The Boy Between: A Mother and Son's Journey From a World Gone Grey

by Josiah Hartley

It is relief, joy and most important it is the sound of hope. And those bursts of hope are the driftwood to which I cling.

‘Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.’

I have also learned not to look too far ahead, as that is where the unknown lurks and that can be a scary thought.

remind me of that poem "i am"

We as a society must look at the value of these connections; a thousand Instagram followers aren’t worth as much as one person who you can communicate honestly and openly with, at least in my opinion.

These periods of ‘normality’ could last anything from one day to a week or so. They gave me hope.

Borderline bipolar disorder?

‘I went away and drew up a list of all the things you wouldn’t have to suffer if you weren’t here anymore. It was something like this: no more illness, no struggling, no loss, no heartbreak, no ageing . . . But then I considered all the things you would not experience: knowing the blessing of a child, earning the right in old age to become eccentric, getting properly drunk on champagne, sleeping in a meadow, by a brook, waking wrapped in the arms of the one you love, fresh caught lobster eaten on a dock, laughing so hard at nothing much that you feel dizzy with happiness. Oh, my darling, this list is endless, it stretches on for infinity . . .

‘I can see that some people would think that, but it wouldn’t have been selfish because that suggests that I would have been making a conscious decision in my right mind; doing it [ending my life] without caring about the effect of my actions on anyone else and it wasn’t like that, not at all. I wasn’t thinking straight. I couldn’t think straight. I was in pain and at the same time numb. I would have done it in that fogged state almost like I wouldn’t have known what I had done, if that makes any sense. Like when you are so drunk you do things and can’t remember. Exactly like that, but I was sober.

We need as a nation, as parents, as carers and as educators to take a step back and ask what we really want for our kids, because driving them to succeed in this competitive, unforgiving, judgemental world could possibly cost them their happiness or worse . . .

I did grow you after all.’

‘Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.’

Social media is, I think, one of the curses of our age. At a time of self-discovery, teens and twenty-somethings are under enormous pressure to look a certain way, live a certain lifestyle and even eat food that is Instagram-worthy! It is of course preposterous and that perfect life is nearly always unattainable.

Life can feel very much like a race where there is little room for kindness or for niceness, not when there is so much intra competition to be the best of the best, to win a place at university, gain a first, get a job, beat all other applicants, climb on to the housing ladder (if you are very lucky), make money, have a perfect relationship, travel the world, make more money and be a winner, whilst not forgetting to show your altruism in the form of charity, and your beauty captured in any number of selfies with interesting or exotic backgrounds!

How often do we hear the phrase ‘Failure is not an option!’ but in my opinion failure should be an option.

There is also a distinct dislike of averageness.

Mai Mhishi - "The average child will make it in life"

I would have fared better if I’d known it was okay to fail and be average

I think if men and boys were less concerned with ‘manning-up’ and were more honest about how they were feeling, if they could reach out, openly and honestly without fear of ridicule or feeling that to show emotion was in some way emasculating, then quite possibly the depression and suicide rates among young men would not be rising.

And it affects people from all walks of life. Lady Gaga, Hugh Laurie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt, J. K. Rowling, Eminem, Steven Fry, Alastair Campbell, Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, Winston Churchill, Franz Kafka, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Ian Thorpe, Sir John Kirwan, Dan Carcillo – they have all suffered or suffer with depression. Every single one of them.

‘People who need help sometimes look a lot like people who do not need help.’

(And yes, I am once again crying . . .) X

I, too, teared up reading that last paragraph.