I didn’t have a word for it. My Caribbean culture didn’t have a good word for it either. But I knew it wasn’t normal. My reactions would always feel disproportionate. Someone could raise their voice, call me names not so beautiful… and suddenly my brain would feel high on slushies. Frozen. I’d question everything… my worth, my place, my existence. My mind didn’t feel like mine. It felt like I was staring at a stranger through a foggy glass. Just blurry. Just… gone as I stepped off the jitney bus that dropped me at NMB Senior High School. Could I ever love myself enough to choose life… in my thoughts? Then, I stumbled across NF, an unconventional rapper. A guy from Michigan. I’m a girl from Port-de-Paix. He’s white and American. I’m Haitian and American. He was on the cusp of adulthood. I was just trying to survive being a teenager. And yet — his lyrics made sense of my chaos. “My mind is a home I’m trapped in, and it’s lonely inside this Mansion.” In 2017, NF dropped Perception, and it felt like stepping into a mirror you didn’t know you needed. NF doesn’t hand you a clean resolution in 62 minutes. He sits in the tension with you. And maybe that’s why his music cuts deeper than just “liking a beat.” It wasn’t just songs. It was him naming the monsters most of us keep locked in the basement: fear, control, old wounds. That aching line in Let You Down to his younger self: “Feels like we’re on the edge right now, I wish that I could say, ‘I’m proud.’ I’m sorry that I let you down.” The album’s theme was about being locked in a cell while holding the key. And isn’t that the most human thing — to have the way out and stay in the cell… because that’s all we’ve known. Isn’t that something, friend? That pain is no respecter of persons. The blues, anxiety, depression… they come for all of us. Before I knew therapy was a thing, NF’s real music became my therapy session. Even before I had the words for what I was feeling, no other music could reach me where I was at. And here’s the surprising part — his songs taught me how to love myself. We think loving ourselves has to be this polished process — full of mantras, self care routines, positive vibes only. We think we have to strive for it, sanitize it, earn it somehow. But sometimes, it’s as simple as hearing somebody else’s story. Because when you realize someone else is struggling just like you, it doesn’t shrink your pain. It doesn’t make it meaningless. It whispers, Hey, somebody else made it through. Somebody else learned to love themselves. Maybe, just maybe, you have a way out too. That was the thread of hope I held onto. And that thread of hope changed everything. Learning to love ourselves doesn’t start on the outside. It starts in your head. I realized something I wish I had known sooner: Christian is not the definition of a perfect you. We keep thinking that once we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, all of our pain, all of the depression, all of the mental health struggles will disappear. But that’s not reality. Yes, we become a new creation with a new identity. But our old thought pathways are still becoming. This made me see God as so much more personal than I had ever known. Not slapping a “Christian” sticker on me and poof— fairy godmother style — my thoughts were all rosy and hopeful. No. He wants to walk with us through the battles we face in our minds. Through the mornings where the thoughts are loud. Through the nights when it’s hard to sleep, as tears blur the ticking clock. Because how can we help ourselves if our self-perception is already broken? It’s like running in circles expecting to end up somewhere new. That’s the truth I learned: loving yourself can’t start with self-help. It grows when you let Jesus meet you there — sometimes through someone's music. For me, that someone was NF.
Heart Call
Maybe choosing life in your thoughts is turning a key… even with with shaky hands.
Are you holding onto a polished mantra or someone else’s hope story?
What steps can you take to process these thoughts with Jesus, God’s Word, and resources like music or therapy?