On Mental Health

Mental health is a topic people still find difficult to discuss, even with their closest circle of friends. If you ask us gays, we are all fabulous. “Depressed, me? Struggling? Never!” Which is ironic, considering the staggering amount of data proving otherwise. In fact, sexual minorities suffer worse mental health than the sexual majority. 

Yes, you can have a body to die for, a perfect job, bathe in money, and be in the perfect relationship. In fact, you can have it all, and still be a mental mess. You shouldn’t feel guilty for feeling ‘low’ when out there a hell of a lot of people apparently seem to be doing much worse than you do. Who knows what it took to get you where you are right now? 

Our private life is an intricate labyrinth. You can easily lose your way in there, especially if your story is not as straightforward as it appears to be, or if this is simply the way you are, from birth. Believe me; if you find life an uphill struggle, you are not alone, and it is ok, it is fine to talk about it. 

There is a shelf in my heart where a single container stands, in isolation. It is made of see-through glass and its label reads simply “do not open” in capital letters. Years ago, when at my lowest, somehow I had managed to find the strength to compress and bottle up the darkness within myself and virtually seal it away in what I eventually filed in my brain as ‘Jar of hearts’. I have always identified my condition with the ability to FEEL life, and the world, in ways only people who experience depression can understand.

I remember crying the first time I saw a clown in a circus. I was eleven years old. Seeing the man behind the make-up and immediately identifying with him and his concealed desperation gave me nightmares for weeks. Even at that age, I had a subconscious understanding of the way we all try to hide hellish realities behind the mask we are all very likely to wear as soon as we wake up in the morning. 

Perhaps, pre-puberty attraction to my male friends played a part in this. Having realized I was gay, I considered the environment around and decided to not only hide, but also that something was wrong with me, something unspeakable, a curse, in fact. This is not surprising. Research suggests that young gay and bisexual men are at a significantly greater risk of poor mental health than older men because the young experience more homophobic abuse and assault. Research also suggests that the network of social support interventions for young LGBTQ people in the UK is insufficient.

Nine years ago, I underwent an initial training for a new job. After six weeks, my fellow classmates elected me the “funniest” of the group. I won easily, without even trying. I actually thought I was keeping a low profile. As it turns out, stand-up comedy would be my talent if I ever decide to enter a beauty pageant and embrace love & world peace. It is telling that creative people in general and comedians, in particular, are very likely to dive into depression. In a way, Robin Williams death, back in 2014, did not surprise me at all. The man was a genius in his field. As such, he was bound to question more than your average Joe his mission in life and, as I know too well, questions can be deadly.

To keep the darkness at bay there is only so much you can do, so many projects you can take on and strategically place between yourself and the moment you come to realize that waking up in the morning no longer holds any meaning.

Human beings who take their life do not do it lightly. If you are one of those people, who perceive suicide as a selfish act, you should reconsider your angle. The thinking process, the weighing up of the pros and cons takes place over a very long period. The anguish and guilt often involved during this time, shows that individuals who commit suicide have not one single selfish bone in their bodies. In truth, committing suicide is an extremely intimate and lonely act, devastatingly tragic and hopeless in its finality.

Selfish is what we do to soothe the pain generated by something inconceivable. We cannot imagine that someone we love dearly may commit such an act and then leave us to deal with the horror left behind. Therefore, we blame it on selfishness. As always, acceptance is an elusive concept, when it comes to feelings and matters of the heart.

I have lost count of the times I have debated the impact of my unnatural death on the important people in my life. Above all, I picture my mum by my coffin, her face reduced to stone, crazed with unimaginable pain. All I feel is remorse for considering such atrocity, coupled with the awareness of not knowing how dark tomorrow could be, and the day after tomorrow, and then the next, on repeat for the foreseeable future, as the shadows stretch and cover my heart.

Although for the time being green grass covers my land of reason, the “Jar of Hearts” is still there, stored deep inside me, a reminder that I will be forever a work in progress, and that sanity is as fragile as a jar of glass.

This is not a call for help. I am in a place where I cherish my good days, which at times stretch into good months, even good years. Yes, I experience strings of bad days. Yes, at times, I find it difficult to get out of bed, but I do get up, because I make a conscious effort to keep living, one day at a time, doing the things that ultimately make me feel alive and worthy. Above all, I do not hold any shame in admitting I am not perfect. In a way, this is what gives me strength.

#WorldMentalHealthDay

A matter of chemistry. A chemsex snapshot.

“I wish I was able to say no”, he muttered, while he hesitantly handed his pipe to me, the moment I said I wasn’t in the mood for drugs and that I had no desire to get high. I only wanted to meet him in person to establish if the connection we had was only virtual, or could translate into the real world. After all, we had been talking on and off for days and we appeared to have things in common. Meeting up was the natural thing to do.

Unconvinced, he looked at me with a lone sadness in his eyes that I couldn’t quite define. Then, he lit up again. We were in my living room, sitting at opposite ends of the sofa. I stared at the pipe, held in mid-air just a metre away from me. There I was, not for the first time, taking another alchemy’s class that I hadn’t signed up for. The chemistry of fire has always fascinated me. In fact, fire is something I have played with all my life, as my many scars would prove. I saw the smoke developing from a crystallised rock the moment the flame from his ‘crème brùlèe’ torch hit the glass, transforming its contents. I stared at the oily, white smoke, a fog for the senses, circling and speeding erratically inside the confined space of the pipe, the promise of oblivion so close I could taste it.

Years ago, I would have given in. A few days off ahead to recover, coupled with ‘that’ feeling of loneliness that I associate with the winter season and the idea of cozy nights in with someone special, who always seems to desert me. That would be too much to resist. These are powerful ingredients, able to brew a perfect storm and the days of stillness and misery that always follow a chemical high. 

Thankfully, these days I have acquired the ability to break down the whole, tempting picture into single individual frames and see them for what they truly are, a cover for self-loathing, a denial of my weakness and needs as a human being. I want company, therefore I compromise everything to get it or at least, I used to.

Now, I simply breathe in, deeply, allowing the oxygen to clear my head as the moment passes: detachment is a powerful instrument when used accordingly.

Marcelo stood by my side, facing me, his pipe loaded with smoke, still gesturing and offering with increased urgency. He was aware the drug would escape the pipe and dissolve in seconds. “No thanks. I am good as I am,” I said, without moving a muscle. Then I saw him take a deep inhale as he cleared the pipe of its contents. 

As his high kicked in and his inhibitions left the room, he offered me some GHB, in case I only had a problem with smoking Crystal Meth. I declined, for the third time: “I don’t think this is going to work; the sex or whatever we were both hoping for. We can talk for a little if you like, but then I will need you to go. I’d rather have dinner and an early night. You are probably not hungry, which is a shame. I can cook.”

Then I smiled. I looked outside the window, as the night was closing in, wondering if my Latino dream, morphed into a sad nightmare, was going to waste his high on me. We spoke a little. As it turned out, he had spent the night before with a MATE, which in ‘gay-land high’ means he hooked up with someone he’d never met before, someone whose name he couldn’t remember. He had moved from place to place for the last three days, until he finally landed in my living room, where he was hoping to ‘self-medicate’ some more with me. The longer he sat in close proximity to me, the more I could smell his chemical sweat. He was beautiful and lost, in an indefensible kind of way.

As I looked at him, I remembered the words of someone I know, someone who doesn’t believe that the gay community has a problem with drugs and chemsex. “It’s only a very small percentage of people who can’t handle it, spoiling it for ALL the others, who simply enjoy getting high over the weekend. It’s the gay media who is creating the hype,” he told me then, with contempt of the ones who can’t handle it.

I wished he was here now. Here it was, his alleged living ‘spoiler’. A human being; someone’s son, brother, friend or lover. Are we so jaded with ourselves that we don’t care anymore?

“I was able to control things, now not so much. I am always late for work,” Marcelo informed me, while standing up and reaching for his coat. As I led him to the door, I suggested that perhaps he should consider seeking help, if he was ready to admit he needed help, of course: “Go to 56 Dean Street in Soho. They won’t judge you, they won’t turn you away, and they won’t report you, regardless of your immigration status and personal circumstances.”

“Perhaps I will,” he said, as he walked out of my flat. Then, he disappeared down the stairs, in hyperactive speed. By the time he had made it down and out into the street, he was on Grindr again.