Are You Okay? (Fun with Mental Illness)

(Trigger Warning: Very long post containing mental illness and self harm)

Yeah, so let's address the big sad elephant in the room.

If you follow the stuff I post with any consistency, I imagine that it’s fairly obvious I have been struggling as of late. While I’ve never tried to keep it a secret that I have suffered, or rather DO suffer, from mental illness my whole life (at times becoming laser focused as a crippling depression) I’ve always been careful not to advertise it as it happens for the most part (which I’ve recently learned is called “masking”....I’m a professional Masker it seems….) The past few months, that became harder and harder to do (….well, until I’m not).

Being able to look back, it’s clear to me now that I’ve actually been steadily sliding for several years, possibly starting with my father’s death in 2019….more than likely beginning even further back. There were so many clear warning signs that I was blind to: the slow and steady withdrawal from friends as well as any and all things social, the loss of interest in creating until I found myself uninterested to draw or write these past few years, the inactivity and decline of my health and body, the loss of a relationship that meant everything to me just a short time before it unceremoniously withered and the lacking of any befitting remorse during and after it did, and then there’s the drinking - which went from a nightcap a time or two a month to several every evening, and eventually just straight swigs from the bottles. In general, simply becoming more numb and removed…waking early to go to a job I despised, in a city over a thousand miles from where I truly wanted to be, only to come home, remain isolated and alone and drink myself to sleep….rinse and repeat…..and actually being convinced the whole time that everything was fine.

And then, this previous June, my mental health took several major direct hits in seemingly rapid succession, and the dam started to break.

There really is no way to dampen what I’m now about to say…so…

Last month I tried to end my own life….or, more accurately, I took my life but was rescued. By all accounts I shouldn’t even be here to write any of this; it truly is down to dumb luck that I am, despite not seeing it that way at the time. 

I’m not a fan of the term ‘nervous breakdown’, even though I understand the reason for its use. Mental breakdown, nervous collapse, cracking-up, meltdown, anxious tailspin, mental fracture - pretty much any term used to describe the condition does nothing to lessen the stigma associated with it. Depression itself is difficult enough to describe to those who don’t suffer it…a complete mental/nervous breakdown is near impossible to relate. Let’s just start by saying that it’s not exactly sadness. Hell, even with general depression I believe sadness is just a product, as if the mind reaches for the closest approximate emotion to make sense of what it’s experiencing. The best way, if I were to sum up a breakdown, is to say it is a severe and chronic pain that in effect isn’t actually there, as if one’s very soul is torn and hemorrhaging, yet there’s nothing that you can point to or show up in scans.
You can genuinely feel your own nervous system, as it seems to take on a constant uncomfortable, almost electric droning that ebbs and flows in its severity. As opposed to chronic depression which is a master of hiding itself in plain sight, a mental break fully drops the curtain, hijacks the brain and shuts down rational thinking, and you find yourself unable to trust your own thoughts. 

This is just the bare surface of a description….like I said, trying to illustrate what it's like to others is near trying to recount a phantom taste or a never before witnessed color.

There’s an unbearable loneliness and isolation that comes with this level of depression, and that’s partly why I’m writing this now. As I sit here writing this, the only person who knows of my attempt is my brother (...I mean, not counting the involved police, paramedics, two doctors and various hospital staff, as well as three separate therapists at this point….having lost health insurance in July, the sheer amount of debt I am now in just being kept alive..well…there’s a few inappropriately sardonic jokes I could easily make). 

The meme of “Men Need to Know..” I’ve attached to this post is one I’ve seen floating around from time to time, and it’s been on my mind during all of this. The first time it crossed my path I absolutely agreed with it, I probably even reposted it, garnering a multitude of likes, comments and reposts from other like-mindeds….I don’t remember. But now I see it differently, for the glaring flaw within it.

Let me say again that I agree with the sentiment. I want it to be true, I really do. It’s the kind of thing that makes anyone with empathy think “Of course, without question!”, but it’s a fallacious message.
While the perception of mental illness in all its diversities has come a long long way from the days of confinement, forced ice baths, electric shock and lobotomies, it still for the most part is widely misunderstood. It’s hard enough, I believe, for anyone suffering to be able to do the things on that list by design of the illness itself…but narrowing it down to the target of men, well, seems paradoxical. 

Believe me, I can already feel the push back and the fact that I lost many of you right there. If this were on a more open forum I could expect a multitude of comments to the effect of “Poor men thinking it’s harder for them”, most of which would be more colorful and far less compassionate (I expect I’ll receive some here). And I get it, I’m an adult white male that grew up in a white middle class family at the end of the Twentieth Century….it doesn’t get more privileged than that. Yet, the fact that not only would there be that type of reaction from a percentage of people, but that I know there would be and have struggled with the very fact of writing about it, well, therein lies the rub.

It’s a strange time to be a man (just cringing while writing that sentence reinforces it to me). Much of the time I feel I’m in a pattern of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. We’re expected to shed much of the toxicity that has been ingrained in us for generations, but without thinking what that would look like ... .and then we’re shamed for not being what is considered ‘masculine’, acting like a man or what-the-fuck-ever.
There’s a trend on Social Media I’ve noticed for a while now where people describe what men do that “gives them the ‘ick’”, and the majority of replies are not about our aggressive behaviors, mansplaining, gaslighting, ghosting or any of the many from the list of bad traits that we deserve to be held accountable for….instead, it's a tally of “when they hold the door for me” “when they approach” “when they don’t approach” “when they’re nice”, and (what I’ve heard the most) “when they talk about their feelings”!
I have close friends whom I love, that are compassionate and empathetic, and that I’ve been in the presence of while they jokingly (or sometimes not) talk about another man who had exhibited any of the listed vulnerabilities, even if mildly. I don’t think any less of them for this, I don’t think they’re even aware of what they’re doing; Hell, I’m guilty of such myself, and of all people, I should know better! It’s an absolute learned reaction.

I know this sounds resentful but I don’t mean it to be and I’m not trying to place blame on anyone or everyone. But we (I) see and hear these things, and it does nothing but reinforces the deep seeded belief that we’ve (I’ve) been raised to hide our feelings, suppress them, and deal with your shit “like a man”.

I wanted nothing more than to ask for help, to scream for someone to see me….but the closest I could come to that was almost childish and vague posts about being unhappy or eluding to depression; and then even brushing off those who DID reach out by playing it off that “I’m just going through it, but everything’s fine” and not accepting the help that was clearly being offered.
The fucking shame I felt. Shame for feeling as low as I did, for needing help, for not asking for it, for not accepting it….and finally, for trying to end it.

Shame even now for writing about it.

We’re in a time of transition, redefining what gender means, and we’re learning what that is together.
While I think a lot of progress towards the positive has been made, there are still so many changes that we (men) have to keep working towards…but there’s also a lot of changes that need to happen around us as well…and that’s the core of the issue I now take with the meme. The idea is right, but the target is wrong…”Everyone Needs to Know it’s okay for Men to….”

So, why am I writing any of this, especially after saying all of the above? I suppose that I still feel the need to reach out, however late in the game it is, and I’ve always been better at writing than speaking, especially when it comes to my thoughts.
Despite everything described so far….I AM doing much better, and improving every day. I’ve had to undergo counseling after my release, I’ve had my medication adjusted and we’re monitoring the effects..and I’ve slowly started venturing back out into the world, which right now is nothing more than daily trips to the gym for exercise, or to the store when I need groceries. I’m not quite ready to see people just yet. While the storm I’ve experienced is passing, I’m still dealing with the damage. Just the little I’m in the world makes me anxious, as if everyone around me knows that I lost my shit, that I spent days curled up on the floor without moving, that I heard voices, had insane thoughts, and that I tried to eliminate myself.

And please take this as us discussing this subject already, for this is about as close to actually talking about it as I can get to yet....and when we do cross paths, I’m still just going to say “Everything’s fine”.

(Note: you all have NO IDEA how long this took me to write out, and the sheer amount of editing and rewrites it went through…the moments I almost deleted it all. I started this shortly after being released from the hospital weeks ago and find myself in a completely different (better) mindset now as I finish it. I did my best to make it cohesive but considering the circumstances it might come across a bit disjointed and with an inconsistent tone…..which might be a good example of mental illness in and of itself? Let’s pretend that I intended that.)