There is a boy in a wheelchair, and he’s dressed in a hospital gown and plays the guitar. There might be nothing underneath that flimsy gown, but he does wear black socks. I always associate black socks with black moods, and I recognise that I permanently wear black socks.

The surroundings are bleak. An abandoned room with plaster dropping from its walls, and there is a floor lamp, with a tassel shade, like the one our parents had in the living room.

This is going to be a serious music video, but I ignore it, as I do most social media posts. What somebody else likes, doesn’t mean that I will like it too.

But something had piqued my interest and I listened to the song on Spotify instead.

“Hi there Ren. It’s been a little while.  Did you miss me? You thought you’d buried me, didn’t you? Risky… Because I always come back.” The voice is weird.

“Hi Ren. I’ve been taking some time to be distant. I’ve been taking some time to be still. I’ve been taking some time to be by myself. Since my therapist told me I’m ill.” This voice is that of boyish innocence.

Ren sings in two mind sets. A song between two people but always the same person. ‘Sick Ren’, the one that suffered illness, depression, and doubt, and ‘Now Ren’, who got better, writes, plays guitar, sings, raps, and makes videos. A lot of his work is about his nightmarish experience.

“When I was 17 years old, I shouted out into an empty room. Into a blank canvas, that I would defeat the forces of evil, and for the next 10 years of my life I suffered the consequences…”

Afterwards, I watch the video, in which Ren switches between alter egos, and there is that fine line between sickness and health, and a fear that never goes away. That one day it might come back.

Dig deeper and you find a teenager who got a record deal and lost it when he fell sick with a mystery illness that took away a dream. There is an old YouTube video where teenage Ren speaks from the prison of his bedroom, and the trepidation that he might have been about to give up.

The illness was diagnosed as Lyme disease and after a stem cell transplant, he returned to the ‘world of the living.’ But the damage was done, it played with his mind, and we see an insecure young man.

This is performance art, and grown-up Ren jumps from the screen and works his way into your conscience.

There is mental illness in all of us. I see it in myself, and I see it in other people.

I’ve since watched interviews with Ren, and I see misery and torment, and I see my friend Liam, who I first met when he threw his skateboard into a bush so that nobody would steal it while he slipped into a bar for a drink.

I soon recognised that alcohol was used to numb his troubled mind.

When he is sober, Liam talks good sense. When he is drunk, you struggle to understand his mind set. And he can never look you in the eye, because he might see you backing away.

All the time, you think that there might be a key to end this misery, but that key is lost behind another locked door.

But occasionally, there is a glimpse of what lay beneath.

“I should go to bed,” he says. “But I think I’ll have another drink before I go.”

“I think you should go now.”

“But I don’t have a bed I like.”

“Then you can share my bed.”

“Will there be lots of cuddles?”

“I always give lots of cuddles.”

“I like lots of cuddles.”

Liam never gets those cuddles because I won’t let him anywhere near me and then I feel guilty.

But one day, I would like to think that Liam, like Ren, will move into the light.

***

“I was walking down a pavement after jumping out my mum’s car in a crossroads in a moment of frustration and distress with my condition. I was trying to run from myself. What appeared to be a homeless man with a dark complexion approached me and asked me what was wrong. I explained that I had been sick most my life, and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to continue. He looked at me and smiled and told me ‘Everything is going to be okay in the end Ren.’ I had not told him my name. There was something so overpoweringly sincere about this simple message, which brought with it an overwhelming feeling of inner peace, and in a flash, he vanished.” – Ren