#overnight walk

[eelephantseal]

Me and a bunch of other volunteers worked hard on this last night for the 2018 Philadelphia overnight walk. It was very fun

[wednesdaynightbourbon]

“I walk for...” - Mental Health Awareness Month

12 years ago, right after starting my junior year of college I got a phone call that one of my sister’s best friends had passed away. He didn’t just pass away sadly, he had taken his own life.

Matthew, or Frick as he was known, was one of those too smart for his own good kids - a genius, a creative, strange and wonderful in all the best ways. The first time I met him, I remember thinking, “this kid is a lunatic,” because he’d taken a motor from god-knows what, jerryrigged it to basically create a fan, had made fan blades out of packing tape, and was torturing another friend of theirs with it while sitting on my couch. I’d later learn how I’d misjudged him. He was a dancer, a pianist, loved techno and had the biggest heart for someone his age.

Right before I’d left for school that year he’d wished me well and reminded me “not to do anything [he] wouldn’t do”. I’m positive I gave him the same peculiar look that I’d been giving him for years when he did something strange - not bad, just peculiar - smiled and wished him good luck in school.

His passing was devastating. The circumstances surreally tragic and oddly wrapped in a sense of beauty only he could capture. I was miles away and couldn’t do anything for my sister, my family, their friends, so I walked around Sunset Lake (yeah, my campus had a glorified pond we called a lake) with my friend T and yelled obscenities and cried. He wasn’t the first person I’d lost, or the last I’d lose to suicide, but the experience was tricky. 

Frick had struggled with mental health issues for some time, as do many teens. He was figuring himself out, he’d been put on different medications to manage all that was going on with him and ultimately it was too much for him. I don’t know that I can fully understand what he was going through, though the idea of things being “too much” as a teen doesn’t seem unfamiliar. As we grow, our brains develop and we start to learn who we are there’s no lack of confusion - we’re steeped with internal and external conflicts, pushed and pulled in different ways. Our individual experiences only complicate or put different spins on where we fall within the spectrum of negotiating our own mental health.

In the years since Frick’s passing my sister and their friend group have all dealt with not only coping and grieving and accepting his passing but their own mental and physical states. Some have been more successful than others of course, but many have grown. My own reflection on that time, on my own challenges at that age, and even where I stand now are peppered with the sheer experience of living, of growing older, of living on both coasts, in Hawaii and in my buttermilk yellow-tan skin. Maybe I’m also impacted by the jaded state that comes with age, when we accept that some shit just is what it is, fake it till you make it mentalities. But I’d lie if I say I don’t think about Frick often. That I don’t think about the impact his passing had on my sister, on her best friend H- our chosen sister - both of whom have grown into powerful, intelligent, beautiful women bound together not just by friendship and chosen family but by this shared tragedy. That my parents lost a son of sorts. That I don’t think about Frick’s parents who’ve attempted to fill his loss with writing and baking and who knows what else. My sister has even created a way of coping with her grief that might help others. 

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

I say that to you not just because it’s May 3rd.

I say that to you because I’m gearing up for my 3rd American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Out of the Darkness walk later this month and here in my home town.

I say that to you because in all of the writing I’ve been doing here on WNB, in all that is going on in the world, y’all need to be reminded.

We need to remember this as we continue to live in a world that (yes, I’ve said this before and I do not care that I’m repeating myself) tells black and brown kids they ain’t shit, every-fucking-day.

We need to remember this because we continue to live in a world that tells trans and gay kids they ain’t shit. Heaven forbid you’re gay or trans AND a black or brown kid, cause then you’re a double negative.

It’s 2016 and we’re still giving people shit who can’t speak English, evicting people to make a mint off of the nouveau upper middle class, discriminating against people because of their religious beliefs.

And yet…

We stigmatize those who admit they have mental health issues. WE THE ONES CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES TO BE  A THING.

Not a single one of us, if we were to reflect on it for a second, can say we don’t know someone who has or have not directly been impacted by compromised mental health. Yet, we are living, breathing proof that our actions or those of our neighbors, directly contribute to having negative impact on others.

Admittedly - we have a lot of work to do, it doesn’t fall on one fragment of our society, it doesn’t belong to one community, but we have to do it.

3 weeks from now I’ll walk from sundown until… whenever I finish… 18 miles, overnight through the streets I’ve grown up on.

Last year I walked through storms in Boston.

The year before I walked through storms in Seattle where my sister was the keynote speaker and shared her journey with Frick’s passing.

So, this year, if it storms again, I’ll still be there, walking for Frick. For our younger selves that didn’t have the language, perspective or support to figured it out. For the black and brown kids who get told daily that they ain’t worth shit. For the trans folks who get told they don’t matter. For girls that get told they can’t. For you, me and everyone in between. This year means something slightly different to me and it means so much to do it here in my city.

To find out more about the AFSP’s Overnight Walk and all the good work they do click here. I could go on and on about the important work they do, what the walk itself does to people and the community it’s built, but perhaps that’s for another time.

I hope you’ll take some time this month to reflect on what you can do - for yourself, for others, for us all.