***

I found my first grey hair the other day.

Just sitting on my chin, standing proudly alongside the other hairs in my beard.

And while that ‘beard’ is more a patchy, sparse, mess of hairs,

Than any kind of virile, masculine growth –

One of them, nevertheless, sat there – silver.

At that point I could have spiralled into a crisis;

Realising that time’s cruel hand was ticking on and on,

Renounced my mortality,

Bought a Ferrari,

And grabbed the nearest Just For Men dye box.

But instead,

It got me thinking about the fact that I’m still here,

Kicking on,

And…apparently now…getting old.

***

Because there was a time, way back when,

Where I couldn’t see myself getting to this point,

Where I didn’t think I could get to this point,

Either to this age, or to this year,

And yet, as has become apparent, the days continued to pass on by,

As they so often do –

Until I found myself at a grand old age where my smattering of facial hairs had been there for so long,

That they began to lose their colour,

And began to turn grey.

***

It can be a sensitive topic, thinking or talking about one not being here,

But as uncomfortable as it may be,

It is a very real thing, a very real issue,

Where people find themselves in a position where they don’t see a future for themselves,

And take it upon themselves to end their own story prematurely.

But it is because of this reality,

And the lasting impacts that someone removing themselves from this world can cause,

That we owe it to those we have lost, and those who are in the depths of it now, to talk about it.

It is scary, it is sensitive, but it is real,

And any conversations around the topic of suicide should be dealt with as such.

But looking back, in my mind, I was never quite…“s-word”.

I think, more than anything, the s-word that was dictating my life, and hindering my ability to see myself existing much further than my early twenties,

Was: Scared.

I was scared of what my future would look like,

I was scared because I couldn’t imagine what my future would look like,

I was scared I didn’t have one.

And I was scared by the potential of being in a world that didn’t want me to have a future.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be here,

It was more that I couldn’t find my place here,

Or in the future.

And the reality of that fact,

Often made me think that maybe it was all too much to simply try and fight for that place.

In those darker moments,

Where the light at the end of the tunnel seems all but extinguished,

It may seem that the only way to go is out.

But if we can wait,

If we can hold on,

And if we can find a hand to grasp onto,

Maybe – just maybe – we can see the dawn of a new day come to be.

***

And so, finding that silver needle in my haystack,

All these years later,

It prompted me to take a moment,

And to look back.

Because as we get older, it’s generally only every decade or so,

When we hit another milestone birthday, that we are given cause to reflect.

It can be a loud marking; with cakes, candles, and celebrations.

And how lucky we are to have them.

But it can be in the quieter, more solitary moments,

Like after madly plucking a grey hair off your chin in the bathroom alone,

That we look a little deeper,

Think of where we have been,

What we have encountered,

And where we find ourselves now.

Because it is then that we realise that we have pushed through that fear,

And made it out the other side;

Whether madly swinging, and tired from exertion.

Or finding that the voices that were once so loud,

And so cruel,

Have quietened slightly in our mind.

Without us even realising.

And we find, that by being here today, with a grey hair now sitting on the bench in front of us,

That we have endured.

***

Because we are tougher than we know,

More resilient than we ever had realised.

And by taking it day by day,

By making it day by day,

And then year by year,

That we can get to the point,

Where we – and our hairs – reflect the effort we have put in,

And give us a silver medal for our work.