Shane - 35

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

I always associated the dominating thoughts and feelings I had as something inherently un-masculine. I was afraid that the feelings would be dismissed as irrelevant because I wasn’t the right person to be feeling them. Jealousy of other men. Feeling ugly. Yearning to be seen as beautiful. Hating my body. Being easily moved to tears. Being scared to get hit. Wanting to be loved by everyone.

I’ve done so much work on being comfortable with these parts of my makeup that make me the unique person I am. But it’s not easy, and dammit I wish it was. Most days I feel like I’ve gotten nowhere, and it’s painful to carry that around. I notice how tired I look and feel on these days. It’s not every second of every day, but it sure feels like it a lot of the time.

The worst it ever got was the Winter of 2019. I had become obsessed with taking my own life. It came on very suddenly. I had just finished directing a play that was well received. With a good support network of people around me, I was struggling immensely with envy and the buckling insecurity that stems from it. It lasted for weeks and took up every moment of privacy I had. All I felt like I could do was pray for the madness to stop in those moments, those hours.

I wouldn’t reveal my sudden secret plan with anyone. The forest. A rope. Far enough in that I would be found, but not before the plan was complete. I felt possessed by something, and it was winning. When I bought the rope, the guy at the hardware store looked at it and said without irony, “Sheesh, a guy could hang himself with this.” The secret plan mutated for weeks. I carried on the best I could until one night I decided any place would do.

I had a belt in my room (the rope was locked in the trunk of the car), I wrapped the belt around my neck, tight. I cinched the other end into the closet. Before I leaped off, I asked God one more time to put an end to this torture. Thy will not mine be done. I kicked the table out, and BAM. The closet door broke. My feet hit the ground. I wasn’t hating my body then for gaining weight, let me tell you. I looked at my phone to find this random person (who cancelled a date with me a while back) asking if I wanted to reschedule. I couldn’t. I was seeing somebody else now, I said. I never tried again after that. I told some friends about my plan. One friend said, “put that rope all the fuck away”. I could tell my plan hurt him.

My favorite book as a kid was a Sesame Street book called “The Monster At The End Of This Book”. The character Grover looks for a scary monster page by page, searching far and wide for it. He looks and looks but he can’t find it. Finally, he gets to the last page and finds out that the monster is, in fact, him.

I thought about that book a lot after this experience.

Music - Shane’s music choices during our photo session included, Alice In Chains, Jane’s Addiction, The Tragically Hip, and Steve Winwood.