Men don’t talk about mental health, but they should Suffering in silence
This is difficult for me to write.
Mental health is not something men are supposed to discuss. We aren’t supposed to suffer mental anguish, or if we do, we’re supposed to suffer silently.
But there is what is supposed to be, and then there is how it actually is.
To be honest, since middle school, I’ve had episodes of anxiety and generally feeling down, especially during the winter. But this episode feels different. This one is different.
I had no idea that would be the case back in September when it started. But the weeks and months passed, lost in the breakneck pace of news postHurricane Harvey. And every night and every day, the anguish worsened.
I had no appetite. I couldn’t sleep. I was tired all the time. Everything seemed meaningless. And I tried my best to keep this to myself.
This isn’t who I thought I was. I played sports, I fought, I competed, and I succeeded. I value being strong and tough. I liked to imagine myself, my emotional state, as that of a sheer cliff: unknowable, constant, stoic.
But during these seven months, throughout the day, I’ve been taken hold of by episodes of sheer panic, paralyzed and unable to do anything but stare blankly at my computer screen. Some days, going to sleep is the only thing I look forward to, and waking up is the worst event of the day. My emotional state swings constantly, from crippling anxiety to despair to apathy to all-consuming rage at everything, especially myself.
Sometimes, in the depths of it all, I fear that this might be my new normal.
Going through such emotional lows has been deeply shameful to me. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just tough it out and get over it. I disparaged myself, thought myself weak and worthless and pathetic. The guilt of going through something like this haunted me as though it were a great sin.
After all, men don’t suffer like this, right?
Then I cracked this winter. I knew therapy wasn’t for me, but I told a few close friends about my struggles. And they, because they are good friends and decent people, empathized and tried to help me.
This only worsened my selfloathing. I felt weak and vile for burdening my friends with such trivial nonsense. They had real struggles and worries and fears to contend with, and I felt that I was being dramatic, seeking attention and care for my own little needs.
So, I tried to rationalize my pain away. I tried ignoring it, ignoring the constant feeling of being a complete failure, ignoring the crippling panic attacks, ignoring the overwhelming sentiment of not being good enough, not being smart enough, not being enough.
As much as I wanted to thrive and overcome the anguish, I made peace with merely surviving until work calmed down and 2018 started. I figured I could just try to tough it out and limp toward the end with some dignity intact.
I was looking forward to spring. But spring has yet to come.
This winter, with its length and severity, has brought out aspects of myself that I detest: weakness, cruelty, pettiness, an explosive temper. I have, without hesitation, hurt people I care about, causing them pain because I hurt.
I have gone from simple disagreements with family and friends to snapping at coworkers, raising my voice at them, looking for reasons to be nasty and ruin their day. I have selfishly trashed friends and harmed friendships, all because I hurt. I have caused too much pain to others in the vain hope that it would help ease mine. All I have to show for it are strained relationships and the pain of close friends and family.
This has played out over multiple instances before I realized that perhaps I needed to change how I coped with mental anguish.
And so I write this. I write not only for my own selfish hope that this may help me, but for other men out there who are going through what I am, who need encouragement or support of some kind.
You are not alone. There is no shame in going through these episodes.
I write this because I know that if I go back to my old ways of dealing with this, I will continue along a path that causes so much pain to myself and to others.
To be honest, I don’t know when this long winter will end. But if there’s one thing you can hold on to, if you’re going through your own, it’s this: You are not alone. Opening up about it will be difficult, and it will feel like an indictment of your masculinity or your character, and it will go against everything you’ve been taught, and you will feel as though you’re dying several times along the way. But still you must do it. It will seem easier to go back to ignoring the problem, more comfortable to engage in casual self-loathing about it. But this will never solve it. You will never see spring until you reckon with winter. And you won’t survive it.
I hope that, one day soon, I will survive mine.