Josh Samarco

I’ll never forget my freshman year of high school when the Emcee of our freshman assembly had each of us 9th graders look to the left and the right. I forgot the statistics about how many high school students do not graduate, but the Emcee said,

I’ll never forget that moment.

Here’s the reality: The people whom I looked to my left and right did not graduate with me.

I never understood why the focus at that time was on one of us not making it. Perhaps there could have been a different message that day. A message centered on, ‘despite what the statistics say, we are here as your educators and support system for the next four years to ensure that you will make it.’

Maybe our education leaders had been around long enough to know that many of the young people from where my friends and I come from don’t make it to graduation.

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Earlier this year, I was looking through an old box of items I had held on to from high school. I found a report card, where in the third quarter of my junior year, I ended with a 1.8 GPA. It was the first time in my life that I received poor grades and did not earn credits to pass a class.

During my senior year of high school, I found myself in a conversation with my freshman basketball coach and who was also a school counselor. He let me know that I would be a half credit short of graduating from high school.

If you followed my writing and stories over the years, you know that I was a Who’s Who Scholar and had all A’s up until 8th grade. In 8th grade, something began to shift in me mentally and emotionally. I felt as though I had to be tough, and if anyone tried to “test me,” they would find out how tough I was.

During my 8th-grade year, I tested out my new way of thinking. I got into it with a classmate on the way to a class after lunch. He and I got into a verbal altercation, which led me to threaten him and act as if I had a knife in my pocket. This led to a two-week suspension, and I was on the verge of being expelled. Lucky for me, my track record and grades were clean.

I am grateful that I did not have a knife on me that day. However, this moment would mark a downward spiral in my life over the next four years.

What happened? How does one go from never getting suspended, bad grades, and being in trouble to, by the age of 16, becoming a juvenile delinquent in Washtenaw County?

Many things happened!

• I started smoking marijuana
• I started drinking alcohol
• I had three minor in possessions of alcohol by the age of 17
• I had to do 40 hours of community service
• I was sexually active
• I started skipping school
• I started to sell weed as a junior in high school
• I suffered a blackout as a result of smoking and drinking together
• Home life was unstable
• I suffered panic attacks
• I had episodes of depression and suicidal ideation

If you have ever watched the news long enough, you’ll hear a news anchor report on a troubled teen who made a decision that not only destroyed his life but also the lives of others. When you hear such a story, you may wonder and question yourself, what is the back story of this young black man?

As you read my back story, you’ll find that many of my peers and I were collectively in the same boat. Our realities became our norm. As teenagers, many of us, we were becoming not just products of our environments, but products of a “system” that we heard of from our elders and it seemed as if after so many attempts of rescue, many of us would be dead, in jail, or soon to be lost in the streets to gangs, drug dealing, and being on drugs the rest of our lives.

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A young black man… Young black men.

I, too, was on the verge of becoming one of the three that wasn’t going to graduate from high school. How could this be? Young black boys like me don’t dream of becoming high school dropouts and not getting our degrees. No, we dream of becoming the next Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, or Kobe Bryant. We put our all into becoming star athletes so we can make it out of the hood and beat the system that wasn’t set up for us to win.

As we entered the prime years of our teenagehood as young black men, many of our lived experiences began to become too much for us. The exploration of drugs, alcohol, and sex opened up pathways for escape. Many of us thought that if we pursued these newfound pleasures, the experiences would bury and hide a lot of our pain. It did the opposite, and the reality is that every time we took a hit of a blunt, drank alcohol, and engaged in sex, our brains and bodies suffered.

If we were to do case studies on the mental health of the young black men who grew up in my neighborhood and neighborhoods like mine, I can guarantee you would find many similar root causes to the demise of our states of being.

So, who is to take account of the black man’s mental health?

Is it our fault? Society tells us that it is. Do we blame our parents? Many say we should. Do we blame the education system? Who’s to say it’s their job to carry the weight of the parents? They didn’t sign up to teach and become counselors, motivational speakers, psychiatrists, pastors, leaders, and caregivers.

Many had to become this so that one child at a time could potentially find a way to make it through.

Again, I ask, who is to take account of the black man’s mental health?

I don’t have the answers. Maybe you do.

Here is what I do know:

• I am 20 years post-high school
• I’ve lost friends to suicide, prison, drugs, and the streets
• Many of the people that I grew up with, we grew apart
• Many of the black men have undiagnosed mental health issues
• The people that many of us said we would never become, we became
• A lot of our realities today were not the dreams of our youth
• Lower economic environments (the hood) are not always the best place to grow up for young black boys and teens
• Some of us never received proper care, tools, support, and resources
• Some of us have never known what it means to be loved, cared for, and respected by a Black man, starting with our black dads
• We’ve had so much pinned against us even before we were born, and definitely as we grew up in our upbringing
• We had more options, but the options seemed few and far between
• Many of us are still fighting core battles from our youth
• Sports and rap are not our savior

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I’ve written about black men’s mental health many times over the years. I’ve tried to publicly share, model, and encourage black men to talk and get help. Sometimes, for me, it is easier to write about my journey than it is to talk about it in person with people that I know. I mean, how do you tell someone they need help without coming off as judgmental and offensive?

Am I any different then the black men that I grew up with, although I have degrees, accomplishments, and have been in therapy? I’m not so sure I am. Did I find a way? No. I found many pathways. Pathways that have led me to make it one more day. Most days, I feel like I am still surviving. Surviving decisions I made and decisions that were made for me.

What I have been through, seen, and experienced as a kid and teen should not have happened, but it did. I try to live my life not with a victim mentality but with a victory mindset.

I’ve had sweet seasons of life, and I’ve had really hard seasons of life. Some call it survivor’s guilt. I am indeed a survivor who is still here to not only tell my story but the story of so many of us black men who don’t make it 20 years past high school.

Despite what society says, we deserve to be in a state of healing. We deserve softness and love. We deserve life and not death spoken over us. We deserve to be a people who grow old and end our lives happily. We deserve to share our stories of overcoming and helping the next generation not struggle like we did. We deserve to be healers and not people who continue the cycle of pain.

I am back in therapy. Why? Because life is hard. Life sucks at times. My brain and my body don’t always align with one another. There’s trauma stored in my body that I am still trying to find and let go of. I cannot go through life fighting battles, knowing there are healthy tools that can help me. I want to give my family a healing and holistic Josh, and not a man who never decided to do anything about the pain he endured.

We only get so many years on this earth. I am showing up as hard as it is on some days for me to do my part. Am I doing enough? No, I am not. I have had to take time off from sharing on social media to navigate my battles, to navigate transitions, to learn how to be a Father, a better husband, and to sit with my mental struggles.

I am hoping to be more vocal again. To regain confidence in my voice and my thoughts. To be purpose-driven and to be a resource for people. I know I am called, and despite getting in my way from time to time, I’m still here. I have a purpose, and that purpose is to live a life for God and help others find the One who keeps on keeping me. You, too, have a purpose!

Lastly, let’s champion each other, speak life and love. The days are long, the years seem short. We only have such a small window here on Earth. Let’s play our part in bringing love and healing to this world, fam.

Love y’all. ❤️

Here are truths and affirmations that I try to live by:

• I am the beloved. – There isn’t anything that I face today that can take away my sonship.
• There is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.
• I am loved for being me and not for what I can do.
• My value is not in what I produce but in who I am.
• I can find ownership in making decisions with better outcomes than the hand I was dealt.
• My voice matters. My story matters. My life matters.
• I can get back up.
• ‘Night cannot whisper away what God said in the light’
• We cannot heal what we don’t reveal
• A dim fire is still a fire
• “Every new day begins in the dark.” – John O
• “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” – Zora Neale Hurston
• Cycle breaking can end with me and ‘got dammit’ cycle breaking sucks!