As Mental Health Awareness Month ends, the three lives I tried to run from and the one I’m running toward

I didn’t want May to end without acknowledging that it’s Mental Health Awareness Month. It’s supposed to be an opportunity to shine a light on the invisible, too often deadly struggles people endure. For me, this month is more than a spotlight. It’s a mirror. One that reflects a past I ran from again and again. Three times, to be exact.

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I tried to die by suicide three times. All three landed me in a hospital. The final time, I was sent to a psych ward, terrified, ashamed, and angry. But that stay may have saved my life. It opened my eyes to all I have to be grateful for. So many have it worse than I did.

People sometimes tell me they’re proud of me when they hear my story. I appreciate that, I really do, but it’s complicated. Because I didn’t survive as me. I survived as three different versions of myself I never quite recognized, and for most of my life, I was running from all of them.

The first life I tried to outrun was the wounded boy. I lost my father when I was 12, right in front of me. It cracked something in me I didn’t know how to repair. I was later abused by a priest, neglected by a mother who couldn’t love what she didn’t understand, and abandoned by a God I had once trusted.

That boy grew into a teenager who felt worthless and a man who believed he wouldn’t live past 50. My father died at 50. I always assumed I would too.

Then there was what I called the bogeyman in my life, the fact that I was gay. It haunted me, feeling more like a curse than a blessing. Even as I approached middle age, my sexuality hung on me like an ill-fitted suit.

So when I turned 50 and didn’t die, I didn’t feel relief; instead I felt confusion. It was as if I had outlived my own story. I had a successful career, a partner, friends, a life that looked enviable from the outside. But inside, I was collapsing.

Then came the second life I tried to end, the man who was growing weary of wearing the mask. By early 2015, everything fell apart. I remember one night, in the back of a New York City cab, sobbing uncontrollably after an event. The next day, I tried to carry on like nothing happened. But I was empty, and I fell apart in my office. I turned to my doctor, who diagnosed me with severe depression and anxiety and placed me on temporary disability.

That night, I did what had always numbed me. I got very drunk. And then I tried to end my life.

I survived, barely, and returned to work. But the world didn’t pause. People avoided me. I was broken in public and ignored in silence. I spiraled again, in and out of suicidal ideation. I ended up on disability again, for the rest of 2015, and I tried like hell to get my life back on track.

To a degree, I did, but over the next six years, I continued to drink and never quite mastered the art of figuring out how to survive or how to put my life in order. I started acting out again, with dangerous behavior while I was wasted. I attempted to take my life twice more. The last attempt, during a drunken stupor, landed me in the ICU and then in a psychiatric ward.

And for the first time, I stopped running away and started running hard toward a real recovery.

That stay in the psych ward was not the punishment I feared. It was a breath. A pause. A flicker. I got sober. I started therapy. I took my medication seriously. I laced up my running shoes, something a doctor once told me years ago to stop doing as a way to minimize the effects of Ménière’s disease.

I will turn 61 next month. I have been sober for 3½ years. I am grateful. I am in the best physical shape of my life, mentally too, but always healing. I watch the skies for that black cloud, but I don’t live under it anymore. I’ve stopped obsessing, stopped catastrophizing. I'm learning, at long last, how to live in the present.

Now there’s a fourth life. This one isn’t as haunted. It’s not perfect. But it’s mine. It doesn’t deny the past; it holds it gently. It doesn’t fear depression, because I’ve been to the bottom before and have reasonable confidence that I can avoid it. My life, for the first time, feels rooted in purpose. I run toward it every day..

Unless you’ve been there, it’s impossible to explain the full-body horror of severe depression. It’s not sadness. It’s not grief. It’s a cancer of the soul and the mind. In 2005, I nearly died from a physical illness that hospitalized me for months. That pain was excruciating, but the pain of depression was worse.

During my darkest moments, I searched everywhere for stories like mine, trying to find proof that someone else felt like I did, and someone, anyone, had made it through. Now I tell my story because someone, somewhere, is looking for that same proof. Someone who needs to know it’s possible to want to live again.

Talking about suicide is uncomfortable. Saying “I tried to kill myself” makes people shift in their seats. But I keep saying it because silence kills. Because someone out there feels invisible right now. And maybe they need to hear that being seen is still possible. That survival is messy, nonlinear, beautiful.

So while May recognizes mental health, these issues need to be recognized every day. That means paying attention. If someone in your life seems to be disappearing, physically or emotionally, say something. Even if it feels awkward. Especially if it does. Sometimes all it takes is someone noticing. That act of witnessing can be the very first thread someone uses to stitch themselves back together.

You don’t have to understand depression to show up for someone who has it. But you do have to try.

Am I “cured”? Honestly, truly, I don’t know. That word feels too neat for something so jagged. But I do know I’m living differently now. I’m not waiting to die. I’m not stuck in dread. I’m not running from ghosts. And I’m not getting wasted to try and wash away all the pain.

I’m running toward something. I just never thought it would be me.

If you or someone you know needs mental health resources and support, please call, text, or chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit988lifeline.org for 24/7 access to free and confidential services. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.

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