Professor Grant
If you're reading this, speak up.
This letter contains talk of suicide. Reader discretion is advised.
Maybe you are looking for answers to questions you may not feel you can ask. Maybe as you read this, you are going through something that feels so bad that you cannot see a way out. Maybe you think no one understands, so what could anyone possibly do?
They can listen, they can hold your hand, and they can listen some more.
Each September in my courses, I speak to students about mental health and about the choice to commit suicide that tragically ends the lives of so many amazing people.
I don’t speak from a place of theoretical empathy; I speak from the point of view of someone who has watched too many people go through life without getting answers to the most important questions they have. To feel that they could not speak up and to see no end to the pain they felt.
I have never once been trained to speak on mental health care, awareness, or emotional triggers. I have spent a lifetime, however, working in an industry where mental health issues run rampant. I have spent my whole life as a member of a demographic, men, which self-demonizes for even considering mental health breakdowns or any kind of weakness. For probably 49 of those years, I never, not once, asked for help. And I was wrong for that.
My brother, my mentor, my friend(s), and my wife's cousin, who was like a brother to her, all found themselves in positions of such despair and such darkness that they felt the need to make a decision that took them all away from us and the people who loved them. Forever.
I cannot speak for them, and I cannot speak from your perspective. I can only speak from my life experience. Someone who has made decisions both right and wrong, with consequences that have made my life a combination of amazing and painful. Decisions that have brought unfathomable darkness and the greatest light a person can know.
I have caused others pain, and I hope that I have brought at least as many people joy. I will never know if that hope, that desperate plea that bounces around my head on the quietest nights, has been proven out.
So why write this, why offer so little in the way of answers to questions with such profound consequences?
Because from the very center of my being I believe that there are answers and there is light and there are ways out of the deepest, darkest pits that we as human beings living complicated, wonderful, empty, full lives can find ourselves in.
If no one reads this, then that is ok. If 100 people read this and don’t find anything in it resembling the issues and events of their lives, that is even better. But the best result is one person reads this and finds solace and is pushed to talk to someone and finds a way out.
Ask for help. Ask over and over again and then ask louder. If the people around you aren’t listening, then find other people. They are not ignorant or evil, but they may not be able to hear you.
There is no weakness in asking for help. Zero. None. At some point in your life, you have probably had someone tell you that hard work is the only way to see results. School, work, sports- all of these have the same mantra. Work hard, get results. Why then would we stop working when it comes to the most important part of our lives? Us. You and me and the future that we can have if we ask for help.
But hard work doesn’t have to be solitary. Misery is not the only thing that loves company. Joy, happiness, recovery, all love company. They need it; they are starved for it.
If you are a guy and reading this, I understand it can be hard to figure out what we are supposed to be today. Social media tells us we need to be caring, “alphas,” sensitive, strong. People tell us to put ourselves first, or to always put others before us. Lead, walk a step behind. Support others, beat the competition. It is confusing and frustrating.
There isn’t “one” way to be a man, or to be a human for that matter. There isn’t one way to succeed, to fail, to care, to love, to feel pain or sadness. That's why you need to find someone who will listen to you and hear your version of what you are fighting.
For 45 years, I never understood that. Suffer in silence, push through the hard times, be a “man.” Then I found someone to talk to. She has been a part of my life for almost 10 years, and it still took me a while to realize that, by showing what I perceived to be weakness, asking her for help was, in fact, strength. I was lucky, blessed even to have this person in my life.
It could have been a buddy or a family member; it just never occurred to me to ask someone. No matter what has happened, what you have done, or what is coming that seems unbearable, facing it with someone will help. Then maybe it starts to get better. But why didn’t I ask sooner?
I didn’t want to be a burden, to weigh someone I care about down with my problems. But you know what? When you ask the right person, you are giving them the greatest gift someone who cares about you can ever receive: trust.
That person can be a stranger, a teacher, a counselor who lends an unbiased ear instead of someone who your fear you will disappoint. There isn’t one way to ask for help.
There are a million ways not to ask for help:
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Everyone goes through hard times.”
“There’s always someone worse off than me.”
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
“No one will understand what I’m going through.”
Speak up.
You are enough, and everyone in your life, no matter what you think, is better off with you in theirs. Life is incredible, incredibly difficult at times, incredibly precious all the time, but incredible nonetheless. Once you are able to see that for yourself, you will fight selfishly, viciously, even to squeeze every last moment out of it.
Speak up right now.
Professor Grant., Syracuse University
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