Racism and mental health: Kenya’s story

I first tried to take my own life when I was a teenager. From that moment through my teenage years and throughout my 20s, I would suffer from various mental health difficulties on a grand scale, staring death in the face way too many times. When you have experienced this and come through the other side, you start to reflect on the situations you have found yourself in and whether if society were different for Black people, others like me wouldn’t have been staring up at those blurred bright hospital lights. 

I was born in the mid-90s from 2nd generation Windrush. I was born just on the cusp of being a part of the millennial generation that remembers Myspace and sending daily love to my friends on Bebo. My dad’s side is Jamaican, and my mum’s dad is from St Vincent and the Grenadines (my nan is Finnish). I was raised with the knowledge that being Black is a beautiful thing and that we should be proud. Family barbeques with reggae blasting through the decks, rice ‘n’ peas, curry goat, and fried chicken in abundance.

I wasn’t born ashamed of being Black, so why was it that, over time, I grew to wish I was living in a different body? 

From a young age, I was ‘othered’ involuntarily. Some teachers just decided that they didn’t like me. One would randomly stop talking whilst teaching, take one look at me, and accuse me of trying to break the keyboard (I wasn’t even doing anything I swear!). One would call my mum saying they were intimidated by me, a child because I was a ‘big girl’. One would walk up to me, get up in my face so intensely that I could feel the warmth of her breath, and tell me I would ‘never get anywhere in life’ and one terrifyingly bullied me to the point of no return – I was done with life, and I was only a kid. 

While these instances may seem like nothing to some, they all translate to racist experiences. You are treating me differently for no justifiable reason other than you’ve made a stereotypical perception of me. On top of this, I was watching the boys fancy my white friends whilst I struggled to find my identity. I wore hot pants in Oceana because I wanted to be loved but unfortunately a lot of my sexual experiences when I was younger were not consensual, with the boys saying that it didn’t happen because ‘they would never get with someone like me’. 

All of this started the snowball of my anger and hatred for myself.

It seemed like everyone else hates me so why shouldn’t I? I didn’t have a word for it back then, but I was so lonely and depressed and this has carried on through my life. I couldn’t get up for school, I would cry myself to sleep wondering why I was different. I couldn’t, at that age, understand the injustice. And to be honest, even becoming an adult, things didn’t exactly change. But I did start to understand what was happening and why. 

As an adult, I started to see these same dynamics play out in the workplace but also within my friendships and romantic relationships. I started gaining more knowledge about racism when I started seeking it out by reading, speaking openly with white and Black friends and finding community. But it was after the killing of George Floyd I started speaking about my past experiences in public. I started to understand activism and finding my voice. Suddenly your voice becoming powerful and helpful to others only seemed to p*ss off some white people more, to the point that they became more openly racist than before, which just cemented how systemic racism is. Ultimately, it always comes down to people not listening, being defensive, not reflecting on their own behaviour and blaming you for everything. Every Black person I speak to has a similar, if not the same, story. You speak up, you are shut down and people make decisions for you instead of with you.

This pattern repeats over and over again until you start thinking you are crazy – you’re not. 

And it is this cycle that ultimately has been so damaging to my mental health. When you are gaslit, your emotions are shoved to the side, you start to lose hope. It feels like you are gasping for air just to be heard and sometimes you just have to accept that some people will just never understand your experience. But the difference is that some people do try to understand and take action to do better, rather than getting defensive and never changing their outlook – it’s these people who have made me understand that change is possible. 

I am soon to be 30 and have been able to reflect a lot about my relationships and how racism can play out in a person’s life but also recognise the layers of intersectionality within communities. I have thankfully had a lot of therapy, I mean… a lot! Can you blame me? And I now know that there is nothing wrong with me – I’m pretty awesome! My experiences have fuelled my work in advocating for change. I have an amazing support network around me, many people who are actively being anti-racist and I’ve slowly started to see those who sadly aren’t and it’s time to let those dynamics go. It’s been difficult, but finding peace and protecting yourself for your mental health is of the utmost importance and I can’t wait to continue to meet people in life who want to uplift you and who have your back when it comes to racism, rather than bring you down, ignore it and pretend that it doesn’t exist. Listening can save the life of someone like me, do the work, be a true ally, and let the communities speak.