The other night I was at a tribute show and heard a lyric that most of us know well:
“I don't wanna die. I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all.”
I have always loved that line in the song. It is dramatic. Powerful. Almost theatrical in the way it is delivered. But that night it landed differently. It stopped me for a moment.
Because that single line holds something that people who have lived with depression know all too well. A strange and unsettling duality.
Part of you wants to live.
Part of you can still see beauty in the world.
You know there are people you care about. Things you still want to experience. Moments that still matter.
And then there is the other voice. The one that creeps in quietly and sits just behind your thoughts. The one that whispers, almost casually, that maybe the world would actually be a better place without you.
Not always loudly. Not always dramatically. Sometimes it just nips at your ankles while you are trying to keep walking. That contradiction can be terrifying. Wanting to live, yet sometimes wishing you had never existed at all.
I have not had thoughts like that, at least not with that kind of weight, in quite some time. But over the last few weeks those whispers have found their way back more often than I would like to admit. The difference now is that I know the terrain. I know the early warning signs. I know when the clouds are starting to gather. I know how to slow things down before the darkness pulls too hard.
But knowing the path does not always make the walk easy. Sometimes people look at me and say something like, “But you are a men's mental health coach. How can you still struggle with that?” And the honest answer is simple. I understand it because I have lived inside it.
I know what it feels like when your own mind turns against you. When the voice in your head becomes your harshest critic. When you are trying to hold on to hope while another part of you is quietly trying to convince you to let go.
That experience does not disqualify me from this work. If anything, it is the very reason I do it.
Because when a man sits across from me and says he feels broken, or lost, or ashamed of the thoughts in his head, I am not listening from a distance. I am listening as someone who has stood in similar darkness.
Healing is not a straight road. It is not a moment where you arrive and declare yourself permanently fixed. It is more like weather. Some days are bright and open and full of warmth. Some days the clouds roll in again. Right now, the sky has been a little heavier. But I also know something that depression often tries to make us forget. Rain feels endless while you are standing in it. But it never lasts forever.
When I first started writing this tonight, I thought I might end it with something uncertain. Something open. Something that simply sits with the heaviness. But somewhere along the way, I realised something. Even writing these words is proof of something. I am still here.
And sometimes the most powerful act of courage is simply this:
Holding on for one more day.
One more conversation.
One more sunrise.
Because even when the night feels impossibly long, the sun has never once forgotten how to rise again.
And if you ever find yourself standing in that rain, hearing those same quiet whispers in your own mind, please know you do not have to carry that weight alone. Sometimes the first step toward light is simply speaking the darkness out loud. My door is always open for that conversation.