Every 13.5 Minutes

Every 13.5 minutes, a man takes his own life.

Not every day.
Not every hour.
Every. Thirteen. And a half. Minutes.

By the time you reach the end of this blog, someone’s father,
someone’s son,
someone’s best friend… will be gone.

Another heartbeat, stopped.
Another silence that will echo forever.

Let that sit for a moment.
Let it shake you. Let it burn.

Because that’s not a metaphor.
That’s not poetic language or emotional exaggeration.
That’s data.
That’s reality.

Every 13.5 minutes, another man disappears.

Gone — not from weakness, not from cowardice —
but from pain that had nowhere to go.

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But this isn’t just a crisis.

It’s a legacy.

We’ve built a world that engineered male suffering into silence.

From the time they were small, boys were taught —
with both words and absence:

“Don’t cry.”

“Toughen up.”

“Be a man.”

We talk about mental health now. Loudly, even.
We hold space for youth, for women, for LGBTQIA+ communities —
and we should. We must.

But somewhere in that progress,
we lost sight of something else:
Men are dying. Quietly. Constantly. Alone.

Because who taught you how to speak the language of pain?
Who said it was okay to say,
“I don’t want to be here anymore,”
without being met with fear, distance, or silence?

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You, reading this.

Maybe you’re that man.
Maybe you’ve googled the statistics
because you’re not sure how much longer
you can carry your own name.

Maybe the weight on your chest isn’t grief or sadness anymore.
Maybe it’s just numb.

Maybe you’ve rehearsed the ending.
Maybe you haven’t.
But the idea… it’s there.

And if that’s true,
I need you to know something,
with everything in me:

You are not a burden.
You are not broken.
You are not weak.

You are a soul carrying a pain
that was never meant to be carried alone.
And I am so sorry the world taught you otherwise.

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And I don’t just want to reach the man who’s close to the edge.

I want to reach the people who helped build that cliff.

The generation who passed down pain like inheritance.

The schools that praised aggression but not gentleness.

The culture that laughs when a man cries on television.

The partners who wanted emotional depth
but recoiled when it showed up unpolished.

The friends who noticed a withdrawal, a silence,
but didn’t want it to get awkward.

 

We are all responsible for what masculinity has become.
And we are all responsible for unbuilding the walls we helped raise.

Because we can no longer be complicit in a world
where a man dies every 13.5 minutes, and no one screams.

So scream with me now, if you can.
Scream with your care.
Scream with your presence.
Scream with your love.

Reach out to the men in your life and say:

“You don’t have to carry this alone.”

“You don’t have to be the strong one today.”

“You’re allowed to cry. Allowed to crumble. Allowed to ask for help.”

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And if you are that man, this is your lifeline. Right here.

You don’t have to keep pretending.
There is no shame in staying.
There is no shame in surviving.

There is only breath.

And breath is sacred. One breath at a time, love.
One minute at a time.
Let this be the one that saves you.

Lots of love,
–Thîrteen