I'm ok talking about my mental health

It's still a difficult topic, but I'm glad mental health is a subject that feels normal

I’m writing this for myself.

I still remember that winter day in the church courtyard. I’d just become a father but my baby was sick in the ICU and my wife in hospital care after complications in birth. A few months earlier I’d left a job that meant everything to me for one that turned out far worse. It was miserable, with a boss who took his rage out on me for no reason.

I was scared. Not just for me, but for my family, who I felt I’d endangered by putting myself in a place I felt like I couldn’t escape from.

On my way back fromn the hospital I just wandered and ended up in a church (I’m not religious). And as I stood there in the courtyard looking at a statue of Jesus, I thought about how I would die, what I would do. It wasn’t the first time—the thought has crossed my mind at least once a week most of my life—but this was the most real it’s ever been. I cried standing there feeling sorry for myself in the cold wind.

I stopped short. I was scared to leave my family, of letting my wife and son down, though that only made me feel worse. It’s always that spiral—wanting to end because I’m letting people down, only to feel worse about doing it because I’d be letting them down.

I am better now. My wife and son recovered. I take antidepressants every day. I go to therapy regularly. I do meditation and yoga to keep my anxiety and perfectionism in check. It works, to an extent.

I still blame myself for leaving that job that meant everything to me (even though I know it made my mental health worse and I should have left years before). I still feel like I let those bosses and colleagues down, that I wasn’t good enough to work there so I had to terminate myself. I still blame myself for leaving it for an employer that made me so afraid. But I did escape, and found another place to work that’s helped heal me.

I still suffer, badly, from perfectionism. Every day I think I’m not a good father or a good husband or a good enough son, or a good enough worker, not as good as that person or that person, not good enough to be their friend, or their boyfriend, too afraid to take chances, not good enough to deserve anything good. I still think of the years I wasted indecisive, frozen like a deer in headlights, fumbling around in emotional immaturity, hurting myself and people around me because I didn’t know what to do. Wasting my twenties and thirties, wasting my hours, wasting my years, doing things I didn’t like at places I didn’t want to be because I felt like I had to fit in, trying to get people to like and admire me, trying to just be worth existing. I was so anxious and afraid, lacking confidence in my identity… if I had an identity at all.

I still desperately feel like I need validation, reassurance. For people to tell me it’s okay for me to exist.

I think about all this a lot. Whenever times get tough, swinging wildly from proud cherished moments to the despair (which is everyday!).

I talk about this a lot, with my therapist mostly but sometimes to the few friends that remain… if I can trust myself not to feel like I’m being selfish and egotistical to make it all about me me me.

I’m grateful I can talk about it with someone. That I go to therapy. That I started medication. That I can write this and say, honestly and with an open heart that I have had and will probably always have mental health problems.

That's what’s changed.

It feels ok. Because I hear about mental health all the time. On the radio, in the papers, at the bus stop, on my phone.

It’s not the same everywhere. There’s a lot of people who would shun for this kind of sharing (I think my family would probably still prefer not to talk about it). We need to do a lot as a society—as a humanity—to change that.

But it’s better.

I’m better.

Just a little bit.