Kevin - 37

Content Warning - The following story mentions suicide ideation. If you or someone you know is at risk, please visit www.befrienders.org to find support in your area.

Let me take you back to 2019. The time is 2 a.m. and I woke up to my partner coming home to our downtown Toronto condo. I had gone to bed around 9 p.m. to get up at 3:30 a.m. for my shift as a Transit Enforcement Officer, a job I worked really hard to get. Here I was, in a beautiful condo, working a career job making 6 figures, in a relationship with a woman I wanted so badly to marry, or at least, that’s what I told myself. I told myself I was happy. But what I woke up to was my truth, the truth I refused to accept leading up to this point. I woke up and felt something was off, a feeling in my body that I normally would ignore. I slowly got out of bed to inspect these odd feelings, walking closer to the bedroom door that leads to the living room. I opened that door and found my partner with another man on our couch. At this moment, my world collapsed from underneath me and left me naked, staring at my truth. The truth is that I was extremely unhappy. The truth is that I stayed in an abusive relationship because I didn’t know how to love myself. I lacked self-esteem or any self-worth. I suffered from anxiety regularly. I was a lost little boy, constantly living in fear. I was depressed and didn’t believe life was worth living. Here’s how I got to this point.

I was born and raised in a suburb outside Toronto called Etobicoke. I grew up as a middle child with two brothers and both of my parents. We lived in a lower to middle-class home, and from the outside we appeared to be a normal family, but from the inside, it was anything but that. My father was born in New York City to an Italian mother and an American father who was a WWII veteran. My grandparents married 3 months after their first encounter. Some would say that’s romantic, but in reality, they couldn’t stand each other from the beginning. They quickly chose alcohol as a coping mechanism and that was how my father’s life began. He was raised in a household with two alcoholic parents who abused each other, physically and verbally on a daily basis. My dad would run away regularly to his oasis, to a home occupied by an elderly brother and sister named David and Ruth. They helped raise my father and gave him a safe home to run to. My father longed for someone to provide him with love, safety, and acceptance. Sometimes he would put his trust in people he didn’t know too well, hoping they could give him what his father didn’t know how to. Unfortunately, my father put his trust in a man who sexually abused him, and without anyone to turn to, he internalized that event for the rest of his life until he spoke up about it only recently. My father was never told “I love you” or “I’m proud of you”. He always felt like he wasn’t good enough, working so hard just to make his parents proud, longing to be seen, longing for connection.

My mother grew up in a poor suburb of Toronto to an alcoholic mother and an alcoholic father who saw battle in World War 2 and brought home PTSD. Her parents were so strict growing up, that they would never let her leave their home, forcing my mother to stay home while her parents drank and abused each other. As a coping mechanism, my mom ate and ate and ate some more. Food and sugar were her way to minimize the pain and to escape the abuse. This continued well into her teens until she met my father. My mom battled obesity her entire life, failing one diet plan to the next, not realizing it was her trauma she hadn’t healed. Through her darkness and pain, she felt life was not worth living any longer. Suicidal thoughts occupied my mother’s mind throughout her life and my childhood.

My parent’s childhood trauma was projected into their adult lives, and onto their children. My mother and father lived in fear and unsafety, having the inability to regulate their nervous system which felt like it was always under threat. This is the household I grew up in. And as a child, I didn’t understand the severity of it all. This was my normal. This was my trauma. This was my life. I was a quiet, closed-off, afraid, young boy. As a teenager, I longed for the closeness my parents couldn’t give me, so I sought it through my peers. I became the guy they all wanted me to be. If they were happy, I was happy. I knew who I needed to be. I knew what mask to put on. I got lost in the happiness that wasn’t my own. Growing up, I didn’t know how to control my emotions. I didn’t recognize it at the moment but anytime I felt rejected or abandoned, I immediately went into fight, flight or freeze, and most of the time, I would dissociate. My nervous system thought I was going to die. I grew up obsessing over women, hoping to be seen, heard or loved. I dissociated all throughout school. I always felt like I needed someone else to help me just to do basic work, whether at school or in whatever job I had at the time.

As an adult, not much changed except more responsibility, which ultimately meant more anxiety. I had no one to turn to for support. I didn’t know how to ask for help. My parents were not capable of guiding me as they were struggling with their own demons. I continued to seek validation through women and my friends and that became my priority. At this point, I was still unable to recognize my pain, living a life I believed was “normal”.

Now this is going to sound crazy, but what happened in 2019 was the greatest thing to happen to me. It was my dark night of the soul. After that event, I had a choice to make, continue down this path of anxiety, depression and shame or choose healing, choose growth. I did something I had never done before. I made a commitment to myself. And what followed was nothing short of beautiful. As the years followed, I quit the job I was unfulfilled in. I moved to Vancouver, a city I promised I would eventually live in. I went back to school to become a mental health counsellor. In this school, I discovered my true essence and learned to love every aspect of myself. I found my self-worth. To this day I still seek support through my own counsellor and through my peers. And now, I am proud to share that I opened my counselling practice, supporting men in their mental health journeys.

It’s never too late to choose yourself and to love your essence.

Music - Kevin’s music choices during our photo session included Fred Again, Dijon, Francis and the Lights, and ¿Téo?.