SHIVANI NADARAJAH: And my mom grabbed me by the face, squeezed my cheeks and said, "You better tell people who you are, otherwise they'll never know."

SEAN WELLINGTON: I didn't want to kill anybody, I didn't want to kill myself.

I just did not want to keep living, not the way I had been living.

IVY EISENBERG: And there I am, all alone in the snowy Snow Belt in nowhere town with no friends.

THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "Outside, Looking In."

Most of us want to feel accepted.

We crave a sense of belonging.

It's like we're looking for that sign from the universe, that voice that whispers, "You're one of us."

But it can be hard to know the right words to say, or the right moves to make to open doors or unlock a welcoming smile.

Tonight's storytellers are bringing their personal narratives of the moments when they showed up in a new place and had the courage to find a way to belong.

♪ WELLINGTON: My name is Sean Wellington.

I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

I am from New York.

I am mostly a teacher, and when I'm not doing teacher stuff and work stuff, I like playing pickleball, and I like swimming, and I like dancing.

And I understand that you have a podcast?

Can you tell me a bit about your podcast and how it got started?

Sure, it's called, "Suicide Noted."

I started it last year, last summer.

I had a friend that died by suicide many years ago.

I've had my own battles with mental health.

The podcast, I interview suicide attempt survivors.

And there really wasn't anything like it, so I started it, and it's been a... life-changing experience, profound.

What's been your favorite part of storytelling?

I've been very lucky to help some people craft and tell stories, and if I had to choose a favorite part, it's the moment in which someone goes there.

Mm.

- And they go to the hard stuff, and in my mind I'm like, "All right, now the story can start."

You know, like, "All right, let's start now."

And talk to me about advice.

What kind of advice would you give a new storyteller?

I would say find a community that you can hopefully trust.

Stay with that community, because it matters.

Maybe take a class, and don't give up because we need to hear these stories, but it takes some work and some heart and some grit, it does.

♪ I'm in my car and I'm leaving the University of North Carolina Psych Center where I have just spent one week on the fifth floor.

The fifth floor is where you go when you want to kill somebody, or kill yourself.

That's what the receptionist told me when I first came here.

She actually used the words "homicidal" and "suicidal."

I wasn't either of those things, I didn't want to kill anybody.

I didn't want to kill myself.

I just did not want to keep living, not the way I had been living.

This is late 2018 and when there was nowhere else to go-- and I tried-- I came here, to the U.N.C.

psych center.

And now I'm leaving, a week later, and I know that nothing has changed.

Maybe on paper, but not really.

And I know in a few minutes I'll get home and I will open my front door and I will see the holes.

The holes in the walls-- in my bedroom, in my kitchen, in my living room.

The holes that I make with my fists and sometimes my knees, and even my feet because that is where it goes.

And just like before...

I'll be alone.

It's not gonna work, I know it's not gonna work and I don't know what to do.

If I'd known what to do, I'd already be doing it.

But if something doesn't change, I will end up back there on the fifth floor or somewhere worse from which there is no drive home.

Now, that week I'm on Facebook and I see a post for a dance class.

Salsa.

I'm from New York, I've done a little salsa.

This class is on a Monday night.

It's nearby, so I go, and when I get there the teacher says, "Oh no, no, Sean, "this is a different kind of salsa.

"This is Cuban salsa, we call it a rueda.

"We dance in a group.

You ready?"

The music goes on.

And I'm in my group, the beginners group.

It's actually a circle, and for the next two hours, I dance.

Is it fun?

No.

It's not the dance.

The dance is fine, it's the people.

I feel like everybody in this room knows each other and they're all looking at me like I have got this big tattoo plastered across my entire face that says "freak"-- what are you looking at?

And that's how I'm feeling when I leave that night, and I go home and I am not coming back and I hide.

With those holes in my walls.

Freak.

That's not an actual diagnosis.

There is no diagnosis.

Just loneliness.

Profound loneliness.

And I know that no matter what I do or where I go or who's around, I am going to feel this way, and so I go back that next Monday night.

Before the class starts, there's a few students waiting outside, and I run up to them and I say, "Hey, I think we met last week.

"My name is Sean.

"I don't know why I'm telling this to you, "but a couple of weeks ago I was at the U.N.C.

psych center, "I stayed there for a week, they let me out.

I'm not sure why I'm doing this and telling you this," and on and on I go.

And one of the women waits.

She smiles.

She says, "Okay.

Are you ready to dance?"

I nod.

The music goes on, I'm in my beginners group, and that's when I see it across the dance studio.

I didn't see it last week.

It was there, I just...

I didn't see it.

I'm told it's the advanced circle.

And wow...

I'm back in my beginners group, my circle.

For the next two hours, I dance.

And when I leave that night, I am pretty sure I'm coming back.

And I do, all through winter start to come early and stay late for two reasons.

One, I feel better.

I mean, not a lot better, a little better.

But when you were feeling the way I had been feeling, a little better is a lot better.

And number two, there's something about that other circle.

After Monday nights, I go home and for the most of that week, I'm alone.

But I've got my Mondays, and I've got my circle.

And I keep dancing through spring and I don't quit, which is unusual for me because I quit most things.

I get sick, I go broke, something happens.

But this feels important.

And one Monday night, in late spring, my teacher says, "Sean I think you're ready for the advanced circle."

And when he says this to me, I think he has lost his mind.

I do.

But this is the same teacher who welcomed me so warmly on that first Monday, so I say, "Okay, I'll try."

And I do that Monday night.

I am the worst one in that circle, but...

I'm learning, I'm getting better.

I'm getting good enough to have these moments, they don't happen often and they don't last long.

These moments when I am dancing with this group of people in this circle round and round to this music, round and round, where I forget entirely about that tattoo and I just dance.

And there are no new holes in my walls.

Because this is where it goes.

And now it's summer.

And one of the women from the advanced circle tells me that she and a few other people are planning a trip to Havana, Cuba-- it's the birthplace of rueda.

I say, "Great, have a good time."

She asks me if I want to go.

And when she asked me this question, I think she's...

I think she's lost her mind.

This is the same woman who heard my rant on that second Monday and waited, and smiled, and asked me, "Are you ready to dance?"

Yeah.

And now it's fall, and seven of us are landing in Havana's airport.

The dance troupe that we've hired texts us and they say, "Drop your bags off at your place, "walk through old Havana and meet us at this one spot on the Malecón."

The Malecón is this big, long stone boardwalk, and that is what we do.

And as we're getting closer, we can see them in the distance.

There's so much joy.

They've got these great big smiles, which usually bothers me, but not today.

We hug, we kiss-- they brought with them some rum.

I'm having a drink, I'm looking around.

Less than a year ago, I was in a hospital and home alone, and now I'm in Havana with friends.

And even though I still have those moments of not wanting to be here, a lot has changed.

Like that tattoo, which may never be gone, but it has faded some.

Then one of our new dance teachers turns the music up real loud and all of us form a big circle.

All of us, including me.

And the sun is shining, the waves are crashing, the music is blasting... and we dance.

♪ EISENBERG: I'm Ivy Eisenberg, I'm from White Plains, New York.

By day, I'm an information technology consultant.

On the side, I write stories, I perform stories, I produce stories.

I do standup comedy, and I run around my house trying to fix things.

Can you tell me a bit about how storytelling has impacted you?

Storytelling has allowed me to get to parts of myself that people wouldn't know about and to share my experiences, my wisdom, and my gifts.

And it also has brought some joy because, despite the fact that I'm shy, I actually enjoy getting up on stage and talking in front of people, and I consider it as if I'm giving a gift to people, and that actually is what helps me with my nerves, too.

What are you hoping that our audience takes away from your story?

That it's very important to find friends that are right for you.

♪ In third grade, I had the great fortune of being plucked from the back of the classroom, as if by magic, to be friends with the beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed, sunny, freckled Becky.

Becky lived right around the corner from me, and we were best friends all through grade school.

I couldn't believe that Becky wanted to be friends with me.

I had no friends.

I vicariously enjoyed Becky's steady stream of boyfriends and whenever Becky made friends, I got to have friends, too.

It's 1968.

I'm 11-and-a-half years old.

That summer, Dana moves right across the street from Becky.

Dana is from this faraway place called Buffalo, New York, and she has this weird New York accent, and these bucky beaver teeth and an upper lip that won't close and she wears high-water bellbottoms.

Big mistake.

Becky and Dana start hanging out a lot together and I'm getting a little jealous, and a little worried about my friendship.

There's just a little something about Dana.

I can't put my finger on it, but I don't like it.

But I can't not be friends with them because they're my friends.

One Saturday afternoon, Becky and Dana call me up and say, "Ivy, we're going to the mall "and Dana's mom's dropping us off.

We're going shopping without the moms, wanna come?"

Do I wanna?

Shopping without the moms?

So I race over there and I dash into the back of Dana's mom's big black winged Cadillac and off we go, Becky and Dana are giggling and they have these shopping bags in the back seat and I'm like, "What's going on?"

And Becky says, "We're going shoplifting."

And I'm thinking, shoplifting?

That's how it's done, all-premeditated and stuff?

I mean, we don't have to steal stuff to get what we want.

This is really, really, weird.

I'm starting to feel a little nauseated.

We get to the mall, Dana marches right into Macy's and whips a flannel shirt off the hanger, rolls it up, and stuffs it in one of the shopping bags.

Then she goes and grabs a belt.

Then she grabs a top.

And Becky starts taking stuff and Dana starts taking stuff, and I'm looking around and I'm thinking, you know what, I really don't even need anything today, I just want the day to be over.

We go to Lerner stores and Dana says, "Here, Ivy, you hold the bags."

I'm holding the bags and they're looking around and all of a sudden Becky and Dana start looking in the bag and giggling.

And I'm like, "Guys, what are you doing?

"We're gonna get in trouble!

Stop giggling, stop looking in the bag."

And just then, I look up and I see across the sales floor is this little gray-haired saleslady.

She's sort of giving us the side eye, like she knows something's up.

And my heart starts pounding, and I get really freaked, and I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness, I'm gonna get caught.

But I will myself to think it's just my imagination and I just keep shopping.

But whenever I look up, there she is.

So we go to try on dresses.

The shopping bags are in my dressing room.

No sooner do I get a dress squeezed over the top of my head that I hear Becky and Dana say, "Come on, let's go!"

And I peer out and I see them dashing out of the dressing room and in walks the gray-haired saleslady.

And she comes right over to my dressing room and she whips open the curtain and she says, "Hand me those bags, young lady," and I'm like, "Oh no, no, these aren't mine, they're my friends."

She says, "Give them to me and you come with me."

So I go with her and I'm like, "Yeah, but that belongs to my friends, where are my friends?"

And Becky and Dana are nowhere to be seen.

And she says to me, "You have no friends, come with me."

She takes me to the back, behind a gray steel door down a dimly lit hallway to this little office and there's a mustachioed man sitting behind the desk and a security guard standing, and the gray haired saleslady's whipping out the stolen merchandise, and they're making a record, they're writing down a lot of things and they're asking me questions and I am freaking out.

And they're telling me it's gonna go on my permanent record and they're going to put a picture of me at the mall and I will never be able to set foot in that mall again.

And I am there for hours and they call my parents and my parents come pick me up and... my parents are actually a little amused that me, the goody-goody, was the one that got picked up for shoplifting.

And to be honest, they're a little relieved that my life of crime has got cut short at such a tender age.

I go home and the first thing I do is I call Becky.

"Hi, what happened?"

"Oh, Dana's mom picked us up."

"Oh, well, everything's okay?"

She goes, "Yeah, everything's okay.

"Listen, um, Dana's mom doesn't want her "to play with you anymore.

"She says you're a bad influence.

I have to go now, goodbye."

She hangs up.

I'm thinking, "I'm a bad influence?"

I'm a bad influence?

I didn't even swipe anything.

I'm so angry.

These should not be my friends.

I should just dump them.

But we're going into seventh grade.

I can't go into seventh grade alone.

So I continue to be friends with Becky.

And all throughout high school, I follow Becky around like a piece of toilet paper stuck on her shoe that she fails to notice.

Becky and I plan to go to the same college in the other part of the state.

A small college in the Snow Belt, way far away.

And that summer Becky changes her mind and instead goes to Miami, Florida, with her new boyfriend.

And there I am, all alone in the snowy Snow Belt in nowhere town with no friends.

I have no choice but to make my own friends.

And I do, and you know what?

I make great friends.

Friends I can trust, friends who trust me, friends who care about me, and friends who would never, ever leave me holding the bag.

Thank you.

There are times when I feel like a fish out of water because I definitely get talked into doing things that are outside my comfort zone, and I go along with it.

But, I think now I recognize it in myself.

I recognize that feeling, and...

I have a lot more confidence to sort of change that direction if it's not going the way I want to.

♪ NADARAJAH: My name is Shivani Nadarajah.

I'm an HR business partner for a biotech company and I'm also a part-time comedian.

I'm from Greenville, South Carolina, and I just recently relocated to Waltham, Massachusetts.

So tell me about how you got into storytelling in particular and what role storytelling plays in your life.

When I first started doing standup, um, I was into more of the bits-- "Don't you hate it when..." "Have you heard what..." And I just noticed that it didn't work with audiences.

Mmm.

But then when I started to retell things that had happened to me, authentically, it just sort of clicked.

And I love hearing about other people's stories.

And so it made it very easy for me to tell my own story.

So what are your favorite kinds of stories to tell, then?

So, my favorite stories to tell are ones about family.

I think the memories... and things that our grandparents, our great-grandparents, my parents, the way they raised us, like, really shaped the person that I am today.

So, you know, family lineage is really fun for me.

I still ask my grandmother stories about our family and some of the initial things that happened to them in northern Sri Lanka.

And I don't have a lot of family there anymore, so it's like my connection to keep that spirit alive.

♪ I grew up in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, and I remember in kindergarten, my mom was coming to pick me up from school and I was really upset, and my mom came up to me and she's like, "What is wrong with you, what happened to you?"

And I was like, "Everyone made a marshmallow structure and I didn't get to make a marshmallow structure."

And my mom was like, "Why you don't make a marshmallow structure?"

And I said, "I went to my special class."

And so my mom grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. K. And she said, "Why she don't make a marshmallow structure?

What is a special class?"

And Mrs. K. said, "Shivani is so quiet, "we didn't think she spoke English.

We've been putting her in English as a Second Language."

And in that moment, my mother heard, "You don't think she spoke English," and "there's no marshmallow structure."

And I don't know what came over her, but she said, "Hey, Mrs. K., I got something to say.

"Marshmallow structure, we're gonna make it today.

"Because she speak English, she speak English, "she speak English.

She speak English, she speak English, she speak English."

And you better believe we made a marshmallow structure that day.

And when I got home, I started stuffing my face full of marshmallows 'cause dang it, I love a good artificial confection.

And my mom grabbed me by the face, squeezed my cheeks and said, "You know, one day I'm going to be dead and gone, "and you better be able to speak up for yourself.

"You better tell people who you are, otherwise they'll never know."

When I was 13, my dad came home and he said, "Guess what, guys?

We're moving to Alabama."

And I was like-- (groans) I haven't watched Forrest Gump enough.

And here I was, moving to Auburn, Alabama, in the deep South, and I wanted to wear the best thing out there.

And in Canada, that was Adidas tearaway pants.

You know what I'm talking about.

Buttons on the side, easy access to rip them off.

So here I was wearing my Adidas sweatpants, rolling into this middle school in the middle of August.

It was hot and I was sweaty, and now I was the foreign sweaty kid that couldn't take off their Adidas tearaway pants because they had nothing underneath.

And as my sweaty body walked into the cafeteria, I noticed there was all-white tables, and there was all-Black tables.

Now, our school wasn't segregated, but a little song went through my head.

♪ One of these things is not like the other ♪ ♪ One of these things is not like us ♪ And then I spotted it.

A little Asian kid sitting all by himself, and I thought we both got smelly lunches, this is gonna be my new best friend.

And so I sat down and I opened the corner of my container where my mom had expertly made a curry potato sandwich, and out of nowhere the little Asian kid said, "Who opened a can of butthole?"

But I made it work.

I went to high school in the South, I went to college in the South.

I lived there for over ten years, until this year, when I took a job in Boston, Massachusetts.

From the deep South, all the way to the Northeast.

During a pandemic.

And it was lonely, guys.

I was cold.

I didn't know anyone.

So I thought to myself, "What would my mom do?"

And that story came to mind.

"Hey, Mrs. K., I got something to say, marshmallow structure, we're gonna make it today."

And I found this Facebook page for local residents and I posted a comedy reel of my standup, hoping to find open mics in the area.

And before I hit submit, I also remembered that story where I was the sweaty foreign kid with the curry potato sandwich.

If I hit submit, will this comedy reel smell like butthole?

And, surprisingly, it didn't.

I met some incredible people that told me about storytelling here in Boston, and then I found out about this stage.

And I'm on it today.

And I'd like to think this is a pretty awesome marshmallow structure, the first of hopefully many that I make here in Boston.

Thank you.

♪ My mom is not your traditional South Asian woman.

Even when she was young, growing up in northern Sri Lanka, she did something that most people didn't do, she wanted to go work after school instead of getting married.

She went overseas to Germany, one of the first females in her extended family to go overseas.

Um, she was very independent, and she wanted to stand on her own two feet.

She didn't want to rely on anyone else, and all of that shaped her to be the mother that told me, "You need to stand up for yourself and you need to stand out and be authentic."

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