My Dear Melancholy
On asking for help, therapy and men's mental health
The undertone of my life has always been tinged with gloominess.
It’s my state of mind. You can see it in the photos I take, the music I listen to and the words I write.
Growing up, I was taught to hide my negative emotions. I got used to treating anger and sadness as if they were dark secrets. What that inadvertently taught me was that if I revealed these emotions to anyone, I would no longer be loveable.
What I thought was my “dark side” is what I now know as melancholy.
I don’t claim to have ever been depressed — Just sad.
A lot of the symptoms of depression and sadness are similar, but there’s a difference between the two: Depression is nature. Sadness is nurture.
I remember the first time I felt truly alone. It was at the end of 2020, I was stuck in a hard and emotionally turbulent place. I desperately wanted to leave poker but, at the same time, was scared to let go of what was so familiar to me. I expressed my fears to my then-girlfriend, but she never understood why. It was in that moment I felt like no one understood what I was going through.
There were many nights I’d lie awake at 3 AM, drowning in anxiety, stress and fear. A part of me would push back and ask what could I possibly have to be fearful of? I’m privileged and healthy. The ups and downs were normal, and the bad stretches were situational. In the grand scheme of things, I was okay.
Yet I managed to find lots of things to be fearful of. I feared that I was a bad boyfriend. I feared that I had no skills other than how to play poker. I feared that I couldn’t earn enough money. I feared that I was not enough. I feared that if I didn’t work hard enough, I’d stopped being loved. I feared admitting that I didn’t actually know what I was doing. On top of that, I had to worry about the heightened racism towards Asians and the unpredictableness of COVID.
Losing meaning in poker, burning out, and feeling lost in life kicked my anxiety into panic mode. I was on the verge of a full-on shit in my hand and clap breakdown. I felt like I didn’t belong in my own skin. I felt like I couldn’t do anything, sit still, get comfortable, eat, lie down or focus.
In January 2021, I finally stopped bluffing myself and admitted to my struggles and signed up for therapy.
It took a few months for me to finally open up to my therapist. Perhaps it was the lingering childhood belief that showing my emotion was seen as weak. She could tell I had trouble relaxing, both in counselling and in the real life.
On the surface, I look like I have my shit together. I appear calm, high achieving, punctual, and organised. But what others don’t know is that anxiety is a constant hum in my life. Beneath the surface, I feel like I’m always treading water. My mind is always on. Trying to survive. Trying to persevere. Trying to stay resilient.
My high-functioning anxiety is a gut-wrenching, pain-in-the-arse gift. I call it a gift because I’ve come to see anxiety as the flip side of creativity. A creative mind is always on, and anxiety occurs when you have nothing to do. Having lost a source of my meaning in my life (poker), my anxiety went into DEFCON 1 crisis mode.
It’s been a year of many personal calamities, setbacks, and heartbreak. But I asked for help. I took responsibility for my words and actions. I kept on fighting, living each day at a time. Melancholy still tinges my life, but I’m in a much better place. My life isn’t perfect, but it’s one that is filled with joy, confidence and meaning.
Being human is hard. From dummies to dentures, life is one big struggle. But it’s wonderful. There are so many reasons to live, from the first sip of coffee in the morning to kissing your date in the rain to seeing your child take their first step.
We’ve just entered Movember, and it has been a tradition since 2004 to grow a moustache and raise awareness of men’s health issues. This issue has become an important one to me because men receive little support or struggle to speak up.
If you feel like you’ve got the world on your shoulders and you think the only way out is through suicide, then please speak to someone. It doesn’t have to be a therapist. It can be a friend or a family member or anyone. You may think suicide is the solution to end the pain. But the pain you escape doesn’t vanish. Instead, you distribute the pain around to those that love you.
You’re not weak. You’re human. There’s nothing wrong with feeling anger, sadness, anxiety and fear. That is what makes us human after all. If you feel these feelings, the good news is that it means you’re alive.
It’s okay to need a helping hand. All I ask is that you reach out to a friend and say, “hey, this is affecting me, and I need some help.”
On the flip side, if you’re in a good place and want to do your bit for Movember, reach out to a fellow male friend and ask them, “hey, how are you?” and just listen.
As the UFC fighter, Paddy Pimblett, said earlier this year, “I know I’d rather my mate cry on my shoulder than go to his funeral next week.”
— Jason Vu Nguyen