The Day I Stopped Pretending I Was Okay

 By Clayton Wolf

“A man with a father wound will grow up starving for success that will feel unhuman-like.”

I remember hearing that quote once and thinking, “Well… that’s dramatic.”
And then, much later, “Oh… yeah. That’s me.”

For most of my life, I thought I could out-work, out-achieve, and out-muscle any emotional hole in my chest. If something hurt, I buried it. If something scared me, I outran it. If something felt too heavy, I convinced myself it wasn’t.

It worked.
Until it didn’t.

And the day I finally realized everything was not okay was in September 2024.

Dinner at the In-Laws — The Beginning of the Breaking Point

Let me first say: I love my in-laws. They are incredible people. Top-tier humans. If there were in-law Olympics, they would medal.

But on this particular day, I wasn’t feeling right.

Not sick… but not well.
Not anxious… but not calm.
Just off. Like someone unplugged me halfway and left me flickering.

We arrived for dinner. I tried to shake it off — because that’s what men do, right? Just shake harder until your emotions fall out like loose change.

Our three-month-old was fussy, so I stepped into the living room and started rocking him, pacing because sitting felt wrong… but standing also felt wrong… existing felt wrong.

I’d had mild panic attacks in the Army after Afghanistan, but this didn’t feel like that. This felt different. Foreign. Bigger.

And then I heard it.

“He would be three.”

My wife and mother-in-law were talking in the other room about our firstborn son — Grayson. Stillborn. Loved beyond measure.

I heard my mother-in-law say:

“It’s hard to believe he would be three.”

That sentence hit me like a freight train loaded with every emotion I’d avoided for three years.

I used to think words didn’t have power. I thought action was power. Words were just noise. Barbaric thinking, maybe, but honest.

But when she said that, I froze. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t swallow.

Not only had I never processed losing my son… I never processed the chaos that came after. Supporting my wife through the darkest pain a mother can feel. Trying to hold myself together. Trying to still perform in uniform because the Army doesn’t pause for grief.

And at the same time, I was facing another abrupt loss: being medically retired. Not by choice. Not gently. Just, “Your career is ending now. Good luck.”

It was too much.
So, like a “good soldier,” I shoved it all down and moved on.

Until that sentence ripped the lid off everything I’d buried.

My heart started pounding.
My head tingled.
I couldn’t sit.
Couldn’t stand.
Couldn’t breathe.
But also couldn’t stop breathing.

My wife walked in and asked if I wanted cake.

Cake. In that moment.

I told her I wasn’t feeling well and needed to go home.

The Spiral

I got home and started pacing.
Living room. Kitchen.
Kitchen. Living room.

My body felt like it was in fight mode, flight mode, shutdown mode, and confused-giraffe mode all at once.

A doctor had told me to monitor my blood pressure, so I checked it.

175/110.

Perfect. Just what my anxiety needed — concrete evidence that I might explode.

I called the nurse line. She calmly said, “That is rather high. You should go to the ER to make sure you’re not having a heart attack.”

A heart attack.
At 30.

Part of me thought, “Impossible.”
The other part thought, “Well, most of the men on your dad’s side die in their 40s of massive heart attacks soooo…”

I called my wife. We got in the car and drove to the ER.

They ran every test. We sat there for hours.

Everything came back normal.

But I didn’t feel normal.

My legs were tingling.
I couldn’t feel my groin.
My arms were heavy.
My vision felt wrong.
I was dizzy. Detached. Afraid.

It wasn’t a heart attack.
It was something worse: the truth catching up to me.

The Moment I Finally Stopped Pretending

Sitting in that ER, I realized I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t “pushing through.” I wasn’t “handling it.” I wasn’t “managing.”

I was breaking.

Slowly. Quietly. Finally.

That night cracked something open in me — the same crack that would later lead to IOP, to healing, to rebuilding my faith, and to seeing God not as a disappointed judge but as a loving Father.

This was the day I stopped pretending I was okay.

And honestly?
It was the day my life began to change.

The Rest of the Night That Changed Everything

All the tests came back normal. My heart was fine. My body was fine. But the doctor — a med student doing his rotations — looked at me and said, “We believe it’s just anxiety. Just go home and wait it out.”

“Just anxiety.”
As if anxiety doesn’t flip your entire existence upside down.

The drive home was quiet.
My wife didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t know what to ask for.

That night was long.
Sleepless.
Heavy.

I was scared.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t pushing through. I wasn’t stuffing it down. I wasn’t muscling forward.

It had me in a chokehold.

And it was time to fight—
except I didn’t have any arms.
I didn’t know how to fight this.

That’s when it hit me:

I have to stop pretending.
I have to stop performing.
I have to stop acting like nothing hurts.

I needed accountability — not to other people, but to myself.

For the first time, I realized I needed to look up.

I needed to actually know God.
Not the God I imagined was disappointed in me…
The God who loved me.
Who was waiting on me.

So I opened the Bible.

Slowly.
Awkwardly.
Desperately.

And somewhere in that process — not instantly, but over time — I realized:

I didn’t know my God.
And knowing Him was the only way out.

That night didn’t fix me.
But it started something.
It was the first honest step toward the man I needed to become.

For the Man Reading This

If you’ve been pretending…
If you’ve been burying everything…
If you’ve been outrunning your own story…

You’re not alone.

You don’t have to break in private.
You don’t have to tough-guy your way through trauma.
You don’t have to act fine while everything inside you is screaming.

You can stop pretending.
You can heal.
And God — the real God — will meet you right where you are.

Welcome to the journey.

A Challenge for You

Before you close this page, take a moment.
Sit with yourself — the real you, not the version you perform for the world.

Ask yourself:

• Where am I pretending everything is fine when it’s not?

• What pain have I buried because I didn’t know how to face it?

• What truth have I been avoiding because it scares me?

• Where do I need to take accountability — not for others, but for myself?

• What lie have I believed about God that keeps me distant from Him?

• And the hardest one: What would my life look like if I finally stopped pretending?

You don’t need to fix everything today.
Just answer honestly.
Honesty is the doorway to healing.

Give yourself permission to be human.
Give God permission to step in.

One honest question at a time — that’s how the journey starts.