ok.

• one thing about kanye, that nigga knows exactly how to keep y’all talking about him and niggas taking the bait over and over and over and over again

• certified hater boy

• imagine getting 360 no scoped by dr king

• tulum???

• that spider-man trailer…let’s goooooooo

• shang chi goes up, y’all better go see it

• ‘ted lasso’ got the chance the rapper treatment; moment he chose to be positive, niggas said fuck that

• add sojourner truth for fortnite 

• beware people who don’t want you to talk to people on the other side of their story. it’s manipulation

• moving into my new neighborhood, i specifically wanted central air and hood niggas on the block

• nike, drop the lisa frank tech suit and i promise that shit will go up

• rip chadwick. wild that it’s been a year.

• rip michael k williams. life is short, y’all, cherish yours

“the worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel all alone.” - Robin Williams

---

this is a pretty difficult time of year for me every year and definitely for millions of people all around the world. i had a whole loosies planned about my upcoming knee surgery, conditional white love, my recovery from gaslighting, and ultimately a love letter to my friends and family for reminding me what true community looks like but i’ll be able to to hit that another day. 

--

tw: suicide, suicidal ideation, assault

ok.

for those who don’t know me, my life has been plagued with an ongoing rollout of death. friends and family passed away over and over and over again for different reasons and i just kept smiling. don’t let them see you bleed, don’t let them see you cry, your life is your life, you know, all that shame resilience and performance of that ever-elusive “being ok.”

but i was not. much of my 2017, 2018, and some of 2019 was my best acting of my entire life. i looked “ok.” all the time, i was 10 heath ledgers, i really fell into my role of “guy who’s fine” aka “ok” and kept that up for months; method acting ennui and middle of the road emotions became my bread and butter. on stage, the people were buying it; i was fine and i totally definitely wanted to be alive all the time…at least to them.

off stage, i wanted to die. full stop. so much of our lives is a dance between life and death, especially amid the pandemic, but other social maladies have us on an iv drip of toxicity, wearing us down until the curtain call. shame, misplaced anger, skin deep friendships and allegiances, the schisms between performed identity and the real cause us to build foundations on shifting socioemotional ground and every house i tried to build for myself began to feel like a mausoleum.

we spend so much time on stage these days, at work, on zoom, on social media, at home with family, with friends, in this fake relationships, that our backstage time is dwindling. backstage, an actor can take a breath, reset and go back on stage. but for me, i felt like there was no backstage and i was “on” 24/7. it was never for me, it was always so people saw the emotional strength i possessed or at least i could convince them i did. i remember telling someone that i may have looked confident but i suffered from imposter syndrome. they laughed at that notion: “you’re so funny though!”

i said it once and i’ll say it again: comedy is a coping mechanism that can become an art form but if you don’t deal with what you were coping with then you’re just getting better and better at wearing a mask. and we all look damn good at wearing that mask.

—

2016 is when i really began the role of “OK.” someone close to me, someone i love to this day was raped. someone i was supposed to protect. someone i was supposed to be there for, and i wasn’t. to this day, i know i didn’t have any power to change the events that day but i carry that guilt because that’s how men are programmed; we have to break, smash, and fight whatever hurt us or forced us to be vulnerable which then doesn’t allow us our full emotional range. but i can’t two piece rape culture, i can’t get my homies together and jump the idea of sexual violence, i have to embody the best principles i am armed with and be a space for healing for her. not me, her. just as i felt i was ready for this, she ran away, in the wind and i had no idea where she was for months. ok. 

as i was processing this very dark event, i was involved in comedy’s herbalife (iykyk) and making myself feel better through people laughing. laughter is like baby aspirin for guilt and shame and pain but eventually you develop a tolerance but there isn’t anything stronger available. then, 2 months after, i myself was sexually assaulted. in public. over a period of 3 nights. but it’s OK. and then told that it was my fault. i still scroll back to that series of texts to see where i went wrong and it always comes back to who was at the wheel when i was attempting to stand up for myself. it was “ok.” it wasn’t. but it was OK.

i buried it and tried to keep going. everything is fine, you’re ok, haha, we out here then…attempted suicide. not mine but that person so close to me that i “failed” before. and now failed again because i was on stages and making videos being OK while people i loved were hurting. that’s the problem. it was me. i was thinking about myself too much and it was dragging everyone along with me. good old Man Logic™️

—

my life mattered so much in 2016 and 17. i know this because white people whose parents voted for trump kept telling me. i dove into activism again, a place that felt familiar and warm even though it was truly war every day. and the meaninglessness of my own life in the face of the greater good continued with every two step between being told my life mattered followed by a cop clapping another black person. i kept telling myself i mattered but i really couldn’t believe it. the OK role had consumed me, i was becoming a vessel for okayness and less myself every day so i began to dissociate. sometimes for a week or a month, sometimes for 10 min. and i kept popping back in. 

it took 10 months for me to admit that i was assaulted; it takes many people much longer and shame kept me from admitting it to my friends. you see, men can’t be assaulted at least that’s the prevailing theory if you believe idiots like i did. the same strength that protects us from being vulnerable also poisons us from ever being able to be vulnerable. i tried to speak about it with close friends but immediately was told it was impossible and given variations of “she must have liked you” and “you’re imagining things” and “no that’s not how it happened.” i continued to not trust myself, my point of view, my comedy, everything. 

everything was becoming more and more dark, the lights were going down onstage but OK kept performing. i kept removing myself from places that OK didn’t feel like performing and worked hard to be OK there. i became so good at being OK that sometimes i convinced myself i was OK…like “goddamn i was buggin, what i went through wasn’t that bad” but it was. i went to a psychiatrist and got told i had ptsd, depression, and anxiety (duh) but i’ll be OK. i always am. i always…am.

—

i decided for a year that i didn’t want to be on earth any more. life felt pointless; i was making people laugh for 12 minutes at a time while people were getting locked up at the border, shot, deported, etc. no one needed me. no one needed me to exist, why look at me when everything else is so much worse or so much better. that was OK. i spent years trying to get on as a comedian and finally got an actual job and i felt nothing. nothing at all. i spent so much time teaching myself not to feel for fear of being hurt again that everything from joy to anger, sadness to euphoria was relegated to the mysterious OK.

i stood up for others way more than i would ever for me. red flag. i would bend my boundaries to make sure that everyone was OK except me. red flag. i would minimize my pov on things because if i pissed off the wrong person, things wouldn’t be OK. red flag made of red flags. and i still got in the car. 

i always knew what i saw in other people but i never knew what they saw in me because i was in the backseat while OK drove. large gaps in my memories that have since been colored back in but i just put on my depression type beats i fell asleep, never knowing the destination just hoping it was the end. at rest stops in my dissociation, i would get a little bit of emotional cell service and call to apologize for not being around, text to apologize for not being there, email to apologize for missing a meeting, send condolences to friends and family who passed while i was on the road, make plans to meet up knowing full well that i was not in control of the car anymore and had no idea when the next rest stop would be. 

removing yourself from the narrative including your own only ends with a final deletion. i was running out of stage and feeling like a finale was in order.

—

i ran into ryan at blink fitness in august of 2018. he had been one of those friends that was not quite a satellite friend but not someone i talked to every single day for about two years. we were comedy homies and every time i saw him, i smiled. what a fucking goofball, my god. this time, my man looked like he had a new lease on life: new job, new ponytail, new goofy grin, the man was at the gym for god sake getting diesel, things were looking up. then on september 9th, 2018 i got the call while i was leaving that very same blink fitness that ryan had died by suicide.

for hours, i couldn’t cry. i was OK. but i wasn’t OK. but i was OK. but i wasn’t OK. i wasn’t OK. we all say this about all of our friends but ryan was one of the nicest, gentlest, purest, most genuine people i’ve ever met my entire life. and he was gone. i was not OK. i was not. he was OK. he was not. but…he was OK. he was not. and now, curtain call.

two things true at once but simultaneously lies. 

what i saw in ryan was kindred spirit. we went to college together. both positive, well liked people by our respective peer groups and tried to be more genuine and better every day. he invited me to do comedy with him in new york. he too had been through his share of bad relationships and good ones, bad days and good, and i’ll never know why he did what he did or be able to fight whoever made him leave us, but in his bedroom while a bevy of friends sat in stunned silence in the living room, i saw it. this was the space of someone who was OK. i won’t describe it because i do not have the words yet. i watched people tell each other who was allowed to be OK, who was too OK, who deserved to be OK and who didn’t and a truth buried in my subconscious told me “nobody was OK, but somehow we all could be.”

to be clear, i don’t blame ryan for what he did as much as i don’t blame the close person to me who also attempted suicide two years before or me who was waiting for the right time and place. i blame OK and what allows OK to exist. OK has robbed us all of honesty, transparency, and valuable relationships. OK is a dance with no end until we drop the pretense. OK allows too much space for grey area and misinterpretation. OK keeps people suffering in silence. OK tells you not to take up space. OK tells you you’ll be fine on your own when what you really need is community. OK is what you say to pretend pain isn’t there. OK is what you say when you’ve been sexually assaulted and don’t want to be a bother. OK is being too afraid to be happy or sad for fear of taking up space. OK is negging ourselves, minimizing achievements, and internalizing external hate. OK is making yourself smaller and smaller until you don’t exist. OK is a mask. OK is a mask. OK is a mask.

humans contain too much neurological and psychological complexity especially when it comes to grief for us to minimize it to two letters. 

—

it wasn’t until [insert year here] that i stopped being OK. i still am OK. but not all the time. i still feel OK in my bones when i stand up, in my muscles when i tense up from seeing someone who makes me uncomfortable in my bones, and see OK in my lab tests for high blood pressure and elevated cortisol. i’m more explicit in how i’m feeling which sends OK to the back. all those years on the road with OK relegated to the back while people fawn over how OK looks, how OK talks, how OK writes, etc, the only thing that kept me here was the people who knew that i was not OK. 

the friends who when i called knew me before i hopped on stage or were onstage themselves. the ones who understood what it took to divulge that i had been assaulted. the ones who shared food with me while i fought back tears. the ones who squeezed my hand to help push out the tears held back by vestigial feelings of looking strong. the ones who weren’t the trauma police or the traumavores. the ones who listened and heard me and not what they wanted to hear. the ones who held space and i reciprocated. the ones who could step out of themselves for a moment so we all could join in the truth that

it’s ok to not be OK. 

the show does not have to go on. 

we don’t have to be alone offstage. 

the brain is a mf. don’t let it trick you.

i love you ryan mccormack. i will never recover from losing you and i think about your every time i dj, every time someone brings up a chicken parm, and every time i think about effortless inclusivity. your light will always be in our lives and i hope it never dims. 

—

last year i was a part of a to write love on her arms campaign to speak on my struggles with mental health. 

photos by aundre larrow. responses to prompts by me.

what does a life worth living mean to you?

i’m still defining that. i think that when you are in a depressive state, you are defining your future based on your past and if that past feels too dark the future feels bleak. i have ptsd, social anxiety, and major depression so being stuck in a dark past moment of trauma and a demanding present, i’m no stranger to letting the anxiety of knowing all that dictate my future; a future that is uncontrollable and ever-changing seems like a hopeless pit to climb out of. but i think life worth living includes the realization that the future is dynamic, with a multitude of variables, and so many of those variables are uncontrollable and unpredictable. 

a life worth living centers joy and centers mental, physical, and spiritual (however you define that) health feeling valued and supported by a community/chosen family that knows your ups and your downs, that you can trust so you are not afraid to be vulnerable and alone. it means balance, it means peace, it means love of self, of others, of the environment, and space to grow.

has suicide affected you? if so, how has your experience altered how you view life?

since the age of 16, suicide has affected my life. it didn’t start with me; it was somebody that i was close to. and as i got older and realized how much trauma, sadness, death, and inability to talk about these things was around me, i lost more and more people. i set out to try and be there for my friends, cheer them up, let them know that this darkness is temporary; i got certified in mental health first aid, studied neuroscience, read everything that i could about breaking patterns of psychological self-harm and destigmatizing vulnerability, but as i lost friends to struggles with mental health, the background program of my own dark ideations (“i just need a break from life,” “i don’t want to die but i also don’t want to live,” “if i disappear from the world people wouldn’t even notice,” etc.) started to accumulate and i found myself ready to go, making plans to not be around, to be a burden one last time. in holding space for so many other people above myself, holding secrets, and not prioritizing my own mental health, i became the very person that i wanted to save.

i climbed out of that dark pit but i kept falling back in. and they keep telling you to keep getting on the horse if you fall off but eventually that horse feels like it’s higher and higher and getting further and further away. i did choose life. and with that choice came the realization that all i could do was to tend to my mental, physical, and spiritual gardens, deepening relationships with friends and family by being vulnerable about how pervasive this struggle with mental health has been and in doing so, i found that not only was i not alone but we are stronger when we are there for each other, when we listen to each other, when we lead with love, humanize one another. i remembered where i came from, what i had to lose, and how i felt when i lost countless friends to mental health struggles. 

i used to reframe this as “you literally have looked down the barrel of a gun multiple times, why are you letting all of this other stuff bother you?” but that’s not a valid analysis; trauma is trauma, how it feels is really and we have to treat it as such. learning this, i gave myself space to grow. life used to be a bully and i try to keep walking away from life but after i opened up and chose to live, the bully seemed less scary. still there, but less scary. 

how are you exercising self care during covid-19?

it has taken a bit of time but i think that i had a pretty good routine of therapy, working out, talking to friends, and consistently having a project to work on to occupy my time. when covid hit, it didn’t affect my life a lot at first; i already stayed at home a lot, i already isolated myself, and i preferred my alone time because i filled it with work. but once that work dried up, the other pandemic of racism and the epidemic of loneliness began to settle in, i realized that i had isolated and disassociated from so many different people and spaces for fear of being a burden to them and now i was alone with me and hated it. i had to dig. 

through that digging, i excavated so many memory fossils from deep in my brain, began to unlearn some of my trauma responses (overworking, people-pleasing, difficulty saying no, weak boundaries, overapologizing,etc), and most importantly i started watching mindless tv and listening to music, opening up more to my friends without fear of being shamed, weeding out those friends who only took my energy, and i made a commitment to assuming that i am allowed to exist. i slept, i made myself eat more regularly, i did facemasks, i talk to my cousins back home and west africa, and i found new more interesting ways to connect with people in this disconnected time. oh yeah, and less social media.

i think when you’re stuck in a cycle of psychological low (and high) lying self-harm, you feel like you’re not allowed to be vocal about how it hurts for fear of being shut down, especially as a man where vulnerability often is treated and exploited as weakness both by men and women. but morning affirmations and prayer have been helpful reminding me that i am allowed to be, i am allowed to exist, and i always try my best.

what is your special recipe to heal the world?

love. self-love. radical love. community love. rice. learning to change your mind when presented with new information. holding space for yourself and holding space for others. bouillon cube. hug your loved ones. when someone is traumatized, don’t just hear them listen to them. don’t just look at them, see them. protect your brain. read books. make mental health care a priority. humanize each other. adobo.

are there any quotes or mantras that help you maintain a positive outlook?

“it be like that sometimes.” - maya angelou

“…but it don’t gotta be” - i dunno

“vulnerability is the least celebrated emotion in our society.“ – bell hooks

“indeed after hardship, there is ease (quran, 94:6)

“delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. so what if it’s all in your head?” - octavia e. butler

is it helpful to deny when we feel down?

absofuckingoutely not. not to get on my radical high horse here but the feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and self-worth tied to our productivity are all a product of not only racial capitalism but also generations of programmed white supremacy, patriarchy, elitism. and individualism superseding collectivism. nobody is untouched by these systems and we all have to deal with it differently, scaled and multiplied by intersecting oppressions. talk your shit. and if you feel uncomfortable with the people that you need to talk your shit with, find new people. 

the world is much better with us in it and everybody has the right to live no matter how worthless these systems (exacerbated by an addictive external validation matrix like social media) makes us feel. i denied my feelings internally for so long, always having a smile on my face and a joke ready to deflect from the reality of what i was struggling with and the secrets, burdens, major traumas, and living in survival mode for so long poisoned me. do not deny that you feel down. when you are interrogating your feelings, do it with someone you trust. when you feel like you’re drowning make sure you reach out for the right hand. never feel guilty for taking up space but make sure that when you do take up space and feel comfortable, create more space for somebody else. tldr: talk your shit.

—

tell me about your performances of ok. drop your thoughts in the comments 🙏🏾

miriam. rama. ray. grace. ashley. maria. karen. john. poppy. laci. q. michelle. yedoye. emily. maansi. petey. vivi. mikey. jordan. mita. val. mia. rebecca. jerah. aiche. 

thank you ❤️❤️❤️