On Black Men, Our Emotional Health Crises, and making wellness a part of our stories, 2nd verse

I realized, somewhere around 10, maybe 12, that suicide was a process for Black boys and men. The same, it occurred to me, could be said for choosing to make a run at living. Both were processes, literally on the same spectrum, and both were frightening, in some way, to so many of us, Black and male.

I watched my father, week to week, drink himself into a violent, abusive stupor, lashing out at us, all 3, and my mother. It took me some time to realize that something about life, possibly all of it, frightened him. Not enough to embrace total numbness, no. Not enough to divorce himself from it completely, no. I learned later, becoming a man, and Black father, that he was afraid always, of what the world could do to him, without him being able to stop it. He seethed with this anxiety, most days, for his children. For his wife. For himself. That is not to excuse any of what I saw in my home as a child. It is to say, only, that I worked through that away from him, and with him, prior to his passing. I realize that all in the same 24 hour period, he chose to live, and toyed with the idea of just letting death happen. It wasn’t, isn’t, won’t be, just him, Black and male.

Working forward, within myself, and other brothers, I started to see these patterns. Never all the same, and never flowing in precisely the same emotional river of colors. But, plainly there. Pulsing.

I would see this boundless joy at being alive, these bright, rich moments of human clarity, deep, clean breaths. Followed, literally in seconds, with the realization that so much was waiting to claim our skin, and happiness, and purpose. Emotionally, I could older and younger brothers waiting to be picked over, emotionally, physically, spiritually. Crows, never far from the places where we rest at.

We are told, shown, coached, coaxed and driven toward knowing that to be Black and male, is to be in peril. Always. We were raised with the understanding that we, thought bright, and wanted, and loved, are that danger. We are sat down and fed a curriculum full of knowing that the nation family outside of us wants our bodies for their pleasure or cages. We are rewarded, within these spaces, crows round about, for pretending. We are rewarded for wearing the greatest and most profoundly expressionless mask of fearlessness and woe.

Our families, our comrades and friends, our teachers, our lovers and neighbors, do not give us these lessons as a means of harming our fragile senses of self. No. They are deathly afraid for us. They are fearful of what may come, that they can never hold back, that momentum, that wave which always crashes down on Black skin, they see its shadow everywhere. And, to be certain, all of our history here suggests that there is no naivete or paranoia in all those others. Their fear, their shouts, these are born of love. Know this, any love, when stirred with enough trauma, ferments an elixir of toxic and crippling enabling. When poured, those who love us most wish to feed us straight from the bottle, wrapped in their arms, and they fear the day when we become too big for that cradle. Understand, and forgive them.

And so, so many of our institutions, so much of what we have learned to invest our persons in, straddles those spaces between life and death. There is the push our ancestors have given us, that biological and family imperative, to dance with all of life’s best and worst, and to burn bright in the undertaking. We will not live in moderation, and will certainly not die that way.

With anxiety, and like skin, and brothers round us, struggling with this spectrum of fearing living, and fearing what comes after death, and wanting to become strong enough to be here forever, and fearing that something, someone, may take us, when and however, we run toward death, those of us overwhelmed by those voices.

All that tends to vary, is whether we sprint, jog or walk toward this inevitability with what we are allowed for dignity.

And so, some among us, test those waters with substances fit to destroy our bodies. We conduct an experiment, testing how long we may stay before we are claimed. Others, place themselves firmly in the path of death, defying Eshu to come and reap them. Ultimately, something will come.

Some of us learn better. We learn to hide, and mimic, and follow, so as to stave that inevitability off. Yet, that anxiety remains. Like all good anxiety, all eustress, for those of us who have grown with proper light and water, it serves as a warning sign.

But, somewhere, something changed.

I found myself, and other brothers, quietly speaking more about suicide, and those who we knew who had taken their own lives. There remained (remains) stigma, but we started, all of us, to count up numbers, and to see truth, cold and near. Where we were able our deaths given over to poverty, supremacy and violence, we were struggling with the concept that we were taking our own lives. We were struggling with means for expressing, and naming, what we were seeing.

The suicide rate is climbing among Black children. The ages of those attempting is creeping lower, and Black boys are rising steadily through these ranks.

Let us address some of the obvious. Those who attempt, or complete, suicides should not be conceived of as selfish, weak, or broken. Especially not our children, especially not our boys. There is the trauma of microaggressions every day, there is the reality of having their personhood ravaged, agendas set for their failures, doubt about their viability as humans, and a system of living which provides them, us, with no means for processing out the hurt, and rage, and fear of wearing this skin, even into our sleep. They, we, are worn, and damaged, and in sore need.

There are cries for help everywhere, which are typically refused or reframed as something other because we are not using a language that our loved ones and all others are fluent in. We have been crying for help, but as it is often profane, and we keep a shield at the ready, these often fall flat. These cries are sketched over our faces, our music, our stride, our sexuality, our vulnerability, and our bodies, so often broken.

Life, for us, need be a choice. One made daily. I don’t say that to pressure you. You, brother, must ultimately carry what life, so often brutal and unfair, has given you.

But there is the pursuit of joy, not joy itself, that is also there. There are our families, not those given to us, but those that we may make for ourselves, that lay firmly along that track for us to grab and hold tight, as we go.

I will tell you now, that this system we grown and breath under wants us to feel harried, and to offer ourselves as tribute. It watches and waits. I would ask that you see that, and that you allow yourself the satisfaction of spitting in its eye through living a good, full, tense, purposeful life.

I would ask that you allow yourself the struggle, and the days most challenging, of which there will be many, and the knowing that you need not take ownership for all of the failures of all of us, Black and male, everywhere. That is not your weight to carry.

I would ask that you refuse to be defined by any standard that does not affirm you. And that you would allow yourself to know that pain is not final, and I would ask that you find your community and tribe, and keep its voice near.

We, brothers, are never as kind or loving as we need to be. We are fiercely and loyally and disturbingly binary, when we should throw the gates of life open. That is our only means for managing all that has been done to us.

I would ask that you know, that you need not have all of the answers. I don’t offer you any here. Rather, I offer only my hand, and a willingness to run away with you, until you are able to decide that your person, you life, needs more air, and another day, and another. I hope you make that choice always, and eventually, leave yourself with only the belief of choosing to live as good a life, fully imperfect and troubled and joyous and human, as you are able.

In sum, though we may spend so much of our developing years figuring out how best to avoid death, or how to meet our best death, I am hoping that we may find spaces to discuss that psychology, to wrestle it to the ground, make it answer for what we have become, and through our wills and words, birth a psychology of our own, in our words, fit to live in us.

I know these feelings. I watched them slowly claim the man, Black, angry, powerful, in my own home. I saw the colors. I have had these thoughts creep up to greet me. There is no shame in saying so. I offer myself, and all of my will, and training, and skill to the enterprise. I will meet you out there, knee to knee, stretch, and begin that run, with you.

Part 3 soon come.