Be a Man. (Even if it Kills You.)

Mitchell Fink tried to do all the things he thought he was supposed to do as a man. Until he found himself depressed, alone, unable to ask for help — and suicidal. 

“Be a man.”

I hear it uttered in many different ways throughout a day. A mother at the park telling her son, “Big boys don’t cry” or a sports commentator describing a player who has “man’d up” and handled adversity or injury that it has become commonplace to think of a man as someone who doesn’t show emotions and works through pain, injury, etc without help because he is a “man”. It is this type of mentality that I think is failing men today, something that I, personally, have fallen victim to and it almost cost me my life.

By all accounts, nothing in my life was abnormal. I grew up in a normal house with two older brothers. Great parents. I played sports. Was good at sports and even got a scholarship to play in college. I was in a guys world and I was good at it. From there I got a job in the sports industry and continued to be around men a lot. Ironically enough, the same type of locker room philosophy seemed to apply with men I worked with. Lots of bravado, machismo and very little communication. If you had a bad day, you went and drank it off or went to a bar and tried to pick up a woman to ease the stress. No one talked about feelings. No one discussed anything emotional because that would have been “gay” or not “manly”. I can remember sitting with friends after work one day and we were talking about a movie and I said “I cried at the end” and then watching my peers laugh and make fun of me. It was clear to me that being a man meant not crying. Just like when I was little. Nothing had changed, instead it was continually reinforced through almost everything I did. If you showed emotion, you were weak and were subject to made fun of. So, I, like most men, kept it all in. Never discussed emotions, never cried, never talked about feelings and just generally put those soft and weak feelings inside because my world was showing me that is not what men do.

Eventually, I had enough of that sports world, so I left to pursue acting and writing. Looking back at it now, I think it was my softer side trying to come out and find a field that would allow me to show that side of me. So, in 2004, I made the move to LA to pursue my dream.

Now in LA, I was free to be around emotional people and people willing to let that side show, yet I didn’t know how. I was still afraid to let that side out. Didn’t matter if it was just a cry at a movie or a big emotional moment in my life, I didn’t share. I didn’t ask for help. I didn’t want to be seen as “less than a man” and it was seemingly working for me. I was doing really well as an actor. Then somewhere in late 2006, I started noticing little glimpses of darkness in my life. Maybe I wasn’t working enough as an actor, not auditioning enough, but something strted to creep in. I had no idea what it was, but as long as could smile in public, keep on working, this too would pass. It did, probably do in part to my getting a job that paid a good bit of money so there was no reason to be unhappy. Life was good again. Early in 2007 I decided to buy some homes as an investment. It was a good idea that just fell to bad timing as the economy took a sharp turn late in 2007 and early 2008. With that turn, my houses were not worth as much and my tenants were not willing to pay as much. Long story short, I started hemorrhaging money. To make matters worse, all of my commercials stopped running which meant no new income. My mood started to shift steadily to unhappy. Now, I don’t say these things for sympathy, but just to illustrate that within one year all I had was slowly disappearing and instead of sucking it up and asking for helped, I tried to man up and that it nearly killed me.

Instead of letting my emotions out, talking to someone, asking for help, reaching out for resources, I clammed up and kept it all inside. I kept hearing “tough it out”, “no pain, no gain” and other cliche’s that our society has adopted to describe how a man handles a tough situation. So I did. I toughed it out. Didn’t ask for help and eventually I lost everything and fell into a very dark depression that took away my will to do the basic tasks in life. By Spring of 2010 I was in such a funk that I just stopped trying to even pretend to be happy. I would hide in for days. Come up with excuses to not be in public with others. Lash out at my then girlfriend about any little thing that would happen and if something negative would happen like a parking ticket, I would find a way to, as my therapist would say “castastrophize” it and make it mean more than what it was. I was depressed, angry, sad and just plain over it. Yet, I still wouldn’t ask for help. In my mind, I had failed as a man and I couldn’t stand to be alive anymore to be less than, so I decided to kill myself.

In December of 2010, I bought a gun, some ammo and decided I would do it over the winter holiday in LA when everyone goes home for a few weeks. I would be alone, no distractions, no one trying to stop me. So I told my girlfriend I loved her and that this was the plan. Granted, I knew that was a cry for help, but also I didn’t want to surprise her with it and I figured this would help soften the blow. Well, she freaked out. Called the Sheriff, which led to a very large fight in which I kicked her out of the house. Now I was truly alone and no one could stop me in my quest to end my life. After she left, I began writing letters to friends, family and everyone important in my life telling them I loved them, why I did this and whatever else I felt they needed to know. I was done.

On December 26th, 2010, I had finished all my letters, I had cleaned my house, cleaned my gun and was ready to kill myself. I then had a few drinks to ease my nerves and for the next 3 days I sat there with a gun in my hand, occasionally pointing it at my head, putting it in my mouth and trying to squeeze the trigger. And telling myself I was a coward for not doing it. So I sat there. The same routine over and over. I would rest, take a nap, cry, try again, not do it and then go through the whole thing again and again. I was so much of a failure that I couldn’t even kill myself.

After a few days of this, I slowly got a little less dark and realized I couldn’t do it. I don’t know why. I really don’t. After a few more weeks, my girlfriend needed to move back in and we tried to mend the break that had occurred. I told her “I was fine” and that it was a phase. She begged and pleaded for me to get help, which I opposed in every way possible. I was a MAN and men don’t ask for help. I can tough it out and time will heal all wounds, which it never will. I was depressed and suicidal. That is something that just doesn’t go away. I even came up with crazy ideas like I would mediate more, get massages, and journal so that I could get these feelings out. Anything but go for help and get on anti-depressants. This lasted for a few months, until once again the darkness took over and I was again on the suicide train. I couldn’t get away. No matter how fast I ran, the train would always catch up. I couldn’t outrun it…so I finally gave in.

To this day, I am not sure what it was that made me agree to see someone, but I did. I really commend and thank my, now ex-girlfriend, for pushing and pushing me to go and get help. She even went with me to describe my darkness from her perspective. I felt small and weak. Here I was a MAN. What the hell am I doing in a doctor’s office talking about depression, anti-depressants, suicide and feelings. I felt so ashamed.

As if I was less than a man because I was here. That I had somehow failed. This feeling continued for a while and despite begrudgingly going each week and even beginning a medication plan, I was still so dark.

Well, time passed and eventually the darkness left. I got better. The meds were working, yet I still sat with a sense of embarrassment about how “weak” I was to have had to deal with this in the first place. Then something magical happened. I went out to coffee with a male friend of mine and while we were talking, I made a joke about trying to kill myself last year and it was met with an odd silence and strange understanding from him. He looked at me and said, “I went through something like that a few years ago”. I was shocked. I had no idea other men went through the same type of thing. I thought I was the broken one, the one with the weakness. Well, my friend and I talked for hours and hours about it and how we came out the other end and how the entire time we were going through it, we felt “less than” and tried to hide what was happening. This got me thinking that if the two of us had been through this, then I am sure others have as well. I began to talk about it more openly. I began to get more proud of surviving depression and suicidal thoughts instead of being embarrassed by it. Amazingly enough, the more I spoke about it the more I found other men who were either in the early stages of it or those who had been through something similar in their past. These were male friends who I deeply respected and who I considered strong, successful and masculine. I was beginning to see that I was not alone. I was not broken. I was actually normal. More importantly, I was still a man. Ironically enough, we all shared the similar feelings of being afraid to talk to someone about it because it would be viewed as a weakness and that is something that men don’t do. We were all fighting the “Boy’s don’t cry” mentality that we were taught growing up. That our society has drilled into our brains about what a man should and shouldn’t be.

Now, today I walk around with a badge of honor knowing that I am a man and being a man means not being perfect and not always being strong. Every time I read an article about a man committing suicide I think back to my time a few years ago when I was so close to doing it and think, to myself, “Did these guys try to get help? Did they reach out or were they hiding behind being the definition of man as society tells them to be?” I don’t know. Only they do. But what I do know is that I was there, on the brink ready to join them but didn’t and now each day I try to talk about it, share it with friends and just be of service to anyone, but especially men, who might be suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts by letting them know that you can get help. That you can be sad and still be a man. Actually, you can be a better man than you ever thought possible. I know I am.

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photo: dno1967 / flickr

This post was written in response to: Men Helping Men: Can We Help Reduce the Suicide Rates Among Males

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