JACOB CROSSLEY

Hi my name is Jacob, and I have been cycling for four years, but that feels like the simplest and most obvious way to introduce myself. The last four years have also included losing my father to skin cancer at 49. Starting two years of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy when my OCD and anxiety hit a point where I genuinely feared I was breaking and trying to figure out who I am when the person I built my identity on stopped working.

People sometimes look at my life and think I have it together. Married. Career. A home in London. Friends. Bikes. Smiles on Instagram. Long rides. Gear chat. But internal storms don’t care how stable your life looks from the outside. Mental health doesn’t wait for permission or check if everything appears okay before it begins to fold you in on yourself.

My journey with mental health didn’t start recently. It began when I was eleven. I grew up in a loving but broken home. My mum and sister were constant, but my dad drifted in and out. There, then gone. Present, then silent. When you’re a child, you learn quickly you’re not the first priority. You hold desperately to the idea of the family you want, not necessarily the one you have. Anger became my language. Sport became my distraction. I played anything that might make him proud, it became my identity. Competition was how I proved I was worth something. That I existed.

I thought being strong meant folding things away. Anger. Fear. Sadness. Dyslexia. Partial deafness. I hid the parts of me that made me feel broken and tried to build a version of myself my dad might stay for. Spoiler: he didn’t. Fast forward. Life goes on. Sort of. My dad and I never really fixed anything. We just existed in this grey area. I thought there’d be time. Then there wasn’t. Cancer doesn’t wait for reconciliation. When he died, grief wasn’t one clean hit. It came in waves, often disguised as something else. Noise in my head. Tightness in my chest. Locking doors six times. Checking my pockets three times before leaving the house. Replaying conversations until they lost meaning. That’s when the OCD took full control. Therapy entered not as a nice idea, but as necessity. Nine months in, it wasn’t about locks anymore. It was about loss. About a kid who never got what he needed. About a man trying not to drown in the aftermath. CBT was where I started unfolding. Layer by layer. Memory by memory. “Theory A: If I don’t do everything perfectly something terrible will happen and it will be my fault.” I believed that with 99% certainty. Therapy forced me to test it. Therapy helped me see that the fear wasn’t about locks. It was about loss. If I couldn’t stop my dad from leaving, or dying, maybe I could control everything else. Except I couldn’t. And the more I folded, the smaller I got.

Around that time, in the thick of OCD rituals and grief I didn’t know how to name yet,I came across a video by a guy called Nick Frendo. It was about cycling, but it was also about pain and connection and not doing life alone. He signposted The New Normal and spoke openly about mental health in a way that didn’t feel polished or performative it felt like someone addressing all the fears I had honestly in front of a camera. I didn’t know Nick then. But that video made me feel less alone for a few minutes and introduced me to The New Normal and the idea of safe spaces for conversations men often avoid until they’re already on the edge. It planted a seed. Not a fix, not an answer, but a signpost. One that said people are talking about this. You’re allowed to struggle out loud. I never thought I’d one day end up speaking to the same person behind the camera, let alone calling him a friend.

Somewhere in all of this, I found cycling. Or cycling found me. I don’t know if it was escape or transformation or both. What started as a hobby became a mirror. On long climbs, you meet yourself. On group rides, you learn how much being surrounded by people who push you and wait for you and laugh with you can heal. On descents, you remember what freedom feels like. On the days your legs are dead and your head is louder than the road, if you still clip in, that’s a kind of quiet victory. I’ve had rides that felt like therapy sessions. Rides where I cried behind my sunglasses. Rides where I laughed harder than I had in months. Rides where I thought of my dad. Rides where I resented him. Rides where I understood him. Rides where I forgave him for being flawed. And rides where I wondered if I’d ever forgive myself for not saying what I wanted to before he died.