OLLIE

“I went through a lot of depression from things changing during the pandemic.

…For me, [growing up as a pastor’s kid] in a community where mental health is, ‘You don’t have enough faith—it’s just in your mind,’ trying to explain it’s clinical to an aunt who kept hammering it’s just a matter of faith…I felt like it was a disease, and she couldn’t accept that.

Now, she sees that there’s a pattern, because she’s reading more about mental health.

I have to be in a patient teacher mode [with her, and] that’s difficult for me to get to when I’m the one with the problem.

In the Black [American] community, there’s a different kind of block...Having an illness that goes beyond depression—people have some familiarity with that—[but] where it’s schizoAffective disorder…you’re seen as crazy and not trustworthy.

On the flip side, I don’t like being treated as an ‘other.’

You’re coming from another country where you have the experience of your dark skin being normal. [Ollie is addressing my upbringing in a predominantly brown-skinned country]…I have no idea what that’s like.

Interacting with White people who expected me to behave a certain way [and] have a low level of intelligence… [and] who believe I have a personal value…that is normal for me.

We have certain skin tones that suggest we come from a particular geographical location…[But] just because I look a certain way doesn’t mean I have the same cultural experience.

I don’t feel normal. 

I find that I just create my own pocket of normal, and among two or three people I feel normal.

When I meet dark-skinned women who have had to cross from one culture to another and feel a disconnect, I gravitate towards people like that.”