The Angry Boy

I wasn’t depressed when I was in third grade. I was simply an angry eight-year-old boy. That’s what I was told, anyway. That’s the problem they wanted to solve. I was a problem to solve. My school sent me to anger management, and a doctor sent charts home so my teacher could track my behavior and report back to the doctor.

I remember looking around the room during those anger management sessions and only seeing boys in the room. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it’s all I think about now. I actually had to look up whether childhood anger management groups split up kids by gender. Spoiler alert. They don’t. However, boys are sent at dramatically higher rates than girls.

Nobody asked me what was wrong. Nobody considered that the anger might actually be something else entirely.

I was 10 years old the first time I tried to end my life. I didn’t tell anyone why. Not that anyone asked. I’m not sure I even fully understood why I attempted. All I knew was that something inside me hurt in a way I couldn’t quite pinpoint or describe. But I knew that the word “angry” didn’t come close to covering it.

I couldn’t have known it at 10 years old, but I was falling through a crack that millions of boys fall through every year. The system isn’t designed to figure out what’s going on inside us. It’s designed to manage the outward-facing symptoms as quickly as possible.

Mental health providers are trained to look for sadness. Unfortunately, depression in boys and men more often shows up as anger, and the people “diagnosing” our behavior often aren’t even mental health providers. They are teachers and administrators who are doing exactly what they are trained to do. They identify a problem (in this case, a person) and then find the quickest way to make that problem go away. They only see a problem, not a child.

Men account for nearly 80% of all suicide deaths but only 50% of the population, and 60% of those suicides had no documented mental health condition. Men die by suicide about 4x more often than women, even though women report more attempts and are more often diagnosed with depression. These men never make it into the system. Not because they aren’t suffering. Because people rarely recognize what suffering in men looks like.

Studies show that only 17% of American men saw a mental health professional in 2023, compared to 28.5% of women. Boys are taught at a young age that showing their emotions looks weak. They’re taught that the right response is to mask their emotions and push through it. So that is exactly what they do. They stay silent and act like everything is okay.

40% of men feel lonely at least once a week, and 1 in 4 men say they lack close friends. The silence isn’t a choice. It’s a symptom. I understood this feeling long before I ever heard this statistic. Sometimes you can have a lot of people around you and still feel completely alone. That’s the quiet part that people rarely ever talk about. Loneliness isn’t always about being alone. Sometimes you’re surrounded by people you can’t completely open up to.

I felt a different kind of isolation. I had my family, extended family, and a friend or two, but I wasn’t comfortable opening up to any of them. Maybe because I was so young that I didn’t even really understand what I was dealing with. How could I explain the way I felt to another child my age when I didn’t even understand it? So, I didn’t even try to explain it. I kept it to myself. The way boys are often taught to do.

A man dies by suicide roughly every 13 minutes in the United States. I was almost one of those statistics. More than once. I had attempted to end my life on three separate occasions by the time I turned 15.

For many years, I tried to disassociate from that version of me. I told myself that those problems I had belonged to the childhood version of me. A version of me that I was convinced no longer existed. But it quickly became obvious to me that certain behaviors in my adult life directly stemmed from my childhood experiences. I realized I couldn’t keep ignoring the childhood version of me that is inside my adult self. I knew I had to work towards healing my inner child. That’s what finally led me to try therapy. I was finally able to admit that I had been running from things I could no longer outrun.

Around junior year of high school, I made a promise to myself. I promised myself that I would never attempt to end my life again. Not because things had magically healed. Rather, I refused to let my demons win. I had some moments, especially in college, where I questioned the promise I made to myself, but I stayed strong and kept to it. Keeping that promise to myself is what eventually led me to therapy. I finally stopped running and started fighting instead.

I only started therapy a few months ago, but I can already see a lot of progress. I know there is still a lot of work to be done, and I’m not afraid to do it.

If you made it this far, some of this may have felt relatable. Maybe you were the angry one. Maybe you were the difficult one. Maybe you were the problem. Maybe some people would still label you as the angry one, but you know who you really are.

You are not a problem that needs to be managed. You are a person. You are a human being. Please go be heard. People want to listen. Do it for the childhood version of you that never got the chance to be heard. You owe yourself at least that much.

Seeking help does not equal weakness. Staying silent may turn you into another statistic. Please don’t become another number. I know it may be hard to keep your head above water. It may feel easier to give up and let yourself drown. You are not alone. We are here to support you until you have enough strength to support yourself.

I’ve also been on the other side of this. I volunteered for Crisis Text Line when I was in college. There are real people there who want to hear from you. They’d rather volunteer their time to talk you through whatever you’re feeling than have you become another statistic. Trust me.

If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out: