01/17/2026
✍️ Why Did I Start Men Cry Too, MENtal HEALth Awareness For Men & Veterans ✍️ Finding Your Ally Group ✍️ Letting Go of the Venom In Your Life ✍️ Let The Sunrise Ahead Of You Give You Strength That You Conquered The Darkness ✍️
…There are many different answers to this question. Varying on the day you ask me, the place I am mentally, the strength I have internally, the lack of strength I have…it was something I thought of since I was in my early 20’s…struggling.
Struggling with self confidence, family perception, the chemical imbalance, the hurt, the pain, the darkness that crawls through every thought you have.
Then the first attempt at su***de came to my door. I was alone. I didn’t know how to speak about it yet. I “knew” how I would be judged by friends and family, I wanted this horrible pain to stop…and the fact that I actually didn’t want to die made things that much worse. I wanted to keep going to school, going out with my friends, seeing my family, and traveling the world. But this voice deep down inside of me said “Death is the only way you get your peace back.”
I fought it for days and weeks. It wasn’t getting easier and it was getting harder. I was becoming nervous about going home from work, because at work I was busy…sometimes the chaos of working at a 772 room hotel was everything I needed.
I saw my bedroom as a jail sell…my life became nervous as it neared “bedtime”. I didn’t want to go to my room. It meant it was night. Night meant it was silent. Silent meant nobody was up. Nobody being up meant I would lie in tears feeling the darkness creep quickly into my thoughts.
No, I couldn’t close my eyes. My mind would play silent pictures of what it would look like the day I decided it was time for me to leave. I saw the people I would leave, sad and upset. I saw my parents angry and beside themselves for having to plan their son’s funeral. This was not the way I wanted to remember. But could I stay in this fight long enough to win?
Two attempts…both failed. As a perfectionist; never have I been so glad to fail at something.
As life as continued to take shape there is a weird part of me that is thankful I had those attempts younger in life. They gave me a base to know at a young age what the truest and darkest hurt felt like. They allowed for me to endure more and take on bigger battles in life without the concern of how they would mentally impact me.
I’ve said it frequently and still it is not a time for public explanation but the last 4 years have been hard. This last week I was reminded that people don’t like the truth or being wrong and that when you politely confront them on how do we make things better. They do not have the maturity to accept they made some wrong decisions (and in truth, most of the issues were caused by them…and I am not just saying that, I do not have an issue with saying when I am wrong because I do hope others will do the same).
In order to keep their broken world the same they needed to turn me into the villain so that they could remain unchanged and they could blame me for stirring trouble when I was trying to fix the problem.
I tie the concept of my past su***de attempts with the actions of this week because I am unsure if I didn’t become stronger at a younger age if I would be strong enough today to take as many knives in the back as I have over the years.
To this day what shocks me the most is simple… I never thought I would need to be more protective of myself around my family then I would need to be around friends and co-workers.
And this message does come with a lesson…I talk about building a strong ally group; those you know you can call at any hour…those who will run to you and drop everything you hen you are in your darkest moments…those who will just sit with you and let you talk, laugh, or cry. Those who never use what they learned about you in your darkest moment to use against you when you are having a simple disagreement. Those who will randomly call or text and say “hey, what’s up”….”hope you are doing good today”…and they understand if maybe that day or the next one or even the next one….mentally you are just not present to go into a conversation but simply are pleased to know you are fighting and they reinforce that they will be there for you when you are ready, when you are feeling stronger, when you are doing better.
So when planning your ally group; don’t assume it needs to be mom, dad, close family members, and one or two of your best friends.
⭐️ Picking your ally group is a two way street. The person you ask must also know what your asking of them is important and could impede on their daily life. Maybe they can’t take a phone call at 2am because of their lifestyle. This doesn’t make them a bad friend or family member; but it doesn’t make them your strongest ally…if you know your hardest moments are between 12a - 6a.
⭐️ ⭐️ Not picking the people closest to you; does not mean they don’t want you to be better or that you all of a sudden dislike them. For both of you…you need to accept your relationship didn’t change. Just this is one event where they won’t be present all the time.
Think of it as if you love hockey, but you brother can’t stand it. You play the sport, watch the sport, ramble off statistics, get overly excited when something major happens in the hockey world; etc. You probably never take your brother with you to a game, he probably never comes to your practices, every now and then he may show up at a game or watch a game on tv with you. Because you love hockey and he doesn’t. Doesn’t mean he is any less your brother.
Now if all he ever does is put you down for liking the sport. Attacks you for wasting your money on tickets. Never gives you any encouragement. Never wishes you and luck on a game. Well…that’s where an issue will lie. That is when you have a brother who is toxic to your life. He doesn’t need to support you and attend every game….but if all he can do is make fun of you, attack you, and make you feel ashamed to play the sport. Well now…it’s questionable how strong your relationship truly is.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Pick the people who will have your back, will be loyal, will be honest, may sometimes push you to help you, but only because they believe in you. This group of people may not be the people you have known the longest or spent the most time with. But if they support you, stand up for you, want to ensure you stay alive, want to ensure you still live all your dreams then this group is your ally group…don’t concern yourself or worry that you didn’t pick the people you’ve known for 20 years.
Because you have known them for 20 years is why you know the task at hand isn’t something they will be strong at. They won’t succeed in a task that indeed is very daunting and hard. And in the end it could even ruin the relationship because they won’t be able to meet the needs and expectations of them that you had.
Depending where you stand in life…you will say I am blessed or that I am not. I have taken a fairly good size family and dwindled it down to the core and have filled my gaps with chosen family. Outside of my parents…I feel like my core friends can tell when the day is not good without having to ask me. There the ones who will not ask me “are you okay?” But they will simply do something they know uplifts my spirits and will help get me back to a better me. They do it out of love, not how will I monetarily reward them as a “thank you”. They do it because it hurts them to know I am hurting. They do it because we are family they have selected each other to be more than friends and we believe that is how a family is meant to act.
I am very thankful for what I have and I know longer look at what I lost. I lost venom, I lost narcissistic behaviors, I lost blood family who couldn’t pick up a phone because it cost $1 a minute to simply say “hello”, I lost family for stupidity…and now this is where the life changing moments happens.
I didn’t lose them.
When you lose something the intended action is to look for it so that you get it back.
I didn’t lose them.
I let them go.
When you let something go the intended action is to never see it again. It doesn’t bother you. It’s doesn’t phase you. It holds no storage in your memory. It is a helium balloon steadfast for the atmosphere until you know longer can see the shape nor color. It is the “Heart of the Ocean” being dropped into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; cascading over waves and then calmly drowning two miles to the bottom of the dark and dreary ocean floor.
It is my hand. It is your hand. Who released the balloon string into the air. Who opened our fingers to lets the necklace slide out of our hand. No matter the $2 balloon or the $20M Necklace…both we so easily could let go of…because they were adding nothing good to our life…in fact quite the opposite.
As we were already suffering with our mental health…they tide the balloon string tighter to our wrist. They choked the necklace around our neck until we couldn’t breathe. They wanted to see us in pain, they wanted to keep us in pain, they wanted us to suffer.
So, we let them go.
Now we watch them as they stumble without us. As they learn and realize just how much we did do to be present in their lives and support them. Now they realize the true good they lost in having you around while in lies and to strangers they said you were the poison.
Balloons will not drop from the air back into your hand. Diamond necklaces do not float upwards back to the surface. You let your demons go. You let the poison vanish.
You let them go. Because you realized I am worth much more than I am being given. That I am not a villain in someone else’s story.
I let them go…and I feel free!
