I know a guy who is doing everything his priest, church, friends and all of his spiritual books tell him to do, but his wife hates his guts and his career is going nowhere. (No, this isn’t actually me - we just have the same club membership). He has several kids, lots of bills, and he believes he’s pretty much all he’ll ever be. He takes some classes online from time to time, but he’s beginning to panic. On the surface - at work or at church - he’s cheerful, affable, and often hilarious.
He said he’s had suicidal thoughts for the last couple of years.
I know another guy who gave up decades ago. He’s about 51 or so. He’s morbidly obese and can barely arrange a ride to the doctor’s office so that they can keep him alive for a couple more years. He prays and nothing ever changes. He’s dying and making peace with it. It’s “his cross.”
The husband of a friend recently bailed on his large family to shack up with another woman. He was, or so everyone thought, a man of active, living faith. A Catholic. So, either he was faking it all this time, or he instantly lost his faith one day, or - and this is evil at work right before our eyes - he consciously chose a path that he knew would lead to his well-deserved damnation. Here’s the thing - I suspect it was the last thing, but he’s found a measure of “peace” in it. It’s his living suicide.
A few years ago, my high school buddy Kevin drove into the woods and ended his life. No one saw it coming. He left three kids and a wife behind.I could spend the next 365 days telling you similar stories. These are stories of men I know or who are maybe two degrees removed - friends of friends.
I had a chat with a man I’m very close to the other day who articulated his version of what I’ve heard so many guys say: “Sure, I’ve thought about pulling the trigger, but that’s just, you know, like a pressure release valve.” He wasn’t talking about a metaphorical trigger. I realized, when he told me that, that I’ve been mentally preparing for bad news about him for years…
If you’ve been reading this thing for awhile, or we know each other “IRL,” you know that I battled depression for most of my life and you know a good chunk of my current situation. You might expect that I’d be sitting on the edge of a building somewhere, feet dangling off the edge, a pistol in my right hand and a bottle of Jack in my left. Makes sense, right?
No. Life is hard right now, but there is no despair.
I beat it. And I want to help other me do the same thing because it’s more than possible.
Depression lies.
That’s not to say I don’t still get dark. You don’t just overcome decades of habit in a moment unless you’re graced with your own road-to-Damascus moment, which is rare. But it’s nothing like it used to be. Glory to God for that. Yes, literally.
So, I started taking some notes a while back. If I can beat it, anyone can. I was as weak and undisciplined as they come. So, in case I ever needed to distill it into a super short, easily accessible action plan for any man I met in his own personal Crucible, what would I tell him?
I started writing down everything I could think of: habits…modes of thought…prayers…actions…
The notes got their own folder. The folder started to get big. One might even call it a “book.”
It’s about 20,000 words at this point and I’m still fleshing it out. I’ll try to cut out anything extraneous, but I have a feeling that the editing process is going to add rather than subtract.
This is an excerpt from the…”book?” (Am I really writing a book on this? So strange…) It’s from the introduction, edited a bit to make it fit this format, add context, etc.. I don’t go too deep into it because this is from the introduction, but I also know, from long experience, that “deep” isn’t what guys in darkness need. Whatever the case, if you read this, I’d love your feedback.
Excerpt from “O.D.: Overcoming Despair.”
Who am I talking to?
As I write this, I’m thinking about a guy at the end of his rope (so to speak). The guy who is starting to come up with some really compelling, rational, and well-thought-out reasons for ending his life. (Like when I was on anti-depressants in college).
He’s a guy who might think a lot about checking out, but knows it’s wrong, even if he can’t articulate all the reasons why. Maybe he knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his kids or wife or extended family would be hurt by his decision.
I’m speaking to guys who have enough residual empathy even while in that dark, awful place to know it’s not all about themselves.
I’m talking to the thousands, perhaps millions of guys who have given their wives, marriages, kids and everyone else taking a piece of them everything they could, or at least everything they thought they could give, but who are worried that they’re getting to the bottom of the tank.
And maybe most of all, I’m talking to the guy who is fighting like hell, grasping for salvation through prayer, or seeking practical solutions in the wriggling bag of snakes that is the contemporary ideology of “men’s issues.”
Too esoteric? How about this: I’m writing to the guy who’s just tired. He goes to work, comes home, kisses the wife and kids, tries to avoid the bottle or the bong, maybe, in a heroic moment of sacrifice, tries to pray with them, and then crashes in bed sometime after midnight because that’s the only time he’s able to sleep, at least for a couple of hours. Maybe Sunday comes along and he drags himself and his family to a church where he tries to worship a God he’s not sure he even really believes in.
On Monday he gets up, without any rest, and starts yet another week.
When I first started writing this, I consciously declined to write specifically from the context of faith or to recommend anything faith-based. After a few months of work and reflection, I now realize that would cheapen this whole project. Faith saved me. Not the squishy, slap-a-Jesus-fish-sticker on my truck kind of way. Not the preachy perma-grin that seems to affect so many believers who are so obviously white-knuckling their Walks. I mean a transforming faith. An actual, honest-to-God transfiguration in which the absolutely elusive and almost incomprehensible things were revealed.
I’d be a horrible priest, so I’ll avoid going to places I wouldn’t normally go, but I do have to say this: We men were made for a purpose, and achieving that purpose is absolutely impossible - or even comprehensible - without a connection to Him Who made us.
Finally, I’m writing to that guy who needs a wake-up call. The one who needs to, and can actually hear, the tough love reminder to “Be a man.” I don’t say that to everyone. It’s bad advice, except when it isn’t. Most guys in the grip of despair can’t and won’t hear that manly admonition. Most guys (me included) have no idea what “Be a man” looks like. They haven’t been taught or shown. But some guys know, instinctively, at least, that it’s the right and necessary play. Nonetheless, for those of you who have survived the darkest of times and have come out the other side battle-weary but otherwise alright, I want to encourage you to nut-up and keep going. This is no time to rest.
Brother, I get you. I’ve been there and, if I wasn’t careful, could return to that dark place in an hour or less. This is my attempt to explain how I’ve avoided that.
My hope for you (What we’re doing here)
My goal in writing this is to help you put despair in chains.
It may be that you, (like me, possibly) have a brain chemistry that’s prone to depression and despair. That sucks, but if it’s true then it has to be dealt with. But even if there’s a physical source for a lot of it, it doesn’t change the fact that you can hold the darkness in your hand and pitch it overboard rather than drown in it.
As with so much of this, it’s a matter of perspective. Of changing perspective. If nothing else, changing your perspective, and maintaining it with minimal effort, will take care of 90% of the problem.
But while 90% is good, it’s not as far as we want to go. That extra 10% is action. There’s no getting around it. You can read a thousand books on overcoming depression, but if you don’t do something, nothing is going to change. That’s just life. I’ve never met an effective man who became a success at anything by simply reading a lot.
So, bottom line, here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to put despair in its place, preferably outside in the rain, with a “LIAR” sticker on hits head.
It’s more than possible, but you have to believe it’s possible. Right now I know you can’t believe it, but I also know that you want to be free of it. It’s why you’re still here. It’s hard-coded into your metaphysical DNA. You were made to rise above and live as a free man.
Let’s do this.
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