sometimes, i’ll see something so gut-wrenching that i feel like i’m going to burst into tears for hours. it’s so rare and precious, to catch a glimpse of human emotion unfiltered and untouched by the pressure to contort it into something easier to swallow.
this display of raw humanity is particularly moving because i find it exceedingly, embarrassingly, painfully difficult to be truthful about anything meaningful. a little bit of this is compulsive lying (words just leave my mouth before i have time to think about what i’m saying!), and quite a bit of it can be attributed to my penchant for hiding. i’m horrified at the prospect of talking too much, of being too much. i coat most personal anecdotes in a honeyed glaze and tuck away the ones that are too ugly to be subdued. no matter how much i endeavor to present myself genuinely, i always acquiesce to my core fear that no one’s love for me is truly unconditional — that there is some combination of sincere admissions lurking in the back of my mind that will cause everyone to run away screaming, and i’ll feel like a fool for thinking otherwise.
living with mental illness is difficult enough; talking about it earnestly can seem like an impossibility. with our cultural landscape so focused on irony and satire, there hardly appears to be any room for authenticity! social media algorithms have cultivated an atmosphere of honesty without vulnerability: we are cloyingly coaxed into crafting a version of ourselves that is relatable enough while still remaining palatable. we need people to feel like they trust and know us without actually trusting and knowing us (because that would be petrifying, of course).
debilitating depression has finally been recognized as a valid affliction and can garner a wealth of sympathy in concept (when it is unattached to a flawed and complex individual), but its physical manifestation is relentlessly ridiculed and shamed. the crux of it is this: you are allowed to feel horrible about yourself, but it’s gross if you are unable to brush your teeth; you are allowed to isolate yourself from friends and family, but it’s pathetic if you don’t shower regularly. as a result, we are subject to tweets like the ones above1: jokes that follow one of the few established, well-received templates for sharing online but which also stir real emotional responses that cause people to engage with the post and spend more time on the app as a whole. the experiences being described here are often vague enough that they don’t incite real worry and could be construed in a perfectly “normal” way: does the word “unhinged” refer to a psychotic episode, or someone spontaneously dyeing their hair? all the ambiguity surrounding the degree of misery being experienced here is a definite benefit to receiving widespread attention: the more specific these types of posts are, the less interaction they’ll receive and the less they’ll be promoted by the all-knowing Algorithm.
take the recent “girl dinner” trend, which in spirit should be about highlighting bizarre but effective low-effort dinners, yet has turned into a depressing curtain reveal for the swaths of girls and young women dealing with severe depression and eating disorders that prevent them from enjoying proper nourishment. yes, this pain is honest, but it is not marketed as pain — it’s supposed to be silly, weird, funny! as a whole, though, it makes me feel strangely seen and terribly uneasy at once, because i know what it’s like to live that way. (even being prompted to recall the sheer amount of anguish i was in is enough to twist my stomach into knots.)
the thing is, i’m tired of it!! i’m exhausted of seeing real human experiences become unraveled and loosely reconstructed in an attempt to conform to the online social obligation of being endlessly riveting. we are all competing against ourselves to simultaneously be the most agreeable and most candid people ever…and it doesn’t work! real things are simply not easy; they aren’t particularly funny or engaging, and they will take whatever shape they choose instead of following the carefully curated one we so often see online. dealing with true vulnerability is a tedious and delicate affair — the process of listening to someone pour their heart out is certainly extensive, occasionally discombobulating, and yes, even uninteresting. but not everything needs to be fucking interesting all the time!!!
and god, yes, i know that honesty is good, and i’d much rather see a hundred quirky posts about strangers having nervous breakdowns or experiencing symptoms of severe mental illness than syrupy, artificial posts about them feeling Perfect and Totally Fine! but i resent the idea that our pain needs to be nestled in rose petals and tied up with metaphorical satin ribbons — that if what we’re sharing doesn’t neatly fit into an established joke format or isn’t spun into something wildly entertaining with the purposes of going viral, we are better off not sharing anything at all.
i have a theory (supported by exactly zero data) that oversharing is gen z’s response to the millions of baby boomers who have broadly discouraged us from allowing any shred of emotional turmoil to slip through our expected façades of pleasantness. it makes sense that we’re angry and bitter about feeling so suppressed, that we feel a sense of superiority over those who have been so thoroughly conditioned to accept regressive (and harmful!) social expectations that they are unable to confront trauma and hurt. because we’re not like that — we pity their inability to confront the past, we languish in the comfort that we have the whole world ahead of us. we’re young and new and ready to make a fucking change!!! we are supposed to be smarter, kinder, more self-aware. but it’s just not that easy.
let me be clear: mental health awareness is a blessing! young activists (who are a hundred times more intelligent and capable than me) have done a wealth of arduous and necessary work to normalize talking openly about emotions, and i am wildly hopeful about the popularization of therapy and medication. i do worry, however, about the way mental illness is being talked about, because sometimes it feels like what we’re seeing isn’t even real honesty, it’s this fake awkward sardonic honesty that reads somewhat as a cry for help, and somewhat as a disconcerting personality quirk. obtaining a mental illness diagnosis isn’t social suicide anymore — it’s now proof that you are a layered and fascinating individual, worthy of being picked apart for fresh and exciting Content. your depression room can be exploited for a viral TikTok, your anxiety can be simplified into a catchphrase on a t-shirt. sending thoughts & prayers to everyone who’s ever been dubbed a manic pixie dream girl rn…
identifying with one’s mental illness isn’t new; i’m certainly no stranger to it. it’s taken forever to disconnect myself from my soup of disorders and realize there was a real human being under it all, one who was special all on her own. and i’m so immensely relieved for discovering my sense of self because it’s made me realize that i could grow to be friends with that girl, and even love her! but all this self-actualization has made me terrified of talking about my own pain, of returning to that dark place. i have spoken and written about it so copiously in the most horrendous ways possible that would never in a million years align with my current value system or the way i now wish to present myself…so the apprehension is a little understandable! i have fetishized my pain, i have languished in it, i have begged for more of it. most of this has happened in my head or in very embarrassing pieces of poetry, but i feel so shameful of (and apologetic for) the few dregs that have slipped through the cracks. sometimes, i think there will never be a right way to talk about suffering. you can be as earnest and genuine as possible and still end up with a queasy feeling in your stomach; maybe you’ve revealed too much and you feel naked and disgusting like a patient splayed out on an operating table…maybe you’ve revealed too little and you feel like a cryptic attention seeker, a crooning siren inviting everyone to jump off the ship in search of more tantalizing details.
it’s difficult to not constantly feel like you’re playing a character, because you are always playing a character, even to yourself. like, i’ve got around a dozen videos of myself in photobooth — some where i’m devastatingly miserable, others where i’m rambling about something or the other, and a few of me just painting or getting ready or performing some other mundane task. these recordings exist because i am obsessed with how i am perceived (especially in my own eyes), and watching them back months later makes me feel like a sick and twisted voyeur, hoping to discover new sides of myself that i can use to round out my personality.2 none of it is really real, no matter how much i strive for authenticity. as soon as the metaphorical camera is on you (whether it’s your social media profile or the eyes of an empathetic friend), something settles — a thin veneer to filter everything through, just to make sure you don’t accidentally ostracize yourself by coming across as batshit crazy. you must be honest enough to be relatable but not so honest that you spark real concern or cause disquieting feelings to stir. it’s maddening, trying to figure out how you’re supposed to go about it!
striking the right balance is difficult — i definitely don’t recommend spilling every morsel of information about your deepest secrets online and developing an unhealthy dependence on social media as an outlet for emotional expression. that’s a sort of vulnerability that you have no control over, and it isn’t really benefiting anyone in the long run. boundaries are crucial!! it took a long time for me to realize that oversharing wasn’t conducive to bravery or strength; in truth, it was a response to how helpless i was against my own emotions and reflected my desperate desire to dump them somewhere (so i could avoid seriously analyzing my life and taking steps towards bettering it). but there has to be something better than this. i resent the commodification of sorrow more than anything in the world — if i log onto social media with an uncritical eye, i will emerge from an hour-long doom scroll feeling lonelier than ever. it seems like everyone is also mind-numbingly depressed, but in a way that’s hot and fun and fleeting…as though mental illness is just another fundamental and accepted inconvenience, and deep down, we’re all really fine. but it’s okay that we’re not fine; these disorders are supposed to wreak havoc upon our lives, splintering them into a thousand pieces and leaving us feeling hopeless and drained as we try to patch it all up.
so consider this is my official endorsement of radical vulnerability. it’s a troublesome and exasperating undertaking, to show yourself so openly — being vulnerable gets an abysmal rap (synonyms of the word include: “in danger”, “unprotected”, “unsafe”, “assailable”, “undefended”, & “powerless”), but it’s what we need to be more than ever. it’s difficult to put yourself out there in a way that matters because the truth is, we haven’t moved the needle nearly as far as i’d like when it comes to acceptance of mental illness. those with “fringe” psychological disorders (basically anything that isn’t your household depression or anxiety) are so often pushed to the sidelines while the general public spews generic platitudes about “taking care of yourself!” and “checking up on people!” because those lived experiences are uncomfortable to face.
but we can face them! we’re already on the right track — it’s beyond refreshing to hear people speak frankly about the unique perils they’ve gone through with thoughtfulness and tact, and i aspire to share about my own life in the same way! this feels a little out of place but i just wanted to say that i am also enormously grateful to community organizers for boosting mutual aid requests and providing material value to those in dire situations. this is what mental health awareness should be — it should encourage true vulnerability and entail tangible benefits for the societally marginalized, not be watered down into strained and quotable quips. the time to resist the Vast Emotional Flattening is now!!! earnestness is IN — to tell the truth, i have been a little scared of stepping outside of my bubble for fear of like…poisoning everyone else but with regards to this upcoming semester, i am so fucking enthused to become part of communities that prioritize wellness and openness in a way that matters!! i believe in us!!!
as always, thank you so much for your readership and sticking with me through my weird and erratic posting schedule! i can almost guarantee when i get back to college that i’ll be publishing at 4x the rate i do now and half of them will probably be titled shit like “how to wash your face when you are so grumpy and sleepy”. (now that i think about it, that’s not the worst idea in the world!) i hope you all have a lovely evening and a splendid august!! kind of giddy about ushering in autumn because of how romantic and lovely it’s going to be…also kind of panicking because i don’t have a halloween costume yet and if i don’t have one now i probably won’t by october…if anyone has any ideas i’m begging you pls let me know!
<3,
sonali
this kind of language around women in pain also frustrates me to no end…it’s an understandable crutch, to be sure — simply saying that you’ve spent all day in bed evokes pity and discomfort and means you are exposing a harsh and personal reality without a real punchline, so you can cushion it by relying on trendy internet terms! you are still a hot girl, aka someone with social currency and affability. like, yes, you might’ve spent hours sobbing yesterday, but at least your eye makeup smudged in a way that made you look fuckable! by the way, i’m only saying this because i’ve had the aforementioned thought like a million times before and i’m trying to force it out of my brain…our depression doesn’t have to be sexy in order for us to say something about it — we shouldn't need to assert our desirability in order to garner empathy!!! gosh…this footnote is so incoherent i need to go to BED! if u read all the way through u deserve a kiss on the nose!
margaret atwood would be proud. or, i guess…sad?
first post of yours ive read and i must say this is really well written, i have never thought about this concept before, i've always thought about how odd that social media these days romanticizes mental health disorders like its qUiRky when it's really not...but anyway i never thought about it in much detail. you my love, have opened my eyes, your theory whilst not supported nor backed by any evidence is still valid to be honest and i feel like it could be one of the reasons we are trying to push depression as something 'normal'. my personal theory on how this whole disaster happened was that someone on tiktok used jokes to cope with mental health disorders and actually did have one, and it gained a lot of traction and lot of people related to it hence everyone jumped on the bandwagon, i dont have tiktok so i cant REALLY guess since i have never gone on the app ( and thank goodness for that since it is a disaster ) but i think thats one of the main reasons. your description of the article is really good and i think accurately describes the article in whole. overall, this was a really thought provoking read that will sit stirring in my brain for the next few days for sure<3 your writing sent CHILLS down my body and i felt goosebumps on my arms, please continue posting, this article's quality is immaculate and top tier im lowkey surprised you said it was all over the place ! (also i love the hollyhock love )
sonali!! another beautiful and enlightening and heart wrenching post. a sentence that stuck with me: "i’m exhausted of seeing real human experiences become unraveled and loosely reconstructed in an attempt to conform to the online social obligation of being endlessly riveting." digital existence comes with so much glamorization and commodification and just... unsavory language around mental illnesses, partly resulting from the constant performance that happens when we engage with social media. it's all about relatability and connection, so *of course* we should be vulnerable, right? and yet, there's such a limited brand of "vulnerability"/honesty which will actually be received well online. it seems there's a very fine line at the point of oversharing-- once you are beyond the point where your mental illness can be romanticized or laughed at or marketed as a part of an interesting internet personality, it suddenly becomes "too much," which is what leads us to so much of the twisted "honesty" you highlighted in this piece. we're only "allowed" to talk about mental health issues in a way which is culturally pleasing and which keeps everyone... comfortable, i guess? it's upsetting. and just another sector of the broader-scale fabrication which is constantly happening online, detaching us from our actual authentic selves. thank u for such a thought-provoking piece!!