I’ve always been fearful those long couches would give away my secret—even though I had an uncomfortable many of them.

For years I was trapped in unresolved feelings that lingered from my childhood. I fell deeper and deeper into a near fatal depression as I aged, and I didn’t see myself coming out alive. I was singing the Black Boy Blues, lingering emptiness and devastation from growing up disproportionately Black and male in America. I knew I needed help.

Therapy was always out of the question, though.