Vicente Avila isn’t your typical TikToker. For starters, Avila is 45 and has three kids. His videos, posted under the alias Vinny the Twister, have gone viral time and time again as Avila, originally from Jalisco, Mexico, enthusiastically tells viewers about his days from home in San Diego.In a recent TikTok, Avila revealed his struggles with mental health. After his father died in 2002 of a heart attack, Avila says he fell into years of depression, an illness left undiagnosed until 2014, when he was sent to the hospital after feeling vertigo, spasms and heart palpitations while making balloon animals at a restaurant for tips. “That’s when my depression exploded,” he says.After his 2014 health scare, he says he decided that things were going to be different for him – and he used his dad’s death as motivation to echarleganas, a phrase that means “keep at it” in English. “I decided to live life in the moment and always remind people I love them,” he says. “I live life thinking that this is my last day here. Maybe tomorrow I won’t be on this planet.” And TikTok became the perfect place to channel this positivity. “Here, I can be who I really am,” he says, laughing about his six months on the app. “I can let go of my feelings, my worries. It’s a way to release the stress and depression I bottled up for so many years.”