Alex Melia:
In this series, we hear stories about the role masculinity plays in today's world. As I try to become a better version of myself every day, join me and let's discover this together.
Today I'm actually gonna be the guest on the show. And for one episode only my producer, Sam is going to be asking me the questions. My story is about how a recent incident made me confront my own masculinity and how this difficult event inspired me to make some big changes in my life.
Let's travel to Mexico.
It's May, 2022, and I'd been living with a local family for the past five weeks while they helped me improve my Spanish.
I went to my Mexican home with the family that I was living with. There was a mother and two daughters that were living there. It was part of this really amazing community. They call it a bario. It's basically a gated community. It's very well protected and there's people from all different generations there.
So Carla is one of the daughters and she's in her late twenties and she's just secured, a brand new position with a company that she was really excited about. So she said that two of her friends and her were going for some food in the evening. So around about eight/ nine o'clock in the evening, we walked to this restaurant.
We decided afterwards to go to a nightclub, we were dancing. And I remember getting a, a round of shots of, tequila in to celebrate Carla's new job. Then Carla went back. So I was left with the two Mexican girls. We continued having drinks, danced, etcetera. It got to about 3:00 AM. And we all said, we were, ready to go back now. So I looked on Google maps.
Said. Okay, it's a 9/ 10 minute walk. So I thought I'll walk back. As I walk, I get to just before the street that I'm living on at the time it progressively gets darker. I remember looking at my phone. I looked on WhatsApp because my friend had sent me a message.
And I heard a noise behind me, you know, those little, those small little stones, those gravelly stones.
And when people are walking, you feel the friction of the stone under the bottom of their feet on their soul. And I turned around the shock, just really floods through my system. There's three men here and I remember one of them punching me and it hit me right on the left cheek.
What proceeded was repetitive punches and kicks. I was getting punched and kicked in the head, in the stomach. And I was just in protection mode of just going straight into fetal position to cover my face, which was the right thing to do in that moment. Whilst the punches and the kicks are raining down on me, after about 45 seconds to a minute, they ran off. Once they'd ran away,
I just remember the street being completely, quite no cars passing whatsoever. And I just felt the shock still through my system, I was thinking, oh shit, how am I going to get back into this building? After patting my pockets and realizing there was no phone and wallet there. And I felt like there was nothing there.
I put my hand into my pocket and I felt this weird sense of happiness. I could feel the set of keys that I had to get into the building.
Sam Brown:
You must have been feeling so many emotions, you must have been feeling shocked, vulnerable at this point. Can you just describe how you were feeling there?
Alex Melia:
I actually, weirdly didn't feel that bad. Because the thing that was most upsetting to me was my, and it's such a first world material thing to say, but the fact I didn't have a phone anymore.
So I wasn't sure if I was, if I was able to contact people on WhatsApp, get access to my emails, all those things. Yeah. I didn't have any money. And I went back into the house and realized I'd left the building door open and I thought, I don't want anyone else to come back. So I kind of came back outside and I was a little bit scared.
To go back just in case they were around the corner. So I was able to close the door, lock the door of the building and then come back into the house and then immediately went to my laptop and thought, okay, how can I be pragmatic about this? What can I do now?
So, I can immediately cancel my credit cards, but I realized shit, I don't have any money. And then realized, thankfully I'd left my Barclaycard in my suitcase. Cause I never take that out with me. I realized I still had that. So I still had access to money after I'd cancelled all the cards I'd gone into this. I'd had a shower, wanted to clean myself from the situation or clean myself from the punishment that I had received.
I didn't want to go to bed in that sort of state. So I was probably up for about two hours.
Sam Brown:
At what point did you see the Mexican family that you were living with? I imagine you didn't see them that night.
Alex Melia:
No, I saw them next day.
Sam Brown:
What did your face look like?
Alex Melia:
I had a black eye. It was not, it was a black eye, but it wasn't a full black eye.
I was kind of, my eyelids were black. My nose was busted and I had some scrapes. I had some scrapes on my elbow, so I probably woke up about maybe 9/ 9 30. I only had about five hours sleep and I came downstairs and I just said to myself, you know, I'm not going to pretend this has not happened.
I'm just going to be honest and open about what actually happened. And I told them the other daughter who I didn't go out with her name was Barbara and the mother is called Lapita. So they were, they were sat in the dining, Mary and I and explained the story to them in my broken Spanish. So it was difficult because I'm not able to fully express all the nuances and the subtleties of what actually happened.
So I was able to say, tres hombres me robaron anoche. Which basically means three men robbed me last night. And then I explained the whole story. So it was almost weirdly good for my Spanish to, to be able to speak in past tense and
Sam Brown:
Ever the optimist there Alex
Alex Melia:
Speak about the details, but I suppose it was weird because.
You know, I tried to make a joke about it and I think a lot of men do that. You know, if they've been involved in something bad, they try to see the funny side of it to soften, the blows of what actually happened. And I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. So because I'd laughed and joked about it.
We were joking about it the following day as well, but I'd not fully processed what had actually happened?
It was still just, well, this thing happened last night and I was trying to kind of recover my money situation and my phone, but it had not really sunk in.
Sam Brown:
You said you were joking with people. Is that like a typical way that you deal with challenging feelings?
Alex Melia:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I general generally do that.
Sam Brown:
Who is it that you would usually kind of open up to and how deep would those conversations go? Would you be able to speak about that usually with somebody.
Alex Melia:
With close friends, I'm able to go into detail with that kind of thing and not feel any sort of shame or embarrassment, and I've got a mixture of female and male friends that I would talk about this with. And it's, it's so funny to see the difference in responses that you get because with women straightaway it’s “oh, No. I'm so sorry to hear that happened to you”. “Oh, I wish I could just give you a hug and make you feel better” or “I wish I was there with you right now”. “I just can't believe this has happened. What can I do to help?”
Male friends are completely different or my friends. One of them said, so you didn't get any digs on these three guys then like, surely you would've punched one of these people or surely you would've had an opportunity to punch these guys.
And they're saying it in a, in a jokey, in a jokey way. And I don't take it personally, but I just find it. Funny the differences between men's reactions, men's responses and, and female's responses.
Sam Brown:
Do you remember what I said to you?
Alex Melia:
You actually said I'm so sorry to hear that. Is that because we work together?
Sam Brown:
Who knows? Maybe…
Alex Melia:
Because you're a friend, you're a friend as well, but. Friends were like fucking hell mate. You should have knocked them out. You know, you should , you should, you should have at least got a few punches in on them.
Sam Brown:
How do you feel about that? Is that like nice that they keep you grounded?
Or would you prefer that they didn't like joke about it? Cuz it's actually like something that's quite serious has happened to you?
Alex Melia:
Yeah. Well it's interesting because the. So it happened on Friday night and then the Saturday and Sunday had not really pro I'd not processed. It, it only started to process on Monday and it was a delayed reaction to it.
So I'd only told friends at this point, I think I'd emailed a few people and told them what happened and why you can't get a hold of me on, on the phone and a few others I'd not messaged back. A few people had sent some emails saying, Hey, I've noticed my message to you on WhatsApp is on one tick, mean, you know, how, how are you?
You okay? I was a bit worried. It just,
I suppose it depends on the personality of the person, but I just find it very revealing about men and women in our society and how we respond to things like that.
Sam Brown:
Do you think they respond like that because they think they're expected to, or is that their way of dealing with, with a difficult subject like you said for you - joking about it.
Alex Melia:
I think it's a combination of the two. I think it's a really good question. I've had situations with friends before. If I've told them something quite maybe like a difficult situation I'd been in, I'd noticed a couple of them would be a bit uncomfortable dealing with it, or suggested something back thought.
Maybe some guys don't want to go into the vulnerability side of things.
Maybe you are expected as a man in terms of being a masculine man to actually respond in, in a sort of a jokey way, that's, you know about, about bravado and, you know, showing that you can defend yourself because, I think the situation would be very different if it was one man.
Who'd attacked me from behind. And I would've definitely felt differently about this. If one man had come behind me and punch me and fall into the floor, I'd be upset with myself.
Sam Brown:
Do you feel like it would be your ego that would be damaged?
Alex Melia:
I think so
Sam Brown:
I mean, it shouldn't be. Someone punching a drunk guy or, I mean someone just attacking someone else out of nowhere. That shouldn't happen just in normal life. You shouldn't feel bad about being on the receiving end of that.
Alex Melia:
Yeah.
Sam Brown:
But for some reason we would.
Alex Melia:
So if you've got three friends joking about the fact that you didn't defend yourself against three people, I think you would definitely have some sort of stronger claims from friends to say, I'm surprised you didn't defend yourself.
I think I would've been embarrassed if I'm on. If I'm completely honest, I would've been embarrassed if it was one person and I'd not, you know, I'd not done anything about it.
Sam Brown:
Yeah, I'm interested. You know, when you've been reflecting on this, how long ago did it happen now?
Alex Melia:
Five weeks. Five weeks ago.
Sam Brown:
Five weeks ago. I mean, it's still relatively fresh.
Alex Melia:
Yeah.
Sam Brown:
What's been the most surprising thing to you when you've been reflecting on it.
Alex Melia:
I remember on the Saturday, Saturday afternoon, I remember feeling quite sad for a couple of hours and I just felt myself in this funk and I needed to go out and record some voiceover for the podcast and I wasn't going to do it. And I just thought, you've gotta get yourself out of the the bedroom and, and get up and do something. I felt really good waiting outside for the taxi to go to this recording studio. I thought I've, I've got out the room because I had, you know, I maybe had an excuse to stay in and say, oh, I'm gonna lick my wounds.
But apart from feeling sad and then doing the podcast after I felt good. And then Sunday, I just stayed in that evening, Sunday. I was around the family for a few hours and we had food and things, but the Monday was the big day where I really, I feel like I had a delayed reaction to what had happened and the Monday it hit, because in the morning I was in a Spanish class with one of the student and the teacher, and we were reading out a Spanish text and we were taking turns reading.
And in that moment, when I was reading the text, I felt this panic attack comes straight through my body and I've not had a panic attack for a while. And if anyone's listening, who's had panic attacks before they know that it comes to you as a shock, or it comes to you as a surprise entirely. You're not expecting it to happen
Sam Brown:
For those of us that haven't. Can you describe it?
Alex Melia:
It's like a shortness of breath. Out of nowhere. And you feel like you can't breathe. It's just this overwhelming fear. It just rises through your body, it almost grips hold of you, and you have this feeling of fight or flight. It's get the hell out of there.
You're in danger. You're about to be eaten by a dinosaur or something, or run away and run as fast as you can. And because I've experienced this before, obviously I was scared in that moment. I still had the experience to know that this will pass. I just had this feeling of this will pass. So as I was reading this text, I started to stutter and I said, “I don't know what part we're we're up to”.
So the other student next to me was able to say, oh, we're up to this section. So it allowed me the time to actually remember it allowed me the time to process this and let the, let the panic attack go. And I was able to continue the text. Now, why would I get a panic attack related to an incident where I'd been beaten up three days previously?
Why was that to do with reading out loud? Well, the first panic attack I ever had in my life was when I was 14 and I was doing a speech about the pros and cons of cannabis. Yeah. I was in the fourth year of high school and I remember being in front of 40 students. I was speaking so fast because I was nervous.
I kind of lost my breath. I wasn't able to continue speaking. And it was this [big breath] couldn't didn't, wasn't breathing throughout and then just. Went red all over, started shaking.
The teacher did nothing to help me.
She just stayed at the back of the room and didn't do anything so there, and then I just collapsed in that moment. And every time I had a, a speech to do afterwards, I was just overwhelmed with fear and terror. That's what came back to me and I reflected afterwards and I thought isn't that interesting that I've had an attack I've been attacked on in few days previously.
And this is morphed into a previous trauma, my counsellor, because I speak to a counsellor once, once or twice a week. And she said, that's. What's termed as complex PTSD when you have two unrelated traumas that just merge together in the days and the weeks since the attack, I've had to re really rebuild my confidence. I've got my own business, I've got staff and, you know, I'm considered a, an alright speaker.
And I just felt like I was 14 or 15 years old again. So really, this was a ma my masculinity being challenged and thinking, am I 14, 15 years old? Or am I, am I 35 year old man? Like I thought I was. Even just having conversations on the phone with people you know, if I'm speaking for a longer period of time, I'm aware of the panic attacks I had from speaking.
To 40 students when I was in, in English class with when I was 14, 15 years old.
Sam Brown:
And you found it just sort of seeping into every aspect of your life?
Alex Melia:
Absolutely yeah. It has seeps into every, every aspect of my life.
Sam Brown:
It's great that you are speaking to a counselor so often.
Alex Melia:
I definitely feel I've improved my confidence over the last, the last four or five weeks just week by week it's got better. Different breathing exercises that I'm doing. And, and just being honest about, about how I'm feeling, and I'm no less, no less of a man by, by speaking out because some people do feel like, like that. And I've realized over the years when I've had panic attacks and you know, I've spoken to spoken to this counsellor that, you know, you feel the more you reveal your vulnerability, the better you become the stronger foundations that you're able to build.
I only started speaking to people about how I felt when I was 29 30, so that was only five years ago. So I'd kept all of this to myself, you know, for most of my life.
A really interesting scenario happened.
I’m in, Porto in Portugal, right now. I had no data, no wifi. It was 3:30 AM. I'd been to a nightclub. I don't want people to think I'm drunk all the time. I mean, I probably get drunk maybe two or three times a year. And I, uh, I had to walk home because there was no taxes. I couldn't get outta an Uber. so it was almost like conquering the, demon or whatever because I walked all the way home through some dark streets and was able to get to the front door.
Okay. And my counsellor had told me to, as an exercise to run and pretend that you're running away from the attackers and almost like that the situation never happened. So I kind of walked and run cuz it was quite away. So I walked and ran, walked and ran and pretended that there was, there were three guys chasing me and I was able to get around the corner and get away.
Sam Brown:
Geez!
Alex Melia:
She told me that was a good thing to, I, I think it helps, but it was like, it was almost like the world saying, okay, we're gonna take your data and wifi away from you. You can't, you can't flag a taxi over. I want you to actually confront this. I think it's just given me coping mechanisms. If I feel like I'm going to have a panic attack, or I feel like any negative thought gets into my head if that comes to me.
Sam Brown:
Yeah.
Alex Melia:
I'm able to deal with it better. I mean, I've not had any panic attacks for a few weeks now, which is obviously a great thing and it shows that I'm making improvements. And it's also interesting as well. When you say this to friends, they then say, well, I had a panic attack about this, this and this and it happened at this point in time. That's been eyeopening. And I think sometimes it takes you to speak out first for someone else to then speak out about who they felt, because I wouldn't have known otherwise that they had a panic attack. Yeah. And it's people that I didn't expect because I thought they were so masculine, They're such strong men, they've got great foundations.
But actually anyone, if they're going through a trauma, they deal with it in different ways. And, and you. You kind have panic attacks and things like that. Yeah.
Sam Brown:
It is often inside someone's mind. You don't know what sort of challenges other people are facing. A lot of people are very good at putting up a front that just makes you think that they are, you know, invincible as a man, I definitely feel like I do that or attempt to do that probably a little bit more than they should just to sort of wrap up following this incident, we spoke about it. Pretty quickly afterwards, we decided to change the subject of this season.
Can you talk us through sort of what the decision making process was there, why we've gone down this route and sort of why it's important to you that we, that we cover this topic?
Alex Melia:
Well, I think from the, the previous seasons have been very passionate about the stories that men have about any sort of challenges they've faced.
I spoke to a guy called Mike McCarthy, whose, whose son Ross killed himself a couple of years ago. And Mike's doing some excellent work in campaigning for more support for men. The biggest killer of men under 45 is suicide. And I think a lot of that is to do with men keeping things to themselves and not speaking out.
So I just felt this overwhelming urge and motivation to give men a platform to speak about all sorts of things. It doesn't necessarily have to do with trauma or mental health issues. I’m just, I'm just very fascinated in what it means to be a man. What is masculinity in, in modern times? How is it different to how masculinity was portrayed 30, 40, 50 years ago when our fathers and grandfathers were growing up? And I feel like in today's world, a lot of things are not said you're only starting to see now in the last few years, sports stars, for example, footballers rugby players, boxers, whoever it might be basketball players in America, actually speaking about their, their mental health.
Or like I said, that might not just be mental health. It might be all sorts of different areas of, of what it means to be a man. So I'm very passionate about it. I can't wait to get the series out there and get people's stories from different walks of life into the, public sphere.
Thanks for listening to today's episode, where I talked about the scary situation I was involved in recently. Hope you liked it, make sure you follow us on apple podcasts and while you're there, it would be great. If you could leave as a review, as it really helps us to grow as a show. Thanks so much and see you next week for another great story.