.

Mike called me a coward. Actually, he called me a lot of things until I finally got sick of it and blocked his number.

He lasted in the flat until the landlord came to see if he wanted to continue the lease. He had no money to pay for it, so apparently went home to his parents.