sorry the topic got me reflecting and apologies in advance I got totally carried away:

I've seen a lot of acquaintances (some of them friends) who over this past decade (starting when they reached their mid 30ies till mid-40ies) who went through some varieties of a mental breakdown, and which they're still recovering from 10-15 years later. Some of them got help. One of them hanged himself. All of them male. I couldn't help tuning into their life as it touched me, not just because they were close but because I also struggled a lot too and I engaged also to find a cure for my own cursed life.

In my case it was because I needed to unfuck the things that got fucked when I was a child (abuse by my mother from a young age both physical & sexual). I ran all my life from it and turned running even into a life-style (lived all over the world since the mid 90ies and still do so until today). I chose to live in some war torn terrifying places to feel alive and took some of the most dangerous jobs just for shits and giggles. I witnessed my first religious motivated murder when I got off the bus in Banda Aceh just after leaving my home country the first time ever to travel. I even started running literally to calm myself, first 10km, then half-marathons then marathons then ultra-marathons. Running 7 days a week for a min of 2 hours. I have no roots. Running both figuratively and literally helped me get through life without thinking to off-myself.

I sometimes come across as lacking empathy. Though my problem is that I have too much empathy in some cases that makes me feel connected to causes that then causes me to go nuts over certain topics that I feel too strongly about. I've also had my episodes here on HN where I advocated violence against causes that are dear to me (protection of nature/animals/biosphere etc at all costs and I was rightly put in place by the mods - thanks for putting up with my shit dang).

In the last 2 years I went through some kind of transformation. idk still what exactly triggered it, ... probably a combination of many things. I was always suspicious of medical help because I felt that my life was so complex and unique that nobody on this planet who went through the canned-curriculum of an academic institution could even fathom how I tick or help me. And besides I managed the first 35 years without killing myself so I'd surely get through this now. Also (more on this later) the experience from the friends I had who chose professional help terrified me for many reasons. I'd never tell anyone to seek professional help (sorry there won't be any of that here).

First change I made was to leave my family - I chose a wife who hit me like my mother when I was a child and who would mentally abuse me in ways I can't go into here both because it's too complex and too fucked up. My wife struggled with depression (and a fucked up childhood too so we really kind of found another). I figured it would be better to just leave them all rather than to make the kids put up with 2 depressed parents (or the risk of one of us killing themselves). It didn't seem fair to the kids as I didn't want to repeat the same lies served by my own parents. Neither my wife nor myself ever hit the children and they were our only thing that was sacred (she spent lot of time with them while I tried to make a gazillion to ensure they had everything. On the outside we were looked up to by friends and even the kids had no idea until they became teenagers when it all came tumbling down. I left them and never had a chance of seeing them again mostly because they now hate me and my ex also thinks I'm trash for leaving.

In my new place I started smoking weed because the pain of having my kids think I left them was almost unbearable - and still is until today. Their mother telling them I left them like a garbage runaway-father. And thanks to her denying me access it means that I'll probably not see them ever again since by now they also believe that I left for the reason my ex claims. What I'm trying to say is that in order to make things better I couldn't just improve stuff. I had to dismantle all the bullshit first. And that dismantling caused even more harm in the short and medium term. The idea to fix things without also destroying some parts is an illusion. I couldn't have stayed there and make it work otherwise I would be dead, or my wife would have killed herself, or god forbid the kids get as fucked up as their parents (after all the only thing that both my wife and me did well was look after them in the way we did.

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