Each One, Reach One

“Everybody needs somebody sometime.”

Greetings folks and welcome to another edition of “The Diplomat’s Report.” It has been a long week and it’s not even half over. And while many of you are looking at the calendar and marveling at the fact that in a few days the fourth month of the year will be here. I’m thinking about how long of a year it has already been, despite the fact that we’re merely a third of the way through. Let me be clear, I’m not complaining. I’m not addicted to drugs, sex, or rock and roll and in need of an intervention. In fact, I omitted alcohol from my life this Lenten season to prove that I’m not addicted to alcohol. Mission accomplished. However, while I have nothing to complain about, my view that it has been a pretty long year thus far has been because of all the work I’ve been putting into redesigning myself. Yes, I’ve been doing a floor to ceiling remodeling of The Diplomatic Consulate and what a job it has been.

The past few months have been very enlightening for me. I made the decision to make some changes on the inside so that I may be a better person on the outside. Often times we focus on the physical changes; a lift, a tuck, a diet, or a new gym membership. While the physical changes present formidable challenges, they are nothing compared to the work that has to be done to change what’s on the inside. For most of my life, save a few years, I’ve been pretty fit so the idea of taking care of my body and eating right has never been a problem for me. However, while I’ve always taken the time to care for my physical body, I haven’t always been as dedicated to taking care of my spiritual and emotional body.

When something is wrong with our physical body, the body has a way of letting us know by way of physical manifestations: pain, smell, visual, etc. However, how do we know when we’re ailing spiritually? How do we know that it’s time for an emotional check-up? Herein lies the problem. Your body doesn’t typically cry out to you after a bad break up. Your ankles likely won’t swell after you’ve lost someone close to you. And your urine won’t smell like ammonia just because you’re a terrible person. No, that’s typically because you aren’t drinking enough water. Either that or you’re eating way too much asparagus, but I digress. The moral of the story is that it’s not as easy to tell when you’re hurting on the inside as it is when you’re hurting on the outside.

So many people walk around every day hurt, feeling like they have no shoulder to lean on, no arm to hold them and no ear to listen them. Many of these same people have more followers, friends and contacts than they know what to do with, but yet and still they wrestle with this emptiness alone. The fact is that mental health is a taboo subject, particularly in communities of color. If a man doesn’t exhibit normal outward manifestations of high levels of testosterone, we question his masculinity. If a woman cries or takes offense to something we may not necessarily consider to be offensive, we deem her to be “emotional”. And when people do things that we may not wholly and completely understand, we attribute it to mental instability. We, as a society, are hostile towards individuals with emotional handicaps or those who exhibit behaviors and outward manifestations of emotions that we don’t understand or identify with.

I readily admit that I was a terrible person growing up. I would not be surprised if there are individuals now in therapy or in need of therapy because of some of the terrible things I said and did to them as a child and an adolescent. My friends and I brought tears to the eyes of children and adults alike simply because we could. If we saw a weakness, we exploited it. We were like bulls in a china shop with reckless disregard for all the fancy stuff; primarily our victim’s emotional well-beings. Why did I do it? A number of reasons that I don’t have time to get into at the moment. But the short answer: I was a hurt person, hurting other people. Today, I’m older and wiser, and when I look back at some of the things I said and did to hurt people, I cringe. It makes me cringe to think of all the women I hurt because I was too selfish and inconsiderate to be in a relationship. It pains me to think about all the people I mentally abused because of their race, nationality or physical appearance. It sickens me to think that I saw someone in need and rather than extending my hand to help these people, I kicked them while they were down.

Everyone hurts. Anyone who tells you differently is hiding the hurt as they tell you that bold-face lie. Emotional hurt, like physical hurt, can worsen over time and may become irreparable, if not appropriately dealt with. As a friend of mine likes to say, “hurt people, hurt other people.” The little girl who was picked on throughout her childhood for not being very attractive but then grows up to be attractive and flaunt her beauty every chance she gets, is a hurt person hurting others. The man who had his heart broken by his first love, vows never to be hurt again and runs through women the way Adrian Peterson runs through defenders, is a hurt person hurting others. The boy who never knew his parents growing up and goes from pillar to post procreating but never starting a family of his own, is a hurt person. It’s a vicious cycle and until we stop and realize we have a problem we perpetuate it.

Everybody needs somebody, some time. That person may be a friend, a family member, a co-worker or a therapist but it has to be somebody. Someone has to help you through that hurt. Someone has to help you see that you’re not right and that until you are you’ll never be happy. Someone has to be there to help you heal the pain. We must not be afraid to reach out for help. If you’re hurting, tell someone. Hell, tell me if you want to. Seriously, I’d rather be inconvenienced now to save a life later and help someone in need.  

I hope all of you who are reading this pass to this on to your friends and family, whether you know their emotional state or not. You never know whose life you could be helping to turn around. Perhaps even your own. Until next time, Stay Up and Be Blessed!