An Extended Selection — Descent (An Introduction to Self Care)
accompanying musical selections:
Solange — “Borderline (An Ode To Self Care),” A Seat at the Table (2016)
Horace Silver — “Peace,” That Healin’ Feelin’ (1970)
Quelle Chris feat. Aye Pee — “Buddies,” Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often (2017)
Flying Lotus feat. Thundercat — “Descent Into Madness,” You’re Dead! (2014)
Nina Simone — “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free,” Live in Montreux (1967)
John Coltrane — “Mars,” Interstellar Space (1974)
Donny Hathaway — “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” These Songs For You, Live! (originally recorded 1972)
I had lived there for 28 years. By any standard, it was a masterstroke in curation. Pastel walls embraced tastefully arranged images of both loved ones and former loves. Golden idols marked past achievements and literal interpretations of glory. Stacked and neatly aligned, every article was folded and stored, not a piece out of order. For me, this was more than a home or simply a place to rest my head; It was a safe space when everything else in the world had gone to shit. It was my comfort. So much so that eventually, I stopped leaving altogether. Upkeep became uncommon as the absence of guests exorcised any and all notions of vanity. This once pristine palace was now cluttered. Like a terribly scripted reality show, I had become the ambivalent hoarder. Through a thicket of proverbial “things”, I could not see the bigger picture — the walls had begun to crumble.
I have always been an anxious person. Being a black man in America, you’re more often than not raised by two things: Strong black women and Fear — fear of authority, fear of white folks, fear of the world itself. I grew up as an only child with two working parents, so my mind played an integral role in how I was raised. I rarely concerned myself with the distractions of the outside world. The World that I functioned in was of my own creation. I didn’t have imaginary friends, I had an imaginary universe in which I was the Principal Architect. Intelligently designed, I was safe and secure, but most importantly, in control. The world as it had been taught to me was dangerous. “Don’t talk to strangers” evolved into “Speak slowly and respectfully to the police” because one wrong step and that might be your last.
In this world, I was always more comfortable alone.
At 28, something strange occurred. I was at home doing what I would normally do on any day that ended in “-day” — engage in the medicinal arts. This time, however, was different. As 160 dBs of loud hit those veteran lungs, my chest became heavy and it was hard to breathe. I would have cried out, but I found it nearly impossible to give life to words. I couldn’t believe it; that D.A.R.E. counselor was right. My mind confirmed a reality that my body had already accepted — I was dying. However, one hasty trip in the back of an ambulance and several very real doctors disagreed with this notion. Like the Devil, WebMD [and that D.A.R.E. counselor] was most certainly a lie. It wasn’t cancer or a heart attack; it was the first real crack in the foundation. My home, this place that I had loved for so long, was breaking down. The hoarding of fears, anxieties and repressed memories had become too much for the already weathered foundation to bear.
I was having a panic attack.
“Said, I went, said I went, said I went to the doctor / The man told me there ain’t nothin’ wrong with me / But I beg to differ, I been feelin’ this pain / For much too long, oh, yeah / I feel like my soul is empty / My blood is cold and I can’t feel my legs / I need someone to hold me / Bring me back to life before I’m dead” — “The Root” by D’Angelo, Voodoo (2000)
The irony is that as the walls began to crumble, I retreated further inward. I stopped going out as much. I cut off relationships with friends. I believed that if people saw me in such a fragile state, the image of self which I had so carefully cultivated — cool, calm, and always collected, would be exposed as a sham.
“What will they think, Paul? What will they think when they find out you’ve been sitting on your bed, clutching yourself, unable to move for the last ten hours? What will would they think of you?”
So, I hid. I sat in my burning room, choosing not to go out onto the fire escape, but to instead stay inside telling myself that everything was fine. I had become a goddamn meme.
My mind is like hearing Coltrane’s Interstellar Space for the very first time. Recorded in his final year on Earth, the duet suite was a collaborative effort with avant-garde Jazz drummer Rashied Ali. The album fits into the realm of Jazz considered “Free,” but the uninitiated might consider it anything but. It’s fifty-four minutes of occupied space. Ali’s rhythmic play is in constant dialogue with Coltrane’s stream of consciousness — a masterpiece in improvisation.
It’s hard for me to shut my mind off. Those moments of solitude of which I had clung to so dearly now exist as a platform for inescapable monologues of thought that further draw me away from reality. I begin with a premise grounded in some truth and work my way through circumstances that have yet to be seen.
Let’s start with the simple task of writing this piece:
I am staring at a blank page. I have an idea of what I want to do and then I begin to think.
I think about writing an honest narrative regarding my relationship to mental health.
I think about how to start an honest narrative regarding my relationship to mental health.
I think about how I may never find the right way to to start writing an honest narrative regarding my relationship to mental health.
I think about anything that is not the right way to start writing an honest narrative regarding my relationship to mental health, up to and including scrolling through Instagram, a Tinder session, and scanning every single NBA boxscore available.
I think about how thinking about anything else is distracting me from starting to write an honest narrative regarding my relationship to mental health.
I think about how I may never write an honest narrative regarding my relationship to mental health.
I think about never living up to my potential due to an inability to write an honest narrative regarding my relationship to mental health.
I think about all of these things for practically every decision I make, in some form, at least several times a day. However, at the end of this wonderfully stressful day, I am afforded the perfect cool down: 15–20 minutes of ice pack to jaw. Because unbeknown to me, I’ve become partial to clenching my teeth. The technical term for the resulting pain is Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction, but my doctor refers to it as being “really fucking anxious.” He’s a great doctor.
My mind is like hearing Coltrane’s “Mars” for the very first time. It is frenetic, but spans dimensions. If you can work your way through it, therein lies something beautiful. I know all of this now, but certainly did not then. I had not yet been initiated.
I am 30 years old and sitting on a couch. The room is haphazardly comfortable, if by design, but almost completely lucked into. A man stares back at me patiently. His eyes are kind. Even though this is not our first engagement, I appreciate his inviting presence. In our silence, I want to feel comfort. I once believed Silence to be my one true love, right next to its sister-wife, Solitude. In this moment, however, I betray them both. I do not want to be still nor alone; I want to speak.
“So, I had a pretty good week…”
Approximately fifty minutes later, the man with the kind eyes looks at me and says, “Well, we have to wrap for today.”
I breathe.
I breathe as if I’ve been holding my breath for fifty whole minutes. But in actuality, I’ve just spoken of Christmas mornings and a woman I can’t quite get over. I’ve talked about my father and his father. I’ve riffed on old episodes of Seinfeld and how it applies to my current relationship status. I speak because I want to speak, because I want to be heard, and most importantly because I want to be understood.
I am in therapy.
As a culture, we have a fascination with the outward form. Even the most body positive individual has an ideal weight or frame or shape or physical identity. It’s an overlooked, yet significant social construct. It’s also an entirely false notion of the entirety of our personhood, but we’ll get to that later. For now consider the following:
[Ignoring its antiquated and widely disavowed use] Let’s just say that you have a target weight. You go to the gym five days a week. You up your cardio. You meal prep every Sunday. You grind for months and months and months to reach that target weight. After much patience and dedication, you step on the scale and cry — “Mama, we made it.” There are so many things that you will do — buy a new bathing suit, “accidentally” stop by your exes job at Best Buy, post a highlight reel of thirst trap-baiting provocateur on Instagram, and so on and so on. But what you will not do, under any circumstance, is stop going to the gym. Your workout may change, but it will not cease to exist. Nobody reaches their target weight and then stops doing what got them there in the first place.
So, why do we feel that even at our target plane of mental health that we need to stop going to the gym?
See, that’s where I failed myself. I do believe at one point I was in a comfortable mental space even if that space was in my own head. Like everyone else, I had my shit, but I was healthy. What I did not do was keep going to the gym. I took days off, I ate McDonald’s, I stopped caring.
Therapy hasn’t cured me. But I don’t believe that that’s the point. Therapy has instead taught me how to accept my reality. I’ll never completely stop being an anxious person because I’ll never be able to completely undo the trauma of my past. What I can do is learn how to better handle it — my anxiety, my existence, my truth. I don’t escape to my head or attempt to rewrite what’s happening in actuality. Instead, I embrace life as an active participant. My mind is sharper and I’ve begun to deal with my past and my present, while trying not to worry so much about the future. I don’t feel unblemished, but I do feel better. And I’ve come this far because once a week, for fifty minutes, I sit in a room and work out.
Wrapped up in my personal narrative is a very real level of financial privilege. Unfortunately, in this country, we still treat mental health as a luxury and therapy sessions can be egregiously expensive. First and foremost, when considering mental health services, reach out to your insurance provider for details on coverage. From there, look for therapists with sliding scales [pay per your financial status] or pro bono openings [yes, they exist]. Tip: Recent graduates are looking to get their required hours and traditionally carry lower rates because of this.
I’m not one to say how anyone should spend their money, but do make mental health a priority. It’s incredible how much we spend on things to make ourselves feel better except the things that will actually make us feel better.
“The next time you see a young black guy in new shoes, stop and ask him, ‘Who hurt you?’” — Jerrod Carmichael
