five days past forty and i’m sitting with what june did to me.
not to me like violence. to me like renovation. like somebody came through and moved the furniture while i was out and now i have to learn the room again in the dark.
the birthday letter went live on the 24th. #to the making’s of Me. i wrote it because turning forty felt like something that needed a witness — even if that witness was just me, typing at my own table, trying to name what it means to arrive here intact.
people texted. some didn’t. both responses taught me something.
the ones who reached out said things like “this is everything” or “i needed this today” and i sat with that weight. the ones who went quiet — i sat with that too. silence isn’t always rejection. sometimes it’s people doing their own math in their own corners. i respect that.
men’s mental health awareness month, quietly
june was supposed to be loud about men’s mental health. i saw the posts. the infographics. the calls to check on your brothers.
i didn’t post much.
not because i don’t believe in it. because i was in it. doing the actual work of it in real time. therapy twice a week. journal entries that didn’t see daylight. conversations with men i love where we said the hard part out loud and then sat in it without fixing it.
that’s the thing they don’t tell you about awareness months. awareness isn’t always amplification. sometimes it’s the opposite. sometimes it’s turning the volume down so you can hear what’s actually happening in your chest.
i noticed i was both quieter and louder this month. quieter online. louder in my own head. louder in the rooms that mattered.
i told my therapist things i’ve been holding since i was seventeen. i told a friend i was scared of something that felt too small to name. i let myself cry in the car after a phone call that wasn’t even sad — just honest.
none of that made it to the grid. none of it needed to.
the gaps
turning forty in the same month as men’s mental health awareness felt like a setup. like the universe was handing me a mirror and saying “so what are you actually doing with this?”
and what i was doing was small.
i was waking up and deciding not to perform strength. i was texting back slower because i needed to mean it when i said “i’m good.” i was sitting with the fact that forty doesn’t come with answers. it comes with better questions.
like: what does it mean to be a man who wants to stay tender on purpose?
like: how do i hold space for my own grief without letting it turn into armor?
like: who taught me that silence was safer than speaking and how do i unlearn that without losing myself in the noise?
the work happened in the gaps. between the birthday and the month’s end. between the public letter and the private reckonings. between what i said and what i couldn’t say yet.
what june taught me
june taught me that forty isn’t a finish line. it’s a door.
june taught me that mental health work for men isn’t always visible. sometimes it’s just choosing to stay in the room when everything in you wants to leave.
june taught me that i can write a letter to myself and call it love and mean it.
june taught me that the people who show up show up. and the ones who don’t are doing their own work. and both can be true at the same time.
tomorrow is june 30th. wednesday is july. i’m closing the book on this month the way i opened it — quietly, deliberately, with my hands on the keys and my heart doing that thing where it remembers it’s still here.
forty and tender. that’s the work. that’s what june asked of me.
i said yes.