
MY STORY

One day I was fine.
The next, I woke up with crippling anxiety and this thick cloak of depression I couldn't shake.
I couldn’t handle noise. Couldn’t think. I just walked out of my house — no idea where I was going. I wandered the streets in tears, completely lost. I remember looking at trees and thinking: “I could hang myself from there.”
That thought terrified me.
How had I gone from feeling completely normal… to this?
What the hell was happening to me?
Eventually, I ended up on my mum’s doorstep. She opened the door and we just hugged.
Behind the dark thoughts I always knew I had to get better. I’ve got a wife and two young kids. They needed me. They still do. That’s what’s kept me going.
But I’m not going to lie — the “help” I got was a system. Cold. Clinical. Forms and tick boxes.
When I got CBT, it was a phone session with 50 other people. Weirdly, that was comforting at first. But I still felt like a number.
I dropped out halfway through. No one checked where I’d gone.
What I really needed was a space.
Not a form. Not a stranger reading questions off a screen.
I needed to talk to someone who got it.
Someone like me. Another lad going through the same silent storm.
I didn’t have that back then.
So I built it.
Say It Lad.
We’re here — I’m here — to talk. No bullshit. No clipboard.
Just a space to say it. Loud or quiet. Once or often.
With someone who actually understands.
(I did, its liberating)