This was interesting, Johnny. When I was entering junior high, back in the day, my parents moved us out into the country. There was nowhere I could go without my parents taking me, except to school on the bus. Of course, as you mention, back then no one talked about problems of any sort, especially problems related to sex or mental illness (hm-m-m-m-m... is there a correlation there?) Anyway... I was taught that you don't talk about family problems outside of the home. And since no one in the home wanted to hear about them either, you just kept it to yourself.

I grew up with gender identity issues that I hid along with what I now realize was major depression & anxiety. At my new school I also became of target of unrelenting bullying & physical abuse. But no one paid any attention. As I advanced into adulthood, I continued to hide my mental health problems. I continued to hide them through the first 5 decades of my life, because that was what I'd been taught to do. I have written elsewhere that if denial were blankets, I'd have been crushed by the weight! Then sometime after turning 50, the pressure blew the lid off of the cooker & I made my first serious suicide attempt. It's been pretty-much a long s-l-o-w downhill slide since then.

I was, & still am embarrassed by my mental illness. I don't share it with anyone I know out in the community. I don't even talk about it with my wife. Sometimes I look in the mirror & think to myself: "you're not mentally ill... you're just a normal everyday old guy." But then I think back over my history & there it is. It's pretty hard to deny.

This, of course, is the danger inherent in not talking about, or doing anything about, mental health struggles. They don't just gradually dissipate. They fester & sooner or later explode. Sometimes the explosion is reasonably well contained. Sometimes it creates mayhem.