I got to realize two days ago that the month of June happens to be Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, and I also discovered that according to a stat in America, men commit suicide every thirteen minutes.
Making that discovery made me remember a conversation I had with a guy a few days ago, where he was telling of how he almost took his life a little while back. According to this guy, his partner had left him not too long ago after he had lost his job, and a friend of his, who was kind of like an escape for him, in the sense that this new friend was the person he calls whenever life starts getting overwhelming for him, had also given him reasons why she felt they shouldn't be more than just friends.
Apparently he had wanted to be more than friends with her, and she had given him a bunch of reasons why that wouldn't be possible, the bunch of reasons being the guy's flaws, and hearing all of that from someone who was supposed to be a safe space for him kind of almost sent him overboard.
He had explained that while all of that was happening, he had tried calling his normal friends, both guys and girls, because he needed to be around someone in order to not hurt himself, but no one truly understood how serious the case was, so everyone either told him they were too busy or some didn't even pick up his call.
And that was when he had decided to keep his mind busy by fumigating his room. He said that as he was mixing the chemical for the fumigation, he had thoughts going through his mind, and he found himself talking to himself, saying that all he needed to do to get everything over with was to open his mouth and drink a bit of this liquid.
He had said that the only thing that held him back was the thought of his family, his siblings, and his parents and the pain he didn't want to cause them by taking his own life; that was it.
But it didn't end there, because apparently when he eventually went to hang out with his friends and told them of what he was going through and what he almost did, his friends had laughed at him, not necessarily in a mocking way but simply because over here, people never take things like that seriously.
It's sad, but this is the reality of things over here.