A beautiful soul takes his life in a moment of... we will never know. Will we say 'it', that menacing shadow, had become too much to tolerate and this was the only option or will we recognise that to hold yourself up through many years of holding yourself up is not unlike doing constant gym pull ups, hour by hour, day by day. And it really is.

Living with moving mental health can be like walking around doing all the things that life needs whilst wearing an over-sized coat made of heavy weight chain mail. You can operate. You can smile. You can present your best self. You can work. You can be honest with people that it's there. You can cope. But all the while you do so wearing this giant's coat made of metal and it covers your hands, tangles at your feet, it pulls and it snags, it cuts and its hot and its sore. Sometimes you want so desperately to Take Off The Coat.

Young men are the biggest casualty. Some women seem to have a little tap and can sometimes depressurise just enough to hold safe. But young men often seem to be built without that gauge. It's hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, gone.

How do we care for those who are battling mental health on an half hour by half hour basis. Well, this is not long enough to go into detail so I will say this... we often struggle to tell you we are struggling because we can't deal with admitting it to ourselves let alone someone else. We need you to know us well enough to see. We need you to recognise the subtleties of our words, our movements, our habits and we need you to perhaps dial in your care. Yes, dial in. Those who battle this war can tend towards being gentle souls. We can't always cope with how you want to help. The orderly doctor appointment or cheery phone call checking in on us might do little except make us pull on our Eleanor Rigby faces that we've kept in our jars for these moments. We need you to watch. We need you to blend in. We need you to think how help would be helpful. A gently placed "I really want to be more of a support and I would like you to tell me how" could be a breakthrough moment. Even "I have no idea how to help but I want to and I want you to teach me and if you can't I want to just sit with you".

We are difficult to help. Admittedly. But that doesn't mean we don't want to be helped. It means you may have to recognise that the help you want to give isn't always the help we need. Phone numbers are just numbers. Be subtle, be gentle, be honest and don't stop. It means that you become part of the fabric not part of the solution. The solution may never come but the fabric is here right now. And to those mourning a loss, there might be just a little comfort in lifting your sore eyes with admiration at how someone pulled up, how hard, how often, how long, how many and know that we witnessed a warrior.

Love from

The room above the garage.