Okunta Kinte Wants to Kill Himself
And it bothers me a lot.
Okunta Kinte is an artist.
His bio reads: Joseph “Nana Kwame” Awuah-Darko, which I can only assume is his government name.
If “Nana Kwame” didn’t already hint at where he’s from, the red, yellow, and green flag with a black star next to his name will. He’s Ghanaian, and I first got to know him on the streets of Instagram.
According to his Wikipedia page, Okunta Kinte is 28 years old, born on August 31, 1996—just four months before I was. We don’t know when Okunta Kinte will die, but Okunta Kinte probably does because Okunta Kinte wants to kill himself. Legally.
"So, what do you think of this apartment?"
"I don’t like it," I say. "The balcony is in the bedroom, and it feels awkward, you know? It’s supposed to be a public space, somewhere I can take my friends."
I don’t tell the leasing agent the real reason I can’t take the apartment.
I imagined myself on a hard day, lying in bed, swallowed by my depression, the balcony calling to me, inviting me to leap over its railings.
How many times can I say no to that invitation before I can’t refuse it anymore?
A balcony in my bedroom serves no purpose but to tempt my fluctuating mental health. I don’t want to increase my chances of jumping.
Wait a moment. Should we keep talking about suicidal thoughts openly like this?
Should it be normalized?
Yes. I think so.
Life feels easier when you know other people are going through their own madness, a version of the chaos you feel inside. And I get it. I get the overwhelming feeling, the yearning for nothingness, and the haunting thought that life is meaningless.
I understand the yearning to end things. I understand documenting hard feelings and mental health struggles.
But even though I know this, Okunta Kinte still bothers me.
His Eyes
His eyes tell the story of someone who has seen a lot. Someone who deals with a lot. But they also reveal someone who lives exactly how he wants to—someone who journeyed far to reach a place of self-acceptance and free-spiritedness.
But can I really understand all that from the eyes in a digital photograph?
Maybe. I think so. I don’t know.
I like Okunta Kinte. His feed is filled with stories of what he learned when he came out of the closet and post-it notes titled "Dear artists."
"Dear artists, don’t allow time to gaslight you. You are not behind or ahead. You are right where you are meant to be."
"Dear artists, madness will be an important creature throughout your career. Protect it."
I love the way Okunta Kinte’s mind works—in his words, his storytelling, and his art. He’s a true artist. An amazing artist.
But where do we go from here? What do we do when someone so incredible decides life is too much and plans to legally end it?
I don’t know.
His Mind
Okunta Kinte has Bipolar Disorder, and he is passionate about normalizing conversations around it. He talks about how much it has affected his daily life—about the depression, pain, and sadness that consumes you until all that’s left is just that.
I don’t fully get Bipolar Disorder because you can’t fully understand what doesn’t plague you. But I understand suicide. I understand suicidal thoughts.
It bothers me that Okunta Kinte is documenting his days and phrasing his videos in a way that screams, “I am killing myself because I am tired.”
He’s living right now. He’s going on dates, painting nude, writing, sharing meals, hanging out with friends, and posting book reviews.
If you scroll quickly through his page, you might misunderstand and think this is the life of a man living his best life.
But maybe, in a twisted way, it still is. He’s living fully because he is in control of his death.
It bothers me, though, because it almost seems like suicidal glamourization.
I can never fully wrap my head around how much he is going through and how comfortable he is in the certainty that he will legally end his life. I don’t understand it.
My immediate reaction is to want to hug him. To tell him that life is worth living and that the world needs a beautiful soul like his.
But what if I’m wrong? What if life isn’t worth living?
I fear that, even though there’s a part of me that wants to understand him, I don’t know how to. And this is why:
Sometimes, I see a car moving past me and think, What if I just walked into it? Or I hesitate about not taking an apartment because there’s a balcony in the bedroom, and I can’t shake the feeling that, on days when I’m depressed, those thoughts might come to me—to just jump off.
I know that, in the grand scheme of things, when I look at the big picture, I don’t want to die.
I’m just severely tired and severely struggling in those moments.
But I also know that when I’m at my lowest—when I’m in the throes of hell, looking at my wrists, the knife, and seeing red—anything can tip me over the edge.
And the documentation or normalization of suicide might just be that thing.
My Worry
I worry about kids on the internet who are dealing with hard things. Kids who might choose life if only they were surrounded by positivity, will now feel comfortable in suicide because Okunta Kinte did it.
I worry for other artists who deal with similar struggles and look up to Okunta Kinte.
I don’t think suicide should be glamourized or romanticized.
Whenever I begin to have suicidal thoughts, I immediately remind myself that I do not want to die. I need to speak with someone. I need help. And even when I don’t want to explicitly tell the people who care about me the details of what I’m struggling with, their presence is enough to help me choose to stay. Because what I need at that moment is help, not someone to push me further toward the edge—toward the cliff, toward the voice in my head asking me to end it all.
Okunta Kinte is grown, and every adult is allowed to make their own decisions. But I still worry and it bothers me. I want to give Okunta Kinte a big hug and tell him all will be well. But I might be lying. All might not be well. All might never be well.
If you live in Alberta, Canada, I work at an organization called Kickstand, where we offer free mental health services to young people ages 11-25. I usually joke that, so after 25, we’re just allowed to keep losing our minds? But that’s all it is—a joke. A dark one.
The truth is, there’s help out there if you seek it. And we want you here. I want you here. 🫂
This week was supposed to be “Where Do Mushy People Go to Die?” I wanted to write about how, as we get older, the mushier parts of ourselves become harder to share, and we feel the need to hide them. And I still will. I just had to write this first, because Okunta Kinte bothered me too much.
If you ever read this Okunta Kinte, I’m sending you warm huggies.
I took a deep breath after reading this, and I must first say, you are an incredible writer.🥹
On Okunta Kinte, life is strange in its timing. If I had come across this post just yesterday, I would have wondered who he was. But Instagram recommended his page to me, and I found myself lingering there for hours. I couldn’t look away. Like you, I found myself conflicted, grappling with the same questions you raised.
I don’t believe it’s okay to willfully want death, it feels like a sign that something deeper, something more, is terribly wrong. But then I thought, isn’t that the point? Okunta Kinte never hides the fact that something is wrong. The bipolar disorder, the pain, the battle I can’t fully understand, that’s what’s wrong. And yet, here I am, asking myself, what right do I have to question how he chooses to bear it?
It feels like an impossible paradox. How do you comfort a heart destined to break anyway? How do you offer hope to a soul that has stared down its end countless times? I keep thinking about the ones still fighting, the children, the people quietly struggling to hold on. Is this okay? Does this choice make it harder for them? I don’t know.
And honestly? It leaves me feeling like a mother, faced with the impossible task of choosing which of her children’s needs takes precedence. How do you weigh one person’s suffering against another’s survival? How do you extend grace to one without feeling as though you’ve failed the other?
This isn’t something with clean answers. All I know is that it’s messy and heartbreaking.
Hamda, compassion has to hold space for everyone, the ones who fight tirelessly, the ones who feel like they’ve reached their limit, and even those of us standing on the sidelines, trying to understand. Compassion doesn’t ask us to choose, it asks us to listen, to bear witness, and to honor each person’s journey, no matter how different it looks from our own.
Maybe the best I can do is to extend that compassion—to Okunta Kinte, to those still fighting, and to the quiet, very fragile hope that there is meaning even in the brokenness.🤍
He won't end up doing it. He's sharing a friend's DDay and people are confusing it for his. Even if he decided to do it it won't be for years - conveniently after his social dinners and published book release. Oh and also after the lawsuit just filed against him this past July for $200K+.