Why I'm Boxing Myself In.
I started a mental health platform on Instagram when I was 15 years old. I had been gratitude journaling for 3 years, and was shooting rainbows and sunshine from my ass into the Internet. I had experienced seasons of sadness and loss, but I was inexplicably determined to spread joy and positivity - even when I wasn't feeling like it. I thought you could just choose to be happy. I was invincibly, sickeningly positive.
When the pandemic hit, I was completing my final year of high school locked down and online. Uh oh! You are invincible no longer! I was studying English, Literature, Music, French and Theatre Studies. But as soon as I'd log off for the day, I was alone. I started reading about psychology and mental health. Books on meditation, Eastern philosophy, positive psychology, the mindbody connection, embodiment, creativity and what keeps us from showing up authentically.
I think it un-numbed me. I slowly started cultivating a deeper understanding of my own internal rhythms and the quiet inner turbulence of the world around me. It rumbled, and I wrote about it. Songs. Music was the digestion system wide enough for the world's ache.
So I kept making art, and then I studied it. I went to university for Music Theatre, I wrote and released music, and played live shows across the country that felt like deep, alive breaths. It became clear to me that the people who depend upon art are often our deepest feelers. We experience unbelievable highs, and the lowest of lows. I felt a deep sense of purpose being able to share this full spectrum of emotions as an artist, and witness the way that it brought people together. It felt necessary.
I got my accreditation as a Mental Health First Aider when I was 18, because I knew it would be of value. I knew it would equip me with an informed, tangible set of tools that I could add to my intuitive ones. I have used it more times than I can count. With close friends in crisis; with strangers at night on the side of Smith Street; in the foyer of a theatre; over the phone and across the country. I've used it on myself.
In 2021, I lost a friend to suicide. I still struggle to think about the day of the funeral, because no one prepares you to be at a 21st birthday one week, and be at a funeral with the same people the next. I remember there being such a distinct lack of words, and that in the silence, we were all thinking: How could we have prevented this?
It's perhaps arrogant to believe that you could have been the person to talk someone into staying, but I also hold the belief that we save each other's lives every day. Just by showing up. By asking the right questions. By looking someone in the eye. By being curious, and attentive and loving. To strangers. To the people you love.
So, I'm boxing myself in.
Because raising this money could save someone's life.
Because I can't remember the last time I spent 20 hours without technology.
Because there is an alarming lack of funding for prevention, and try as we might, we cannot bring people back once they are gone.
Because there is only one thing, and we are all it.
Because people need people -
and 20 hours in a 2x2 square is a challenging, but small price to pay, for the possibility of a young person feeling like they belong in the world.
Love,
Charly
