Continuing isn’t Healing

One of the first questions a Black man asks another Black man in conversation is, “You good?” The typical response is, “Yeah, I’m good.” For many Black men, that response does not show the many layers of struggles, societal pressures, and burdens they are dealing with. This phrase rang true in my high school days as I first experienced what could have been forms of depression. During that time, I was not comfortable discussing what I was feeling. I would be sad, overwhelmed, or just not my best, and I would keep pushing. The funny thing is, I thought I was doing a great job of hiding it, and the whole time, not in the slightest. To this day, I remember being described as having a dark cloud over my head. Looking back, I don’t know why I said I was okay, knowing damn well I was not.

For a long time, that was my definition of strength: continuing. I grew up around a family who woke up and got to it. They did not make excuses; it was to put your head down and work. I am grateful for their focus and intention on education and hard work. I don’t remember a specific time anybody explicitly told me that just because I was a Black boy, I could not be emotional or vulnerable. If anything, I was assured that it was okay to feel my emotions. With that being said, I could count the times I have witnessed the Black men in my family cry. This could be due to their experiences in life, or maybe I just was not around when they did. Somewhere along the way, though, I questioned the reasoning. Was it because they did not feel like they had a safe space? Or did they suppress what they were feeling and decide to push through? I believe I leaned toward the latter, developing an understanding of what a Black man was supposed to look like. You handled your business. You didn’t complain too much. You always figured things out for you and yours. If you were hurting, you found a way to continue while dealing with it. I believe the things that shape us most are not even given to us by anyone. We absorb them from multiple people in our lives, and they then become our own beliefs.

Those beliefs were tested when I experienced losses at a young age. The deaths of my grandmother, uncle, and childhood barber all gave me a feeling that I still cannot properly explain to this day. I did not know what grief was back then. Those departures all felt like they happened around the same time. My memory is blurry, y’all, so please bear with me. What I did understand was that they were not coming back. In my eyes, there’s a difference between knowing somebody is gone and knowing how to navigate their absence. Life was still moving, so I continued. In a sense, I moved the way I saw the people in my life move. Looking back, that may be why I confused continuing with healing. I am not sure I ever processed these losses correctly.

That mentality followed me into high school. When I was struggling emotionally, I chose not to challenge myself to express how I felt. I simply stated, “I’m good.” From thoughts of quitting basketball to feeling like I didn’t fit in to navigating growing up, I carried more internally than I knew how to communicate. That is why the “dark cloud” statement is so interesting, because it came years after I graduated. I truly felt that keeping my thoughts to myself meant others would not be able to see how I was feeling. Clearly, I was wrong. I chose isolation when I needed other voices talking to me besides the one in my head.

College did not necessarily change that mindset either. It gave me a fresh start and a sense of independence I never had. The bad habits came along with me from Cleveland to Cincinnati. I met new people, had new experiences, and lived my life, but I still did not know how to express the internal battles I was facing. At the time, I thought that drinking and smoking would help, but as I learned over time, it was contributing to the problem. Like, hold on now, the things I thought were helping me cope are making it harder for me to regulate my emotions. Still, I continued to party, but as the years progressed, I took my life more seriously and started looking for ways to grow. I became more intentional about the person I wanted to become; I started reading self-help books and watching YouTube videos that would shift my mindset. I was growing in some areas, but emotionally, I still had work to do.

Fast forward to around the COVID pandemic, when I was absolutely depressed as I stayed inside the house day after day with my thoughts. A podcast called I AM ATHLETE, featuring former athletes Brandon Marshall, Chad Johnson “Ochocinco,” and Fred Taylor, showed up on my timeline. The podcast featured unfiltered conversations about vulnerability, personal struggles, and just navigating life as a Black man. It gave me a perspective on masculinity that was different from what I was accustomed to. Hearing Black men speak openly about their feelings, mental struggles, and the burdens of being a provider gave me a sense of relief. I realized I wasn’t alone, which gave me the courage to acknowledge my own feelings. Since it was during COVID, I binge-watched episodes, and after that, it clicked for me that I could do this too. Suddenly, when people asked me if I was good, I stated, “No, I am not, but I am working on it.” That made me proud because I felt a change like Sam Cooke.

There’s a full-circle moment in this for me. When I was younger, my father always told me to keep pushing, and my mother always told me to “keep the main thing, the main thing.” Years later, I am seeing another example of being a Black man through a different lens. It can mean waking up and handling your business, but it can also mean being upfront about the struggles that came with handling your business.

Eventually, my communication around greeting others and answering when they asked how I was doing became easier. Although it was easier, that did not mean it made me feel better immediately or that I wanted to explain in the moment what was going on. It just felt good to finally be free from the shackles of pretending all the time.

As I became more comfortable, therapy was my next step. This was a big step in my journey, as I was extremely scared of what would come about. Part of me wondered what people would think if they knew I was in therapy. When I started, my therapist challenged me to journal every time I felt myself spiraling or felt saddened by something happening in my life. This gave my racing mind a break. I needed it. It gave me a place to slow down my thoughts, give them somewhere to go, and find a new perspective when I read them on paper.

At first, those words that I wrote in my journal were just an outlet for my thoughts. Most of the time, they were random thoughts with no structure. I was letting them out. Over time, I started realizing that some of the thoughts I was putting in the journal could have value for somebody else. My goal in everything I do is to inspire at least one person, whether that happens through my actions or something I have said. I hope my words reach everybody, but I don’t expect them to reach all audiences. But if one person reads something I wrote and thinks, “Damn, I feel the same way,” that is enough for me.

About a year into therapy, I had grown much more comfortable with acknowledging how I was feeling. I remember walking out of my therapy session, and the sun was shining. The day had good energy. My therapist’s office was located on a hill overlooking the highway and trees. I took a picture and just stated, “Truly believe in therapy at least once in your life. It’s part of who I am. Everybody needs checkups from time to time from a different perspective,” and hit “Add to Story” on Instagram. I received so much love from it and encouraging messages thanking me for speaking up. That actually gave me the extra boost to really start expressing myself when I felt I had something to say. Mind you, this is the same person who once struggled to tell the people around him that he was not okay and is now sharing with people he has never met some of the internal struggles he might be facing. I love a good 180. Truly has a way of setting you free.

Now, I do not want my openness about my emotions to be the only thing people see. I like to look at myself as a person of duality. I am confident but uncertain at times. I am ambitious but can be unsure about what I’m chasing. I do well in one area but struggle in another. Shoot, I can motivate other people while still needing motivation myself. Being vulnerable has helped me understand that all of that can exist at the same time, and I don’t need to hide one part of me to prove the other exists. Vulnerability did not make me less confident, ambitious, or determined. It made me feel like I had a superpower as a Black man.

As I kept posting my experiences online, I saw the value in sharing what I was learning. Stories that needed to be told from my perspective. Then boom, one day I discovered a platform called Substack that checked all the boxes. A place where I could say more than what could fit on my Instagram story. It was a calm space, for once, in a world of other overstimulating social media platforms; it consisted of just others' writings. It took me a while to commit to posting as I had to scope the scenery, but I have grown to love it over there. It became a place where a new audience can see my reflections. 

The more I write to the world, the more I have come to love it. I’m still figuring out what using my voice really means. I have discovered that I might not even know the people it is touching, and that’s okay. I randomly ran into a friend at the bar, and he said, “I love your articles, keep going!” That made me feel great because I did not even know he was reading them. Some people never like, comment, or tell me anything at all, yet they still take something away from what I wrote. Now, I would be lying if I said everyone gets access to my thoughts. There are still moments that I handle alone. That is important to me at this stage. What has changed in my thought process now is that I can decide whether I need to deal with something on my own or say it out loud. I am blessed to have people around me I can call or text, write about it with, or sit in my thoughts for a moment. I have options that younger me didn’t think he had.

That’s the blessing.

For most of my life, I thought strength was just about continuing. I still believe there is strength in that. But I now understand people can learn many forms of strength. I carry everything I saw when I was younger; it made me who I am today—the resilience, responsibility, and knowing how to show up and handle your business. The beautiful thing about life is that there are always opportunities to grow while holding on to the good things you have learned in the past. What I understand now is that continuing isn’t the same thing as healing. You’ve got to face that. Sometimes continuing is speaking out. Sometimes strength is therapy. Sometimes it is pausing long enough to acknowledge your feelings and live with them. I realized I didn’t have to abandon the form of strength I grew up with. I just needed to expand on it.

With that, when someone asks, “You good?” I finally know I have more than one answer.

Quincy Waithe is a writer who uses personal experiences to discuss topics such as mental health, growth, and culture. Outside of his writing, he loves working out, fashion, and listening to R&B music.