Last week I told you about a brilliant project called The Perfect Gift For A Man, a book that has been compiled to allow men to tell their personal stories of what it means to be a man. For them.
[you can read more about the project in that original post here].
Today, I want to share another chapter from the book, written by a man called Alan Long who has had to undertake a pretty daunting project of his own over the last year or so: saving his own life.
This is a story I have intended to share since I first started my personal journey through SavingAlan. In fact, it was one of the key reasons for starting it, not just to share my weight loss journey or raise money for charity.
Recently, I said that I would now open up and talk about how I became obese, as I firmly believe it is what is between my ears that caused it, not simply what I chose to eat. It’s not about discipline, about routine, about knowledge, about skills, about self-worth/esteem, about family, about belonging, about expectations or a hundred other things. It’s about all those things and more.
I have suffered and battled with depression/melancholy on and off for all my adult life but it has taken until my mid-forties to realise that was what I was experiencing. It took a second marriage breakdown for me to get to the crisis point, the feeling of absolute hopelessness, of desperation, of sadness so heavy it was physical.
But as a man I’m expected to be able to handle these things, to continue to function at work, socially, as a parent, as a mentor, as a son and all the other roles we fulfil in our daily lives.
During the two years it took to battle for some custody of my son, during the time when I needed friends and family close by, I ostracised them all. I literally couldn’t function and I didn’t want anyone to know. I couldn’t let the veneer crack. The odd thing is they could see it clearer than I could!
There were many times when I tried to have a conversation about how I was feeling and the other person took over the conversation and it became about them, when I just really needed someone to listen even if they didn’t understand, just to listen to me so I could
hear myself. Instead, it stayed bottled up inside. As men, we need to be aware of each other’s need to talk, we need to make sure we are active listeners with our friends and family.
Three moments are so clear in my mind, and I never want to revisit those feelings again:
1. Not long after my marriage broke down, I was sitting in the courtyard just feeling helpless and hopeless. Thinking about how my life had turned pear-shaped. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to have the happy marriage, awesome job and beautiful house, yet I couldn’t find one good thing in my life. All would be better off without me, but I don’t have the balls to do that. But I now know how people can get to that point and feel that desperation and hopelessness to take their own lives.
2. Some months later, at home, I was walking around the backyard – bawling my eyes out, my whole body heaving. For no specific reason, I had this incredibly heavy, sad feeling. It was just a build up of everything I had experienced – I had screwed my marriages (yep there was an earlier one), my work life, my friendships and here I was fighting alone to not screw up again by being an absent father.
3. Driving home from work during this time was a battle — going home to an empty house was just a reminder of my failures on all fronts. It was my destination, not just a small part of the eventual journey. I cried all the way home.
I remember seeing the Beyond Blue TV ads and was horrified that I was looking at myself. It was me in those ads … it couldn’t be. I connected with Beyond Blue and then through my GP I started to see a psychologist. After ten sessions I felt I was getting nothing out of it. It would have been so easy to just give up, accept my lot and maintain the survival mode, even though I longed to feel alive again, to feel loved, to love and to laugh.
Over the following months I had given up the idea of how I could find someone I could connect with. So I started to think of the times when I had a strong sense of self value, when I was passionate about what I was doing and felt really alive. I realised that two common themes kept emerging — music and charity.
So I started to formulate SavingAlan (www.savingalan.com) and having discussions with people when I got the chance to test the waters, to see if they would drag me down or dismiss it as a stupid idea.
At dinner with two colleagues, the discussion was very open and there was a strong resonance in each of our stories, but most importantly one of the women gave me an introduction to a counsellor/psychologist.
This has been a serendipitous introduction; my time with Jan Beames (counsellor, coach, psychologist) has been incredibly positive. The level of understanding is growing and the insight I am gaining is helping me every day to get my life back on track. She challenges me to be honest and to get to the underlying belief systems that I have built up over the years, to see its madness and how this has shaped so many things in my life — and how this has turned one, with so much energy and enthusiasm for life, into just a survivor.
The good news is I am on the path back. I don’t need to be perfect. I don’t need a perfect life. I just need my life to be full of my passions. After all, that’s all any of us need. I teach my son to have the courage to walk to the beat of his own drum and, now it’s time for me to walk the talk!
Website: http://www.theperfectgiftforaman.com.au
Free PDF link: http://bit.ly/miamanbook
Special deal for pre-Xmas purchase:
Get 50% off priority or express shipping on The Perfect Gift for a Man. Use the code BLURBMERRY4 (Aus only) http://bit.ly/manebook
