Men's Mental Health Month
June is Men's Mental Health Month & I need to be honest with you: I'm anxious posting this. I'm anxious about how it will land, who will read it, what they'll think, whether I'll feel exposed afterward. That is anxiety talking though. And I've learned that hiding and avoiding is corrosive. It doesn't protect you; it just delays the cost. So, I'm saying this anyway. This is a message for anyone reading this who gets something from it. I'm just putting it out there not because you only matter one month of the year, but because this event is a moment to focus on you. I have brothers, and a father, and guy friends. I see how the people around me act, what's lacking, what's being done too much of what isn't being focused on, what's being ignored, and especially what isn't being questioned. Ive met monsters and saints, men lovingly caring for those around them, and hurt men who chose to not heal, and they passed on their pain.
I could go on and on and id love the deep conversations, but I'll keep it at "just" this post lol. So if you choose to follow along I thank you.
This is advice I wanted and needed growing up. I could have started healing sooner. Not because I was broken, not because I was bad, but because I was swimming in water no one named for me. I didn't know the performance was optional, at least in some ways in some settings. I had to build my own language, and it took longer than it should have.
I once ended up in the ER for drinking years ago. The doctor asked how many drinks. I kept saying a few, that I socially drank. I couldn't be honest with him. And I felt terrible after. I should be able to be honest with a professional, there's no personal relationship there, I needed to be honest with myself for my own needs. But I couldn't. Not yet. That gap, between what I needed to say and what I could say, that was a real problem. The drinking was just a symptom of it. Later, they checked my heart. I told the technician something like, my father didn't care about his health, he faced a lot of issues, and I didn't want that. I wanted to be present for others, to take care of myself. He agreed. He had said something like, sometimes us men don't take care of ourselves enough, pride and all that. That us, he wasn't above me, he was in it too. That moment stuck more than any lesson someone could tell me, because I felt it, I wasn't lectured. As I worked on my drinking, friends told me they were worried. Worried when I was slumped over, blackout drunk, worried I might not wake up. They checked on me and I was lucky to have people who did, and not everyone has that.
I also lost two friends to suicide. Felix suffered from bullying, the people around him rejected him, he wasn't enough to them, he wasn't the right man for them. Xavier suffered from loneliness, the people around him rejecting him, him not being able to connect for whatever reason. I carry their names forward because the least I can do is make their deaths mean something I build with, not something I just experience and move on. There is a male suicide problem. My whole generation is experiencing a mental health crisis for various reasons. I want others to know those experiences are real. And those experiencing it, their feelings are real and they are felt by those around them.
We keep telling fish to swim better instead of asking what's in the water. The water is real. We live in a militaristic society that values men largely as much as they are useful. We live in a society that is more rigid than people think. A lot of men do feel and experience a life that feels meaningless, unfulfilling, and claustrophobic. Look at the language we use for example. Fight your demons. Battle depression. Struggle through. Wage war on your problems. Even healing gets framed as combat. But what if you tended to yourself like a farm instead of guarding a fortress? Sat with your thoughts instead of conquering them? Listened or waited instead of dismissing or fought? Grew through instead of pushed past? The war language makes you an enemy to yourself, but you are not a battlefield dudes.
It makes many feel inadequate when they aren't getting constant positive feedback. Many men are insecure and won't admit it. Many feel they have a right to things others don't, because they grew up being sold a warped traditional lifestyle that only really started after World War II. A lot of these frameworks are artificial constructions built to serve a modern society, but they robbed you of introspection and self-respect. They shifted masculinity from being rooted in community and obligation to being measured by performance. And when you're constantly performing, you lose confidence and security. You stop living how you want and start living how society tells you to. Do you really want what society told you to want? Or was it imposed on you?
Many boys don't go through a ritual that prepares them for manhood. They're just thrown into it, emotionally unprepared. Self-harm in the form of drinking, overworking, numbing out, expensive distractions, this has become the norm. We say that's life and leave it there. But there can be more.
I'm not talking about softness, just to preempt assumptions, though there's nothing wrong with that. Like the tenderness of a father holding his child, a brother giving his sibling advice, the gentleness that doesn't need to perform strength, those are real, and those are great! But what I'm asking for here is simpler and harder: honesty. We need honesty. Learning to trust your own body when it says something's wrong instead of making jokes about it. Eating right, sleeping right, being there for each other rather than just making jokes about mutual struggle and calling it camaraderie. Asking who benefits from you believing this is the only way to be a man.
The system is real. Others have harmed you, and that matters. But the same system that taught you to mask and perform also taught you to wait for permission, to not expect rescue, to believe your pain is someone else's fault, or someone else's job to fix like the system. It isn't though. And it is. Both things are true. The work starts with you, not because you're the problem, but because you're the only one who can start it from inside your own skin. But you don't finish it alone. You were never meant to. We are social beings, the goal is creating a village, not a factory.
Claim your humanity. Not in the shape you were told it had to take. It can take many forms: in faith if that's where you find breath, in family if they give you room to be real, in the work and creativity of your own hands, in communities that see you, but especially a mix of all of it and none of the conventional names. There is no script guys. Nothing that actually matters. The men who came before you were improvising too, they just had better PR through stories we learn in history.
Getting out, team activities like sports or gaming, connecting with good people, text a buddy, write ideas down and throw them away, be around people that make you happy, and talking to your doctor, and seeing what help is available are all important. You don't have to jump into anything. Just ask questions, see where it goes, shop around. You don't have to commit to a program to start listening to what your body is telling you.
If you're reading this and you feel something in your chest, that's the water. You don't have to comment. But maybe ask yourself: What do you need? What do you want? What do you feel? What are you dissatisfied with? Why do you lose help? What's stopping you from having hope?
You aren't cannon fodder. You aren't a machine. You are a man. Claim your inheritance and claim your humanity.
What I claimed today is confidence. Confidence in myself and confidence that the future is brighter than I once thought.
