The Me You Can't See (2021) s01e04 Episode Script

It is different.
Isolation is not easy
for anyone.
All of the global pain
and the global trauma
is coming to the surface.
So this idea
of what COVID-19
has done to people
along with this isolation
and its deprivation
for so many areas of our lives,
I think it's
the prolonged inability
to be able to have life
as we knew it
and isolation
and loneliness turns into,
you know,
other forms of behavior
that might not be useful
or helpful to you.
But I haven't seen
enough attention given
to what people are actually
experiencing every day.
Knowing that self-isolation
was gonna cause
so many mental health issues
for so many people
that were probably
on the brink anyway
that didn't know about it,
to have that community
whether it's in person,
whether it's family,
whether it is friends,
or whether it is
on social media or otherwise,
it is absolutely vital
that we have a safe space
to be able to share
and to be able
to talk to an individual
or a group,
which in turn also gives them
the opportunity
to share back as well,
so it is gonna be a case
of healing the world.
It hurts
because at the end of the day,
there's so much going on,
and everybody's
starting to realize
that mental health right now
during COVID is huge.
And from someone
who's in that depression
and anxiety point
And being isolated
and having nobody,
it's really hard.
It's really hard
not to have someone
to talk to
at the end of the night
to express your frustrations
and your good things
and your bad things and
I'm nervous.
I'm, you know, tripping
because we don't know
what's gonna come, and, um,
like I always say, you just
gotta have a lot of faith
during this time
and a lot of just, um
hope.
My anxiety has been,
you know, pretty high,
kind of bad these past coup
two weeks
because I don't know
what's next.
I don't know how long
everybody's gonna
be in quarantine or if
we're gonna go in lockdown.
It's the unknown.
I just have to stop myself
and say,
"Okay, that's enough
social media for this day.
That's enough news
for us today."
Not being able
to see my friends,
not being able to have
that physical connection
with people.
I don't know why I do anything
to make myself feel better
when in the end,
there's gonna be
70,000 different things
that are gonna
make me feel bad.
We're staring at the walls
now that we're in isolation.
It's interesting, isn't it,
who really calls
when you're there
losing patience?
So be kind to yourself.
You got the answer
in the palm of your hand.
And this is the time we need
to learn to love ourselves
and that's the answer,
so right now that's the plan.
And we'll get through this,
and before you know it,
we'll be back stuck in traffic,
spending money
where it's not needed
on expensive food and fabric,
and we'll walk past each other
in the street
like none of this ever happened
to not one of us on the planet.
But take this time
for yourself,
and in return,
you'll be helping humanity.
And somewhere in that gap,
we make magic.
I write poetry for a living.
I write stories mainly based
on my own life experiences
and things I see around me.
My job as a poet
is to sometimes unearth
conversations that people
aren't used to having,
conversations I believe
that are swept
under the carpet,
swept under the rug.
I was
the biggest underachiever
in my year group at school,
but I was always fascinated
with words,
and I could never find stories
I was able to relate to.
Then, behold,
I discovered Eminem,
So Solid Crew, Dizzee Rascal,
and then I was able to find,
like, versions of my life
I was able
to relate to in them,
and I just started
recording my own stuff
that I had been writing
in my school planner.
That boy
just wants to be heard.
He's got a dream
that nobody's heard.
He was kicked now
straight to the curb.
He was on the edge
kind of like a suburb,
but he just wants to earn,
never gonna quit.
He's always gonna learn.
I end up going
to a university in London,
and I'm becoming so depressed.
Moving out was never,
like, um,
a thing for me coming from,
like, a Pakistani household.
You only really move out
once you're married,
so I started to compare
my life to other people's.
I was just
in a really bad place.
My mum was a key anchor.
She would come
into my bedroom and say,
"No, look, you have to get up.
The distance between you
standing up and the floor,
it's notI know
it seems like it's a lot,
but it's not a lot.
You can get out of bed.
Once you get out of bed,
make your bed.
There, you've done something.
See?
You've done something."
And she was proper cockney,
which was weird
because if you'd see
how she was dressed,
she would be dressed
in traditional
Pakistani clothes,
and she'd be like,
"Y'all work
in Dagenham Motors?"
So it was, like,
a huge juxtaposition
of identity and culture,
but I believe
everything I learned,
I learned from her.
Strong woman.
Very strong woman.
I said to my mum,
"I'm quitting everything.
I'm gonna be a poet."
And she goes, "What are you
gonna write about?"
And I said, "Depression."
She goes,
"If you say that again,
I'm gonna give you something
to be depressed about."
There was this competition,
finding a young voice,
and it was all based on
if you could change the world,
how would you change it?
It was open to 90 countries.
Thousands of people entered it,
and I entered it.
There was a series of stages,
and then the final stage
was a keynote speech
at One Young World
in Thailand,
which I had no idea
what a keynote speech was.
I'd never written one
in my life.
I had to deliver
a keynote
based on mental health.
Have three minutes.
Go.
Next up, Hussain Manawer.
Dear Mum,
I wasn't meant for this planet.
You see, you did
everything you could,
so please don't panic.
No one likes me,
so I might as well vanish.
See, I write stories.
I write them on my arm.
Only I can read them,
but the doctor
calls it self-harm.
When I bleed, he tells me
to put on a plaster,
but I'm depressed inside.
There's no bandage
for this internal disaster.
But it's all right, Mum,
I found a cure.
I'm not alone.
The calling's come.
You see, God's calling me home.
But what about
the soldiers, Mum?
The state of their minds?
The flashbacks of death
and the sounds of cries.
Do we expect our soldiers to
have a healthy state of mind?
Negative, soldier.
Good job, but access denied.
My sisters,
I'm with you all
until the end.
There's over 100 million
who are currently living
with the consequences of FGM.
That's female mutilation.
That's psychological poverty.
The inhumane
degrading treatment
of gender inequality.
When I speak of Mum,
I took Mother Nature.
She created us all, so together
surely we should be greater,
but mentally where we stand,
I am not in favor,
and, to me, that problem
couldn't be any greater.
Am I going too deep?
Mentally, we have become
detached from ourselves
and society,
so can somebody tell me
it's okay not to be okay,
and do not tell me quietly,
because mental health matters
and that's the reality!
The winner is Hussain Manawer.
Now, like,
I believe, "an artist."
I'm an artist.
I'm living at home.
I'mconverted my shed
into a studio,
and everything's happening
from there.
I feel like
because of the work that I do,
I open up a big vulnerability
about myself,
and that is what
people connect to.
I then looked at it
like a gift.
The gift of pain.
If you can utilize
the gift of pain,
not only will you
help yourself,
you'll help
other people around you.
We've never gone through
the same amount of pain
with our mental health
as we are doing currently
right now in society,
which is why we all need
to come together
to figure out solutions,
and we've got too much
already living
under the carpet.
We can't have anything else
living there,
which is why, like,
I get up every day
and I do what I do.
I actually
don't know what I do.
It's more a time
I'm asking the question of,
"What needs to be done?"
I'm learning to take this life
for what it is,
to give more and argue less
and forever dream.
To walk on air and fly
through clouds is all I need.
I am pretending
not to be too mainstream.
And my elbows are dry.
I still need to cream.
And believe me,
me and my friends
have the worst
five-a-side football team
But it's all I want
because it's all I need.
I'd be going out really late,
coming home.
I'd go out,
come home around
3:00, 4:00 in the morning,
and my mum is there praying.
A ship is safe in the harbor,
but that's not
what ships are built for.
And it's true.
Now, dude, you're a sick ship.
You're, like, a yacht out here.
August 31st, 2017.
My dad phones me around 11:00,
and he's like, "Where's Mum?"
And I'm like, "She's at home."
He's like, "No, she's not."
And I can hear him
calling her like,
"Ness, Ness, where are you?"
And I was like,
"Hm, that's a bit strange."
He puts the phone down,
and then I look at my friend,
and I'm like,
"I need to leave."
I pull up to my road now.
There's four ambulances.
I come inside the living room.
Exactly where
her prayer mat is,
she had a brain aneurism
and passed away.
She was only 49.
Sudden death is such a shock
to the system.
Nothing in this world
can prepare you for it.
The ambulance is there.
The police are there.
Everyone has come
to the house within minutes,
and my mum's laying there,
and I was whispering stuff
in her ear like,
"You can wake up, you know?"
And then there's nothing,
so I kiss her feet.
That's the last thing I did.
I kissed her feet.
And I miss her so much, man.
I'm like, "Yo,
I'm so bamboozled right now.
I can't process anything."
I look at my best friends,
both of them,
and the first thing
I said to them was,
"Book a week off work,
and you book
the following week off work.
You're gonna need
to sleep in my bedroom,
and once you're done
for the week,
then you're gonna have
to sleep in my bedroom
because I think
I'm gonna kill myself."
I think I was brave enough
to be honest to them
and say to them,
"I can't handle this."
Like, I actually
cannot handle this.
It's too much.
It's too quick.
It's too sudden,
and when
I've been depressed before
and had suicidal thoughts,
this gave me enough of a reason
to just be like,
"Yeah, I'm done.
It's over.
Go and be with her."
I went from being this person
who was saying,
"Mental health is a problem,"
to being the person
with the problem.
I've been depressed before,
mildly compared to this.
And, um, somebody said to me,
"Your mum
can teach you everything,
but she can't teach you
how to live without her."
I miss you.
No matter what they say,
I miss you.
I've never missed anyone
the way I miss you.
Our house
doesn't smell the same.
Our doorbell
doesn't ring your name.
Our home phone
doesn't buzz for days,
and our names
don't mean our names.
I had to discover
and really look
and invest time in myself,
and that's when I think
people talk about
"self-love and self-care."
That's what it actually is,
discovering and investigating
the best things for you.
If heaven would let you
have a day out,
would you come and visit?
If you could go back
to that day, Mum,
would you go and live it?
I need to know.
Did God take your heart,
or did you go and give it?
And I need you to speak back
to me right now, Mum,
because everybody kind of
thinks I'm not with it.
What helps is just by people
receiving people's emotions.
Because depression
took over my nights.
Self-doubt took over my flight,
and suicide tried
to jump into my fight.
So do you know what I did,
ladies and gentlemen?
I started to write.
It's like a release.
It's like therapy.
It's like
I've drained my brain,
and that's what I needed to do.
You have to find somebody
who has an understanding
of where you are coming from.
I'm gonna write every moment
on the way.
I'm gonna share
with you all my journal.
It gets cold on certain pages,
so read this in your thermals.
I think it's easier
when someone looks
at someone else doing it
and says,
"Oh, you know what he just said
about his mum?
Yeah, like, well, that happened
with me and my dad."
And I was able to be a part
of something in their lives
to help start a conversation.
Being diagnosed
with depression, anxiety,
whatever,
any mental health illness,
and talking about it
is not a sign of weakness.
In today's world
more than ever,
it is a sign of strength
without question
because you have the power
to be ablethe confidence
to be able
to show vulnerability
in a way that isn't weakness
but that is strength.
I tried
conventional therapy.
Tried church for a while.
Nothing's working.
The world is
a fairly inhospitable place
for grieving people.
Selah Carefarm is a place
where animals who have known
loneliness and fear
and trauma and loss
create this connection
with humans
who've also known
these experiences,
and the humans look at them
and go,
"Maybe I can get through this.
Maybe I can survive this.
Maybe with love
and compassion,
I can learn
how to live again."
This is a place where
traumatic grief and love
and beauty and pain
coexist and intersect.
People from all over the world
come here to feel.
There we go, pretty girl.
We have brought together
an intentional community
where we just
sort of let them be
and they get
from the experience
what they need to get.
Come here, Percy.
Come on.
Yeah.
He's kind of like
the juvenile delinquent
of the bunch,
which is why
he and I get along.
Come here, buddy!
What are you doing, buddy?
It's like they say
even with service animals,
they let the dog
pick the person,
and of all the dogs here
Percy, for some reason,
picked me.
Abused animals
and abused people
are the same way.
They're skittish.
They're uncomfortable.
They're nervous.
When I came here,
really neurologically,
I was in trouble,
and I meet Doc,
and by that time,
I realized we had been
sitting here for 2 1/2 hours,
and I had nonstop
talked to her
About who Corey was
and why I was here.
Come on.
Nobody wants to talk
about losing a child.
The biggest thing you feel
is that the entire universe
or even God has betrayed you
and taken your child.
I'd had a whole lot of issues
long before Corey passed.
When I was eight years old,
I was molested
by a family member.
That was my introduction
to shame.
I knew that being
physically abused
by my dad, that was in my way.
I knew that having
a mother that said,
"You're just like your father,
and I hate him."
That was fucked up,
and I knew that I needed
to get beyond that.
I joined the navy.
I got out.
I did Lifespring.
Got married.
Had kids.
That was fucked up.
Went to counseling.
Went to marriage counseling.
My kids were fucked up.
The problem was,
the same thing occurred.
Somehow, shame would
interrupt progress.
I started it three months ago.
All I'm doing
is I'm gonna cut off sections
of this plywood
so that the goats
don't get caught up
when they're running
up the ramp.
Goat-a-rama phase one.
The least I can do
is help out
with some of the critters.
The one thing that I guess
in the whole story
that I'm leaving out,
my dad was messed up
but my dad apologized.
I tried to do the same thing
in Corey's life,
but it didn't work out,
and obviously,
I wasn't as successful
as my dad
because I'm still here
and Corey's not.
That's Corey.
Apple River Canyon State Park.
That's how he lived his life,
on the edge of the cliff
with his arms spread wide open.
He wasn't afraid.
I'm not sure what scared him.
Don't know what would
make a kid like Corey
commit suicide.
Parents with kids
with suicide
wanna talk about
why it was our fault,
and the first answer is,
"You did the best
that you could,
and he was mentally ill."
Bullshit.
He was a kid having trouble,
and his family fucked him.
Grief is
a complicated emotion.
It contains
many emotional experiences
from despair and anguish,
longing, pining,
intense yearning,
anger and rage,
fear and terror,
deep sadness and despair,
especially when grief
is catastrophic and traumatic.
It can overwhelm us
and shut us down,
and that's why we need
others in our circle
to support us through that.
Right there.
He's at the fence.
What's up, buddy?
Huh?
What?
What?
What?
Aww.
The best things for ourselves
when we're hurting
is another loving,
compassionate person
or animal
Who doesn't judge us,
who doesn't push us,
who doesn't shame us,
who holds space for us.
Animals have a great way
of that, don't they?
II mean,
they just show up,
and they're there.
Whoa, is that good?
Is that the spot, hm?
Are her eyes getting sleepy?
She's just sticking
her head up.
Ooh, ooh.
I'm on antianxiety,
pain meds, antidepressants.
Nothing's working.
Somebody been
taking care of her.
Yeah.
So I started reading
everything I can
about community,
and the big thing
that Dr. Jo had done
was rescued the animals
when they weren't rescuable,
and basically that's
where psychiatry had left me,
was that I wasn't rescuable.
Corey decided
that somehow
it was better to be dead
than hang around
and tell his family
or depend on his family
or work with his family.
His family was so fucked up
That he couldn't stay.
In order to get
to the other side,
if that's possible,
of how I feel
about Corey's death,
you have to be vulnerable.
People don't want
to be vulnerable.
I mean, I understand
that it's difficult.
It's difficult
for me to come here.
In what way?
Um
The amount of work that
it takes.
It's all about choice.
And the only choice
at the farm is,
is they've decided
this is where broken people
can come and be broken.
You don't have to do anything.
There's no prescription.
You don't have tonothing.
There's no program.
I just miss her.
It feels like
it's getting worse.
She's just gone.
You and Leland
get to talk about her much?
- We do.
- Mm-hmm.
- Every day.
- Mm-hmm.
I don't know
how people do this shit.
I know you
don't want to be here.
I know you're Mama Heart.
I get it.
You know, yet, here you are
kind of stuck with us.
You know?
With donkeys and horses
and pigs and me.
Oh, my baby, God.
I know, Mama.
We talk about Heaven every day.
I was very skeptical.
I just used
to drop Michelle off
and go back to the hotel.
But I could see change
in her.
It's simple.
The farm was designed
by somebody that lost a child.
Period.
That's why it works.
My daughter Cheyenne
died in 1994.
Nothing can match
the presence of her absence
in terms of meaning.
It's untouchable,
but I'm still here,
and because I'm still here
The work gives meaning
to my life.
Sorry about your girl.
I'm sorry about your boy.
Look at him.
At least the animals
make sense, right?
Yeah, they do.
Not that everything else does.
This is a long road.
It's fully inhabiting grief.
It's staying with
the deep feelings that we have
while being supported
and held by others.
That's what leads
to a transformative experience
in who we are.
We can't endure this kind
of suffering by ourselves.
We need others
to help support us.
Caring for others,
especially others
with whom you identify with
because they experienced
the same kinds
of traumas or health problems
as you do
is one of
the most powerful roots
to healing yourself
and supporting
your own recovery.
With adequate thought
in designing
the program of care,
training, and supervision,
anyone in the community
with a calling
for mental health care
can become an effective
mental health care provider.
To me, this offers
the most
transformative opportunity
to reimagine
mental health care
around the world.
My name is Forget Gutuza.
I have six children.
And I have seven grandchildren.
I am happy about my seven grandchildren.
There are four girls,
and three boys.
The oldest is a girl,
and she is ten years old.
What do you like the most about Granny?
I love that
a lot of people come here to see Granny.
They come with their problems
to seek help.
I grew up poor,
so I wanted to help poor children.
I work on children issues or cases,
so in the community I'm known as
"Granny."
Even my grandchildren call me "Granny."
And even my husband calls me "Granny."
I live in a community
where life is hard.
There is no electricity at all.
We do not have tapped water.
We have received little rain
in the past three years,
so our wells do not have water,
even the boreholes.
As big as our community is,
we only have one borehole
and it's always broken
because of being used non-stop.
So people go early in the morning
to fetch some water at the springs
even though it's such a distance.
Because women and children
are walking at night,
we are afraid that bad things
may happen, like abuse.
When I was a young woman,
I would bottle up my problems.
And no one would approach me
to ask me what the problem was.
I couldn't open up
about what was bothering me.
How are you?
A person needs to be loved
and to be understood.
So things are hard for me.
Zimbabwe has been affected
by a wide range
of social, political,
and economic challenges
for decades.
The impact that has had
on the population's
mental well-being
is tremendous.
Today, we have
a huge treatment gap.
In simple terms,
one could say, you know,
90% of those requiring care
or evidence-based care
will not get it in Zimbabwe
because we don't have enough
professionals
to deliver
those kind of services.
I had to take the work
that I do to the community
as opposed to expecting people
to come to me.
And so these grandmothers
who had previously
been involved
in outreach program
in the community
were the only people
who were available, literally.
The idea of working on a bench
was because we couldn't do
this work inside the building
with the resources
that we had at the time.
How are you grandchild?
I am fine. How are you?
We welcome you with joy
on the Friendship Bench.
Friendship Bench
is a bench for friends.
I don't know, grandchild,
are you ready to tell me your problem
which brought you to
the Friendship Bench?
Life is tough, grandmother.
It's true.
In these homes, it's tough.
So it's building good relations
with the people surrounding you
and those with problems.
Because if I am your friend,
you can tell me what is wrong;
but if I am not your friend,
you cannot open up.
In 2013, when I
fell pregnant with my third child,
after giving birth,
I thought issues would be solved.
But things got worse.
And he started beating me.
I was being beaten, grandma.
It was difficult, grandma.
Have you told anyone about this?
Like your relative
or your husband's relative,
in relation to the problem
that your marriage encountered?
Ahh
Let me try my aunt,
she is a mature person.
Maybe she will keep my story a secret.
I will not delay, grandma.
Any time. My work has no specific time.
I work 24 hours
because, whenever a client comes,
my job starts.
If I tell them it's late, they might
be thinking of committing suicide.
Okay, grandchild.
Did you share this problem with anyone?
No, granny.
What happens is that, once you share
your story with family and friends,
they spread it to everyone.
That's why I've come here.
You're the one who can help me.
You can teach another person,
but the more you talk about it,
the more you understand it as well.
What you're going through, seeing
and hearing things that others cannot,
means you need to get checked
by specialists and doctors,
who will be able to
assess and assist you.
Yes.
Maybe there's something happening
in your brain.
Working with Friendship Bench
has greatly helped me understand
how anxiety can cause mental illness.
Knock, knock!
How are you?
I am well, mother.
How are you?
As a young woman
I almost developed
a mental problem.
Time and again I would be carried away
in an ambulance
because of high blood pressure.
I was the type of a person who couldn't
speak out when something was wrong.
I would cry at night and wake up crying.
While I was crying and in pain,
another problem would come and another.
Right, grandchild, you once told me
about how your sickness started
and what happened soon after you were
diagnosed. Can you explain to me again?
I was afraid to tell my relatives
about this.
Even my own sons. I was afraid
to tell them, thinking if I told them,
these grandchildren I stay with,
who was I going to stay with?
Would I be alone in this house?
Would I be a person
that people would want to live with?
Grandma, I was hurt to the core.
I felt that this was truly
what it means to feel pain.
I got to a stage where I thought,
what will people think about me?
If I am to do this in this community,
what will people say about me?
What will people say about me
considering that our name is well known
in the community?
I was scared to even walk around,
grandma.
Then I decided to just stay alone
in the house living a private life.
I was just staying alone, hurt
that I had no one to love me in my life;
I will just stay alone.
Okay, grandchild, it's okay.
The Friendship Bench
taught me to let it go.
Now I know that,
once you have a problem,
find someone to share with and get help.
Friendship Bench really helped me
to improve my health.
Hello.
Didn't you go to work today?
No, I didn't.
When you help other people, it also
helps you physically and mentally.
When I help you,
I'm also improving my health!
The more we talk about it,
the more we heal.
Love is what they need the most,
because if a person is shown love
and is talked to
and really gets listened to
If they see or notice that there
is someone to listen to my story,
they can be helped and get better,
because they will be thinking,
"So somebody loves me?"
Granny! Granny! Granny!
Enabling societies or communities
to use their own resources
to solve their own problems
is the most empowering thing
you could ever do.
Rather than assume
that communities are passive,
waiting for an expert to come
in and solve their problems,
there could be nothing more
inspirational and sustainable
than building capacity
in the community itself
to address their own problems.
And one of the key innovations
over the last 15 years or so
is the deployment of ordinary
people in the community
without any other
prior mental health training
to deliver
mental health care.
I've kind of been just trying
to round the troops up
and make sure everybody's good.
It's just everybody say,
"Hey, what's up?
All right,
this is what I'm doing,"
or "Hey, what's up?
Hope you guys are good."
"Okay, all right,
we'll talk to you guys
in a couple weeks."
If I hear from someone
that I haven't heard from
in a long time,
they need to talk,
and they know
that I am willing to listen,
and I have resources
to help them
if they're willing to do that,
and they know
that I'll be honest with them.
It's just making me think,
like, more and more now,
like, what can I do every day
to helpto help people?
In my head,
I just have my mum's voice,
and all she's saying to me
is, "Keep going."
Hold me close
What did you say?
"Hold me close"?
Hold me close
I do put
all my hours into work
mainly because
I don't know how to do life.
Hold me close
Tell me
what's been going on
'Cause I've been absent
from you
My life's been
full of so much
heartbreak and heartache.
That life I see
is not the life that I want,
and the life that I want
is a life I have to go
and create,
and by working so much,
I've managed to create
family-style environments.
Even if they're
for a couple hours,
that really helped me.
It just needs
to be, like, basic.
- Real.
- Relatable.
- Real words.
- It needs to be real.
It needs to be vulnerable.
This morning, I woke up
and I was
very, very, very sad.
My mum always taught me
to give, give, give, give,
and approaching her
three years anniversary,
I'm living now,
there's no home atmosphere,
and I feel like
I wanted to make a song
that made me feel like home.
Go on, bruv.
What if I say something
like this?
I call my older sister.
I say,
"I think my mum forgot me."
It's been a couple years.
Why on Earth haven't you
come and got me?
Ooh.
There's things in my way.
A couple things
are trying to stop me.
And, Mum,
I know you hated wrestling,
but the Rock has really got me.
And Dad's always saying
that it's nice where you are
But I need you back
'cause heaven's just too far
I'm scheming up there too
There's lots
of packages for you
I wrapped them up
in threads
Of all that's happened
in there too
You see,
the moment that you left us
A part of me got killed
I'm shouting, and I'm angry,
I'm not taking up the guilt
Why the hell
you leave your family?
Someone told me this,
they feel
And they're saying
I'm not manly
Cause I'm saying, oh
Hold me close
Hey!
I'll tell you
what's been going on
I don't wanna hide it
Nothing sad about it
This week,
I set up a foundation
in the name of my mum
to educate young people
from the area
that I come from.
And it's a week-long course
with some of my nearest
and dearest friends
that I've met in the industry.
Two meters apart,
hand sanitizer,
masks, COVID tested, everything
for them to have
this experience.
People aren't equipped
with the tools
as to say what it is
they're feeling.
We need to come together,
and I think right now
in society,
more and more people
are beginning to realize that,
and they're coming together
because we can learn
from each other.
The creative arts
and performing arts,
I think it's a dying
it's a dying breed,
and we have to reinforce
these things back into society
to help us with
self-expression,
with self-therapy,
and if you do that,
and you're real,
and you're vulnerable,
and you're honest,
and you're raw,
and you're passionate,
you're successful
in unlocking the key
to the heart.
They say I should
call myself a queen,
but I can't find my crown.
These towns seem
to suck colors to me
like an emotional Hoover.
Changing gears constantly
in order to survive.
You gotta maneuver.
Relationship so toxic
the fumes almost finish me off.
You can let yourself die
from a broken heart
or try and glue back
the pieces,
but the black dog consumes me
whether I like it or not.
Searching for ventilation.
Found some inner peace,
and the space I'm in
is amazing.
There's beauty in the struggle.
My fire just keeps on blazing.
Since I unleashed the dragon,
I can't help but keep chasing.
I've been mentally stressing
about why, why, why.
You know, my mind,
it moves at light speed
and has no end.
My image of love and loyalty
are now skewed.
It's nighttime again,
cut up searching for peace.
Inhale pristine white
to blackout
in the bliss of the in-between.
Live a life wide awake
that we won't remember
when we wake up.
I feel chained to the system,
but sinner walking fine.
I'm trying to wash away
my sins,
but they keep
brainwashing my mind.
Who am I?
I can't identify
the man I portray.
Yeah, I'm lost.
Somebody please
show me the way.
My little sister asked me
why I have scars on my arm.
You see, she knows that
Black girls don't self-harm,
so I hold her beautiful
mixed-race skin.
I whisper that self-mutilation
is not a sin,
and I create a story.
I'm sinking.
My arms outstretched for help,
but there's nobody around.
I'm gonna drown.
When a tree falls
in an empty forest,
does it even make a sound?
Mm.
I'm sinking.
Suffocated by my own thoughts,
and I can't find air.
There's nobody there.
If I talk to someone,
will they listen?
Will they even care?
I'm sinking.
Now you lot have been given,
like, a jetpack.
Do you know what I'm saying?
A jetpack.
When you leave here,
press that,
and you've built a community
amongst yourselves.
Lean on that.
Hold that.
Cherish it.
Nurture it.
I have a job now,
and my mission
is to inspire young people
who are as hairy as I am,
who have insecurities
as much as I do,
complex identity,
cultural clashes,
and all these things
and be their voice.
I don't think we can have
a truly meaningful life
without giving back
in some meaningful way
to others.
I mean, imagine if everybody
just had that attitude.
Like, I'm gonna do
my best today
to help whoever is in my path
who I can help.
And if they do that,
then we would be
a hell of a lot better off
as a species, as a planet.
No matter how big
your problem is,
if you look for someone to share with,
you might be able to get a solution.
A problem doesn't kill, but gives
you an opportunity to seek help.
So, "There is life after floods."
I've got some baked
sweet potatoes and some squash
and a split pea soup.
Yeah, when I have
a normal moment
I'm quite proud of myself.
Right?
Me too, me too!
- I totally get that.
- I'm like, "I shopped today."
You know,
and I didn't have a meltdown
or have to leave
the grocery cart.
Just sitting down
and listening to somebody,
yeah, there's joy in that.
That's where
the healing comes from,
and it comes from
helping somebody else.
Being able to
access emotional resources,
being available for one another
when people are in distress,
when they're coping
with difficult times,
and perhaps even more simply,
not creating the sorts
of difficult, stressful
situations for other people,
and I think having that kind
of supporting scaffolding
is a kind
of emotional resilience
that I believe
each human being can play.
It's up to us.
When I've done
my public speaking
and I've seen the recruits
or other people
that I'm speaking
and it, like
something I say just clicks.
I'm really proud of myself
for being able to
to do this for myself
and to do this
for my mental health
and to be able to hopefully
share this resource
with a lot of other people.
There needs to be this
sort of this acknowledgement,
but also this uplift of,
we are actually
100% in this together,
and if we weren't before COVID,
we 100% are now.