I had to scroll through social media afterwards, seeing pictures of my friends all gathered on the beach to watch it together, and wholesome videos of strangers sharing glasses with each other. The entire internet was full of it. And then came the fomo and anger towards myself, because I had missed out on this rare opportunity that might not present itself again during my lifetime. All because I was anxious about losing my vision. Realistically I knew the eclipse glasses were safe and I wouldn’t be reckless enough to look into the eclipse without any protection. And yet, I missed out.

It’s been exactly one year since I moved to Australia, expecting to stay for a year. I should’ve only been back home for two weeks at this point but instead I’ve been home for 6 months already. It feels embarrassing to admit it knowing what I know now, but I went in with the expectation never to move back home again. I thought I would move there and find my dream life, a job I loved in a country I loved, a girlfriend, and loads of new friends that felt like home. When I got on the plane one year ago I thought I would find myself in a place I had never been before.

What happened instead was quite the opposite. It turned out that uprooting your entire life to move all the way across the world wasn’t easy and brought me a lot of anxiety.

I had to find someone to take over my lease in the shared house I currently lived in, otherwise I would have to keep paying my part of the rent. I assumed this would be easy with the current housing crisis but it turned out to be more difficult than expected and I was worried I would have to use money I saved for my big move to pay for a room I wasn’t even staying in anymore.

And if we’re talking about renting, I also had to find a new place to stay in Melbourne. I did my research before, and one google search told me that it wasn’t easy to find a place to rent in Melbourne at this time. I already saw the situation unfold: I wouldn’t know anyone there, therefore wouldn’t have anyone to fall back on, so I’d be in big trouble if I couldn’t find a place to stay. I had accommodation booked for the first month I was there to give myself time to find something but I wanted to have the next step sorted out before I got there. So I started looking online and responding to listings, which was hard with the time difference. I was often up in the middle of the night responding to people, sending over documents, or even doing video calls to virtually view apartments. Obviously, I wasn’t able to find anything while I wasn’t in Melbourne and didn’t have a job there yet. I simply had to wait until I was there to figure out the housing situation. A big gamble for someone who likes certainty.

On top of that, I also have flight anxiety. The longest flight I had been on before was an 8 hour flight to NYC, and I also never had to do a layover before. So a 22 hour flight with a layover triggered my obsessive thoughts. I researched my flight on a website where you can see how ‘’safe’’ your flight is based on the plane, pilot, and how much turbulence is predicted on route, and even though the score was over 80% I got anxious because it wasn’t 100%. I had flashes of the plane going down when I closed my eyes at night, another reason to lie awake, worrying about everything that could go wrong. Just me and my fears sharing a bed. There were moments when I wanted to cancel my move completely because I didn’t want to get on the flight. Part of me thought I wouldn’t even make it to Australia. But when I did make it, the fact that I had to do it all over again with no other way back than getting on a plane again was always on the back of my mind.

Now I did all the scary things despite my fears. When I arrived in Australia I quickly smiled at the camera, posing underneath the Melbourne sign in the arrivals hall in the airport, ready to take on this next chapter. It was only up from here, I thought, this is where the fun begins.

Unfortunately the opposite was true.

All the anxiety and stress from before I left had taken a toll on my body, and as soon as I got to Melbourne I noticed my hair started falling out. Which to anyone with a healthy brain would be easily explained; I just went through a period of extreme stress and anxiety, so of course my hair started falling out. But I suffer from health anxiety which means that my brain skips over any reasonable explanation and goes straight to the worst case scenario.

This triggered a period of extreme health anxiety for me. I completely spiraled in my obsessive thoughts and had to depend on myself to be comforted. But comforting myself was hard when I was living in a country I had never been to prior, and a minimum of a 22 hour flight away from my loved ones. My first thought when I woke up in the morning was: there is something seriously wrong with my health, and then, what do I do today to not feel the daily dread that comes with those anxieties.

It quickly became a habit to plan my days around distracting myself from my anxiety. But it turns out that spending all your energy trying to run from something makes you exhausted. Yet I couldn’t stop running because what was on the other side of that seemed way scarier to me.

But anxiety is a funny thing, no matter how much you try to escape it, it is always with you. It either hangs above your head like a cloud of doom or lives inside your body somewhere between a racing heart, a tight throat, and a sinking feeling in your stomach. It makes a home inside your body even if you never gave it permission to. Maybe that is why it is so hard, because you don’t want it to be part of you, so you try your hardest to push the feelings under water. But the more you try not to think about or feel it, the more power you give it.

So there I was, in Australia, experiencing things I could only have dreamt of. I lived in a nice apartment right in the city centre and had a job as a barista. Spent evenings on a rooftop terrace overlooking the lit up skyline of Melbourne with my new friends. I saw the great ocean road, kangaroos hopping in backyards, and koalas hanging from trees. I enrolled in dance classes and fell in love with dancing again. Went to farmers markets on the weekends. Visited the opening night of Fashion Week. Started a TikTok account and got invited to events and experiences through it. Visited cafes to drink the best coffee, because that is a must when you’re in the coffee capital of the world and a coffee enthusiast.

I was aware I should’ve been ecstatic. But my anxiety was casting a shadow over all of those experiences, and I was only able to enjoy them half the amount I normally would because my body was in survival mode and always worried about something. Half of me was living those moments, and the other half was living in my head.

Over numerous FaceTime calls to my loved ones, when I’d be sobbing and telling them I was so tired and couldn’t do it anymore, I came to the decision I had pushed myself enough and that it was time for me to go home. This was not an easy decision. I felt like a failure because I couldn’t finish what I started, and I was upset at my mental health for ruining this opportunity for me.

The alternate universe where I didn’t struggle with my mental health and was able to fully enjoy this experience played on loop in my head like a compilation of what could’ve been.

The other part of me knew it was an act of self love, which was something I hadn’t felt for a long time. I am someone that always pushes through and stays in situations for longer than is healthy. A job, a relationship of any kind (romantic or platonic), an unhealthy habit. However, this was the time when I finally made a decision as someone who loved themselves. Going home was a hard decision, but it was the right one.

I thought this experience would be life changing, and it was. Just in different ways than I had expected before. I learnt how to trust and take care of myself again. I remembered what it is like to make decisions from a place of self love. And yes, I will always mourn the version of me who stayed in Melbourne, but that is not my reality and I have come to make peace with that.

When I got back home I went straight into therapy, something I needed to do and had been postponing for years. I cut ties with people that weren’t healthy for me and started working towards the future that I want. I’ve been working on letting go of unhealthy habits and patterns I’ve been grasping onto for years. So it is safe to say I’ve made leaps and bounds in my healing that I know I wouldn’t have made if I stayed in Melbourne. If I stayed I would’ve only pushed myself beyond my limits even further. Instead I allowed myself to go home and focus on the parts of me that were in need of fixing. Parts I ignored for too long, but that I was finally able to listen to when I went out of my comfort zone. I finally love myself again, and that also means loving my anxiety, because it might not be who I am but it is a part of me. And I know it was only trying to keep me safe, but I’ve got it from here instead.

I don’t want kids, but yesterday I woke up from a dream in which I had a son, and my heart ached because I do not have him. I don’t want kids, but I still keep a list in my notes app with baby names. I have my top one for a boy or a girl. Ruby and Lucca, my future children that I love so much I choose not to have them.

Growing up, I thought the opposite, I always dreamt of having a big family. In fact, I always said I wanted to have four kids. I was full of ignorance and enthusiasm only a child could have, and didn’t even realise four kids plus a partner wouldn’t fit in a regular car. I’ve always been very family-oriented, spending holidays with all my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Celebrating my birthday in the garden with all my loved ones around while I blew out the candles on my cake. The heat of it mixed with the heat of the summer air. Every year, another candle was added, and every year one less family member showed up. At this point I haven’t celebrated my birthday for my family in years, couldn’t remember the last time we sat together in a circle passing around a plate of cheese and meat. But when I was younger I imagined my kids being the ones to blow out the candles, and me watching them.

I don’t want kids because I am selfish. I love my freedom too much and I am not ready to give that up and take care of another human being full-time. Whenever I see my sister, who does have two children, run around trying to balance taking care of a family, a job, and herself, I think to myself: I could never do that. But the thing is, I know I could but I simply don’t want to. I want to be able to meet my friends whenever I want, and party until the sun rises in pinks and oranges, and people in suits are out on their morning commute. I want to be able to decide that I want to go on a trip and get on a plane that same month. I want to be able to make decisions purely based on my own wants and needs, and to have the time to focus on myself and the things I want to accomplish in life. Sadly being a mother isn’t one of them anymore.

I don’t want kids because I am selfless. I don’t want to put children into the world because I have seen what the world has become. I love my future children so much that I choose not to expose them to all that the world has become.

Despite some people saying otherwise, I believe climate change is real. I see how summers have been getting hotter every year. I used to cycle to school in winter in -13 degrees and ice skate on ponds, now my ice skates are sitting in the attic collecting dust. If this is how much the weather has changed in just the twenty-six years I’ve been alive, I can’t imagine what it would be like when my own children are adults.

And on top of climate change, there’s political issues that are getting bigger and bigger. The looming threat of another world war has become less of a question of when it will happen, and more of when. I also feel that we have gone backwards in women’s, LGBTQ+, and POC rights. And let’s not get started on how social media has changed the way we live our lives, and the uncertainty of what a future with AI means. Which brings us back to climate change: because with the amount of water AI is using, I worry if my kids would even have clean water to drink when they’re grown up.

All these concerns have changed the question from whether I want children to whether I should have them.

However, this doesn’t mean my womb doesn’t yearn for the children it will never be home to. I’ll never experience the feeling of my baby kicking inside my tummy, I’ll never be called mummy, I’ll never see myself being reflected to me through my children.

When kids run past me in the street it makes me want one so badly. I held my nephew and nieces in my arms when they were babies and cried alongside them, salty tears falling onto their soft heads, because I loved them so goddamn much. And I've wondered: if I already loved them this much, how much would I love my own?

I mourned alongside Gertrude when I watched Hamlet in the cinema, because I had lost my son as well. I lost him because I chose never to let him exist, but he still lives in my mind. I’ll never get to meet him because of the choice I’ve made, but I love him all the same. And I will miss him for as long as I live.

It wasn’t until afterwards, as we were strolling along the pebbled streets of Madrid, and we started discussing the making of art, that we asked the question: 

Does an artist need to feel sadness to create good art? 

Artists regularly get painted as tortured souls, and many of the world famous painters have struggled with various mental illnesses throughout their lives. 

We all know the story of how Van Gogh cut off his own ear, Rothko suffered from depression and eventually would end up taking his own life, and on Munch's most famous painting ‘’The Scream” the words ‘’Could only have been painted by a madman!’’ are inscribed. Yet these have all become some of the most influential and well known names in the art world. 

Would they have been this successful if they hadn’t suffered from mental illnesses? 

My friend argued that good art comes from emotion no matter what that feeling is: happy or sad. Great poems have been written by people in love, and great art has been created by people in a state of pure bliss. So maybe good art just requires intense feelings, not necessarily bad ones. 

And if sadness, loneliness, despair,  and all other emotions we deem ‘’bad’’ are needed for artists to create great art, aren’t they good emotions? 

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said somehting that stuck with me, he said: “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star”.

It has stuck with me because I relate to it deeply.  I write the things I am proudest of when they are written out of emotion. In moments of heartbreak I write the best poems, and the book I am currently writing is inspired by a difficult situation I went through in life. I only know how to process my feelings by turning them into art, and I don’t think I would be half the writer I am today if I hadn’t gone through the struggles I did in life. I don’t think I would’ve put a single word on paper ever if I had lived a truly happy life up until now. I wear the label of tortured artist proudly because it makes me a good one. 

But could the tortured artist label also be harmful, if it has not been able to save artists from going mad in the past? Does it glamorise mental illness and enable people to stay in a state of despair for the sake of creating good art? Has art been the thing that has pushed artists over the edge instead of saving them? 

Is art a symptom and not a cure? 

Many artists created art from mental suffering. So, is great art just another universal symptom for mental illness and simply a cry for help instead of self expression? 

By celebrating good art, are we enabling artists to stay in this state and refrain from seeking help? If artists believe they can only create art people enjoy from their intense feelings and mental instability, they might sacrifice their mental health in pursuit of their art. I believe many have in the past. I wonder how many artists have given up their lives for their art, and if they would’ve had a different life path if they chose happiness over being a good artist.  

But then again, if they lived for their art, any life in which they weren’t creating would not have been a life worth living for them. And maybe the thing that killed them in the end was the sole thing keeping them alive for that long. 

My art has come from my mental suffering, and not the other way around. I have written things that have made people feel seen and less alone, only because I have gone through those experiences myself. There have been moments in my life where I was so desperate for things to end that I turned to writing, and that became the thing that saved me. I wouldn’t trade my art for mental clarity and I’d like to believe other artists wouldn’t have either. 

Maybe great art is art that saves a life, whether it’s the artist’s or the observer’s.  Art is supposed to make you feel something and that cannot come from someone who doesn’t feel deeply. 

For most of my life, I have been quite reserved and quiet. When I first meet someone, it takes me a while to open up to someone and feel comfortable enough for my true personality to come out. Before I hang out with certain people I make a list of topics to talk about in my notes app. I’m constantly worried I am not fun enough and that I am too quiet.

 I have even had people make comments about this before, which just confirmed all my insecurities were true. 

When I was in my teens I visited one of my online friends, she lived with her two best friends and they had come to pick me up together. We drove home in the car, and when we arrived at their house they showed me the room I would be staying in. When we were putting the duvet covers on and I said something, her friend made a comment:  “Oh, so she does speak,” she said. It was meant as a joke but to this day I still think about it and remember how my heart sank down to my feet.

One of my past girlfriends considered breaking up with me once because I didn’t talk enough. She was someone who needed constant noise and stimulation. She felt uncomfortable with even a moment of silence and always needed to be in some sort of conversation when she was around someone. She then told me she felt uncomfortable at times when I was silent and wondered if she needed to be with someone more talkative. She stayed with me and reassured me everything was fine but every time I saw her afterwards I would feel the need to perform. I felt pressured to be talking constantly, worried that if I didn’t, she would decide she didn’t want to be with me. She broke up with me half a year after that for other reasons, but I have always wondered if the fact that I don’t talk enough was still one of them. 

Recently, I helped one of my close friends out with an event she was running. In the previous months our dynamic had been shifting, and I felt my friend slowly slipping away from me. We acknowledged this was happening over countless conversations yet remained friends. But the absence of what our friendship used to be was present every time we interacted. 

During this time, my friend made a new friend and had grown close to her. She was also at the event alongside me. I spent the evening watching my friend live in our old dynamic with someone else. They had inside jokes, she asked if she was excited to start her new job on Monday (which was new information to me) and they danced together under the purple LED lights. Meanwhile, I stood on the sidelines by myself which gave me enough time to watch them interact and wallow in self pity. 

It didn’t help that her new friend was everything I was insecure about not being. She moved around the event with ease, going up to strangers and talking to them, effortlessly dancing in the middle of the dance floor by herself, and she seemed careless and free. All while I was awkwardly sitting on a chair, hiding behind my phone, because I didn’t know how to position myself. So it was decided: the reason why I lost my friend was because I was not outgoing enough. Of course she had gotten close with this new girl who had everything I lacked instead. 

After a couple hours of torture I decided I couldn’t sit and watch them any longer. I told my friend I had a stomachache and left. I then put on “Liability” by Lorde and cried the whole train ride home. 

Naturally, I brought this situation up in the next session with my therapist, and her response was why I wanted to write this article. 

She reminded me that just because I am not as talkative and outgoing as others it doesn’t decrease my value as a friend. She told me there are so many more aspects to friendships that I was devaluing by placing importance on the one thing I lacked. And that from what she has seen she knows I am a deeply caring and calm person and that those kinds of people are also needed in life. 

Basically, people have different friends for different needs. And just because I am not the friend that will be the life of the party doesn’t mean I am any less valuable. Yes, maybe I won’t be my friend's go-to person if they are going to a party. But I am their go-to person when they need calmness, someone they can fully be themselves around and unwind.

Throughout my entire life I have been told I am too quiet but I have also been told I am the calm in the storm. I’ve had people I barely know tell me they appreciate how open and kind I am and that they immediately felt comfortable enough to be themselves around me. I’ve had friends who still hang out with me when they are drained because it doesn’t require the mental load to see me. And I would gladly take being a kind person over being an outgoing one. I might not be the life of the party but I am the safe space in the corner whenever anyone feels overwhelmed. 

The next picture I see is one of the Parisian poet aesthetic. So I tell myself the only reason why I haven’t finished the book I’ve been meaning to write is because I am not in Paris. I definitely would be able to if I were writing from a curbside cafe on a cobbled street. I need to be inspired by a whole summer of French kissing strangers in the orange light of a streetlight by the Thames. I’m not writing, because I’m not sitting in my Paris apartment. One of those with the big French doors opening to a French balcony. That’s what I need.

And then, a picture of a chestnut wooden desk overlooking the mountains. And I know: maybe I didn’t write that Substack article because I should be in a cabin somewhere in nature. Either the woods, or on top of a mountain. As long as there are trees, green as emerald. As long as I wake with birds singing, and eat wholefoods from the vegetable garden. Maybe some peace and quiet is what I need to hear the thoughts I’m meant to be putting into words. Yes. That’s it.

As if all my self-sabotaging thoughts and insecurities about my writing skills would not follow me there. As if I’m not misplacing the blame on my environment instead of facing the fact that the only thing that’s keeping me from writing is myself.

Even this Substack article has seen more versions than my Google Docs has seen first drafts of books. Abandoned once the excitement of a new idea wears off, and I decide I am no better a writer than Colleen Hoover. Actually, I should probably stop judging her so hard. Because at least she did what I can’t do: finish writing a book. Multiple, even.

The thing nobody tells you is that the hardest part of writing isn’t the writing itself, but keeping going despite the constant feeling that you’re not good enough. You need to get out of your own head if you want the story to do so as well. But unfortunately it’s never that easy.

I know the only purpose for my first draft is simply to exist, not to be perfect. But still I stare at a blank page for about half an hour of every hour I sit down to write. A blank page, because I am stuck inside my head. My fingers stay hovering over my keyboard as I tell myself the next thing I write needs to show, not tell. My dialogue needs to be natural and have a purpose. And God forbid a word ends in -ly. What a disaster that would be.

And when I write something down after second-guessing myself countless times, my fingers gets too trigger-happy to be pressing the backspace button. And back to a blank page I go, and a mind full of self doubt.

Sometimes writing feels more like battling your insecurities. But I know I am not alone in this, and I know it’s a battle we need to keep fighting. There’ll be days when you want to close your laptop and never write again. Days when you hate every word you write down. Then there’ll be others when you write something you are so proud of you’re glad you never gave up. You just need to silence the editor’s voice in your head because it cannot coexist with the creator. It can have its turn once you finish your first draft. That’s when you can go from writing to editing. But you cannot edit something that doesn’t even exist.

My mother was watching a home renovation tv show the other day, and while the contestants were speaking, the text underneath them showed four things: their name, age, how many kids they had, and relationship status. It got me thinking about how strange it is that we have deemed those the main ‘’accomplishments’’ to introduce someone by. How we narrow down a person with countless dreams and aspirations to just marriage and kids. As if that tells us more about a person than their hobbies, and what they find important in life. Why instead shouldn’t it be: Maria, aged 28, loves to write and walks in nature.

It also got me thinking about how if I were to be introduced by if I had kids, a partner, or a proper job, I would seem like a failure.

Last year, my life was socially acceptable. I worked a full time job as a manager and got paid very well, had my own place (even if it was a rental with two roommates) and appeared to somewhat have my life together. But I felt unfulfilled and completely stuck. I worked way too much, felt burnt out and tired when I got home, and had no space to do anything to fill my own cup. I was living a creative’s worst nightmare.

One night I was having drinks with an ex co-worker in a dimly lit cocktail bar, jazz music playing in the background, my thighs sticking to the run-down leather chairs we were sitting on. I sipped my overpriced whiskey-forward cocktail when she popped the big question. She asked me if I wanted to move to Australia with her for a year. My decision making was slightly loosened from the alcohol and my discontentment with life, so I didn’t hesitate before saying yes.

One week later I had given my notice at work, spent part of my savings on a one-way flight to Australia, texted my landlord to tell her I would be moving out, and had several teary-eyed meetups with friends and family to break the news to them.

Then I did the thing: I lived in Australia. Free from any of the expectations life puts on me without feeling bad about it. I was able to justify my untraditional life choices by telling myself I was still doing something impressive by moving all the way across the world. But now I am back home, and all the things I ‘’should’’ be doing with my life are tied to my ankle, heavy like a ball and chain. But this time, I’m not letting them hold me back from moving towards what I want in life.

When I moved back home I could’ve easily slipped back into the skin of my old life: gone back to another job as a manager having to spend half my payslip on an overpriced apartment, just to look accomplished to the outside world.

But I didn’t. Which means right now, at the age of 26, I live with my parents again in my childhood home. Alongside this I work as a part-time barista in a specialty coffee bar. I have time to write regularly, and the space to let my creativity flow and get inspired.

I’m still working towards my goals. By having time to write regularly I am improving my craft. I am finally dedicated to writing and finishing the first draft of my book. A book I am not sure will ever get published, but writing is already a success for me. Alongside this, working in specialty coffee, I am gaining knowledge about the coffee industry, another passion of mine. Next week I am even working an event alongside world champion baristas from all over the world. This is all great experience for my dream to open my own cafe someday.

So, I am still working towards my goals, and feel more fulfilled than ever before in my adult life. But then, I open my Instagram and scroll from pregnancy announcements, to marriage proposals, to a set of keys in front of a white picket fenced house that now belongs to one of my high school friends. And I label myself a fuck-up. Suddenly I feel like I am so far behind in life. As if everyone else is already at the finish line, while I’m still trying to figure out how to start the damn car.

But the thing is, the white picket fence dream is theirs, not mine. I would be more of a failure if I settled for that kind of life path, instead of walking my own. My end goal is not to be where they are, so how am I behind when I am not even on the same track as them?

I want to write a book, open a cafe, and have the space for my creativity. I want to be able to see the world, and be free to go wherever I want to go. I’m not ready to be tied down because I would simply feel stuck in a life not meant to be mine. I am living my dream life, and if that doesn’t fit in with the norm, I’d gladly take the title of abnormal. And the voices, both inside my head and of society, telling me that is not good enough can kindly shut up. I owe it to myself to live a life where I won’t look back and wish I hadn’t settled. I’ll happily spend the rest of my life floating through it as a creative, with my head in the clouds.

Basically, throughout the concert, the visuals on screen tell a story of Ariana, trying to erase memories of the most traumatic parts of her life. 

Her younger self appears, grabs her hand, and together they walk through a corridor of a run-down house, water spilling from the ceilings, wooden panels fallen down. In every room,  a past version of Ariana lies on a medical chair, wires attached to her head, prepared to erase her memories.

 In one room, it’s the version of Ariana during her ‘’yours truly’’ era. Most likely hinting at her relationship and the passing away of her ex partner, Mac Miller. 

In the next room, she’s wearing the outfit she wore for the One Love Manchester tribute. A benefit concert she gave after a terrorist attack at her tour killed twenty-two fans and injured a thousand.

In the last room, she is wearing an outfit from her ‘’Sweetener’’ era, a time she has been open about being one of the hardest periods of her life. During this time, she was on antidepressants and drinking away her feelings. In this moment of the video,  you can see her visibly cringe and look away. It’s no surprise to me that she’s not performing any songs from the ‘’Sweetener’’ album on this tour. 

At the end of this journey, she decides she does not want to erase her memories, and breaks down the machine. We see her sitting down on a chair between past and future Ariana, and they rest their heads on each other's shoulders.  Showing she has made peace with all that has happened and all that is still to come. Holding space (forgive me for the Wicked press reference) for all versions of herself, because they are who made the person she is now. No matter how hard those moments have been. 

By the end, tears were freely streaming down my face, and I felt the love that I’ve had for her for the past 13 years grow even bigger. I would say this is parasocial. But is it really, when I’ve been on this journey with her since before she released her first album? When I have witnessed, and loved, all those versions of her? And while she was going through the most traumatic times of her life, she was saving me during my own.

My teenage years were some of the hardest years of my life. I went through a traumatic event and after that, fell into years of eating disorders, depression, suicidal thoughts, and self harm. I felt lost, and that’s when I found Ariana.

When I was thirteen,  and needed an escape from reality, I would go onto Youtube and watch Ariana’s Lullaby Fridays. Grainy black-and-white webcam videos of her singing songs a capella. The name couldn’t have been more fitting. I was a child in need of comfort, and found that in my idol singing lullabies to me. When everything else felt out of control, I could open my laptop, and for those couple of minutes she sang to me, everything would be okay. 

When I was fifteen and felt like I had lost all of my friends, I made new friends online, through fan accounts I had created on Instagram and Twitter. While other people my age were going out to meet up with their friends, I would meet up with mine online instead. Thousands of strangers bonding over their shared love for the same person. I was added to group chats where we would talk every day, when I was feeling down they’d be the ones to pick me back up, and slowly I felt like I belonged again. Adults used to say not to talk to strangers on the internet, but they are who saved me. 

When I was sixteen, and allowed to get my first tattoo,  I walked into the tattoo shop and got a crescent moon tattoo behind my ear. The same one Ariana has. It was a way to commemorate the impact she had on me, and the mark she left on me. I wanted to carry her around with me for the rest of my life, even if I knew I would do so whether I got that tattoo or not. 

I still have the phrase ‘’As is yours’’ reserved for another tattoo. I’m saving it for when I finally meet her and can get her to write it down for me in her handwriting. This phrase is from when she used to do twitter sprees, and the entire fandom would be spamming her with tweets in the hope to get a ‘’notice’.  At that point, she had just broken up with her boyfriend Ricky, and I tweeted her: ‘’Your happiness is very important’’ She responded saying: ‘’Tru. As is yours. Love you.’’ I cared about her happiness, and she cared about mine. One of the most special moments of my fangirl days. 

Later on I also got ‘’Breathin’ tattooed on my wrist. My second Ariana-related tattoo. A song about anxiety, and having panic attacks. A reminder to slow down, and quite literally, just keep breathing. One of the many anxieties I have is flight anxiety. And to this day, every flight I take, I play ‘’Breathin’’ as the plane takes off. And it’s Ariana’s voice calming me down, pulling me back from a panic attack.

On that same album, there’s a song called ‘’Get well soon’. This is another song about anxiety, but in this one she reminds her fans they are not alone in difficult times. 

She sings:

‘’’One of those days you had enough, I'll be there.

'Cause if it ain't one thing, it's another 

When you need someone to pull you out the bubble

I’ll be right there just to hug you,

 I'll be there.’’

And to this day, when life feels like it is too much, when I think to myself ‘’I cannot do this anymore’’ I will play that part of the song. And it feels like she is right there with me, putting her arms around me and pulling me into a hug. And suddenly everything doesn’t seem that bad anymore. 

To summarise a lifetime of being a fan: she has helped me through the hardest times of my life, and I can’t help but feel I owe my entire life to her. 

Maybe that’s why I had such an emotional response to the interlude videos; I didn’t see all  versions of her on that screen,  but I also saw all versions of me that existed alongside her. I saw all the trauma and hurt that I went through.

And I realised we were both on the other side of that corridor, looking back at all past versions of us. Still carrying the trauma like a moon tattoo behind our ears, always part of us, but never defining who we are. And when she grabbed her younger version's hand, she also held the hand of my inner child. 

Funnily enough, as I am writing this, sitting on my bed drinking an iced latte, my keyboard sticky from typing and eating a cinnamon bun simultaneously, ‘’Illicit Affairs’’ by Taylor Swift has just come on shuffle on my record player. Which is very fitting as the person I had a crush on was already in a relationship when we met. Now, I can already sense your judgement. And I know this doesn’t sound great. But to come to my own defense, she was not being treated well by her partner. Which is something I told myself often in the hope that it made the situation morally okay.

In the beginning, the interest was mutual. We’d meet up to read books together in the park and call it a date, she’d come to my work to sit at the bar and read a book while I was working (a lot of our interactions revolved around books, the way to any writer’s heart), she’d reciprocate my effort and make time for me.

Which is why it hurt even more when it started becoming less frequent, and why I accepted being breadcrumbed.

She once showed me she was interested.

So why wouldn’t she do it again?

It only took a couple of weeks before I went from instant replies to waiting days for one. Hoping it’d be her name lighting up my screen when a notification came in, being disappointed and hurt every time it wasn’t. She only made time for me a couple of times before she started cancelling at the last minute, and taking weeks to suggest a rain-check. We’d be at parties, where she used to sit next to me with our legs slightly touching, but now she stood across the room, talking to everyone but me. In those moments I told myself I wasn’t going to entertain it anymore. But then she’d walk over to me. Her hand would linger a second too long on my arm, and suddenly I’d be back on my knees, arms stretched above my head, begging for scraps of her attention.

I pushed everything down, but it stayed there, waiting to be brought up.

All of our interactions lived in the in-between spaces, where it was safe. Us calling a meet up a date could be passed off as just something two female friends say, our flirty banter could be narrowed down to only the latter: banter, and when we’d lock eyes in a crowded room it didn’t have to mean anything. Yet it meant everything. We crossed so many lines that we travelled far past the in-between and were fully on the other side, no turning back. Yet none of this was said out loud. But a confession lived on my lips, and I knew it wouldn’t die there.

So, on a night out with our friends, she and I found ourselves sitting on the steps outside the club. The cold tiles underneath me failed at sobering me up. I had restrained myself for so long, and the alcohol running through my veins dissolved whatever willpower I had left. Every time I told her I loved her, it was under the disguise of friendship. And tonight, I was ready to stop hiding.

I laid all my feelings out on those steps that evening, drunk words spilling out of me, starting with a slurred ‘‘I like you’’. It was messy, but it was the truth. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. I told her it hurt me to know she had someone else, and that it hurt to know he didn’t treat her right when I would never dare to do any harm to her. I told her it hurt that despite that, she still chose him over me. But I reassured her I also knew she didn’t owe me anything.

She responded with compassion and understanding. Two traits I so admired in her. She admitted the feelings were mutual, but she also listed all of the reasons why we couldn’t be together. I thought hearing her admit her feelings too would make me feel better, but it tore my heart apart even further. It felt so unfair at that moment. The conversation ended with her asking me where to go from there, and me telling her space would be good. She sat with me until my uber arrived. Then she hugged me tightly before I got in and said she was sorry. I reassured her she had nothing to be sorry for, then sobbed in the backseat the entire way home.

Despite that, we slipped straight back to our old dynamic. There were just enough interactions to keep me invested and waiting. Looking back, maybe those interactions only felt significant because I labelled them that way.

Touches, lingering looks, quick replies, and effort were rare. But they still existed, and as long as they did I wasn’t ready to close that door. I turned them into hope, into proof that she did want to be with me. When she had made it so clear that she didn’t. Those moments kept me going in delusion. Then I wouldn’t hear from her for weeks, and I’d be sobbing in my roommate’s arms again, asking why I wasn’t enough, why love never worked out for me.

She even broke up with her boyfriend during this time, yet the fantasy of her coming running straight to me afterwards never came. My heart was breaking, but I was the one doing the breaking myself by staying around. I knew I should walk away, but the breadcrumbs satisfied my hunger, even if only for a short moment. And I was afraid of starving.

So instead of leaving her, I left the country. I moved all the way across the world to Australia. To be fair, this wasn’t the sole reason behind my move, but it was high up on the list of reasons. A list full of things in my life that were hurting me, things I was trying to escape. All aspects of my life felt broken, including my love life. So yes, it was part of why I packed my 23 kg suitcase and got on that 20-hour flight, away from all my loved ones.

Before I left, I never told her I wanted to cut off contact, but while I was in Australia it naturally happened anyway. I had to stop myself from contacting her, but I was successful in doing so. But I remained hurt over the situation, and still thought about her all the time. I couldn’t figure out why I was unable to get over her, and felt hopeless that not being in contact didn’t manage to solve the problem.

But it didn’t solve it because despite me believing otherwise, I still kept myself in the same situation. We weren’t in contact anymore, but because I never communicated that to her, every day that went by without us interacting felt like rejection. I tricked myself into believing I closed that door, but I left it open a crack for her to enter. And there I was, still waiting.

However, none of this clicked for me until after I moved back a couple of months ago. I convinced myself I was over her, and that I would be fine seeing her again. But when I reunited with my friend group, I was crying to her again on those same steps I confessed my love for her a year ago. I decided enough was enough. I clearly couldn’t be friends with her when the foundation of our connection had never been friendship. Diminishing it to that wasn’t enough for me, and she made it clear she couldn’t give me more.

So, I finally told her I couldn’t be friends. That I needed distance from her. And I have stuck to that since. It has not been easy, especially being in the same friend group. But every day it is getting better.

I realised the only thing the breadcrumbs fed into was my hope, turning me into a statue waiting to be loved.

The thing keeping me stuck was me, believing she was one decision away from picking me.

And only once I started moving forward, was I able to leave her behind. I simply needed to be honest with myself. The truth is: she doesn’t want to be with me. And no amount of waiting around can change someone’s mind.

I pick up a container of pumpkin hummus, it is not my favourite, the sundried tomato flavour wins for me most of the time. But I think of my ex-girlfriend, who I haven’t seen since we broke up about three years ago, and place it in my trolley anyway. It was always her favourite and they didn’t really sell it in the UK. So whenever she came to visit me, I made sure to have some waiting in the fridge for her. That, and the knock off version of squash for her to drink.

I can confidently say I am over her. I have been for a long time. But I still find myself reminiscing on the summer we spent together. So I buy the pumpkin hummus, hoping it tastes like sticky, sweaty bodies twisted in bedsheets on a summer morning . I’ll prepare it the exact way I used to for her, spread on toast with grilled vegetables on top, and pretend I’m not painfully aware of the lack of arms around my waist as I stand at the stove.

On my way home I put on Harry’s house, and as it plays, I remember us sitting by the river in Hammersmith during a trip to London. The album had just come out, and we had it playing during a picnic. Both of us sat on a blanket together, sharing picky bits to eat, and slightly buzzed from the ciders we had drunk earlier at the pub. We were in a long distance relationship and I hadn’t been able to visit her for her birthday earlier that month, so I decided this was the perfect moment to give her presents. I had wrapped them the night before. The dried flowers I had carefully tied onto each one with a ribbon were falling apart from being squashed in my airplanebag. ‘’Keep driving’’ played in the background while she opened the first present.

I made her the top Rory wore in one of the episodes of her favourite tv show, Gilmore girls. A tv show I had never seen before we started dating. We had been lying in bed watching that episode together when she mentioned wanting the top, and I immediately added it to the notes app where I kept a list of gift ideas for her. It’s still on my phone to this day, full of gifts that remained ungiven. As for Gilmore girls, we only got a couple of seasons into it before we broke up. It then took me a while afterwards to continue watching the show without my heart aching from not having her next to me, parroting the intro song.

She loved the top I made her. Actually, she still does. I saw her wearing it in a picture she posted to her Instagram long after we broke up. I wonder if she thinks of me when she puts it on in the morning, or if it is simply another top to her now, completely separate from our relationship. If possibly she doesn’t tether things together the way I do.

Because for me, I cannot go a summer without resurrecting the version of myself that loved her. And every June still to come, I will open our text thread, a conversational ping pong of ‘’happy birthdays’’, to do my yearly serve. Because I might be over her, but I still think about her all the time. Not just on her birthday. But ‘’Happy birthday’’ feels more appropriate than ‘’The sun has returned, so I thought of you. And I will every summer still to come.’’

One that has been in the making for years now, so honestly, it’s impressive that I even lasted this long without collapsing under self inflicted pressure.

It’s so easy to turn ourselves into self improvement projects, all while our nervous systems are screaming for us to slow down, impossible to be heard over all the voices telling us to fix ourselves and become the most emotionally stable and productive version of ourselves . Until one day the noise gets so loud that it is impossible to ignore. And by that point we have run ourselves too far into the ground. Emotionally burnt out and past exhaustion, all because we didn’t listen to our bodies.

We’ve forgotten the art of simply existing.

Our bodies are asking us to slow down. We do not need another ten step morning routine for productivity. We do not need to go through another ‘’75 hard challenge’’ making life even harder than it already is. Only to fail and then feel worse about ourselves. We do not need to get up at 5 am to go to the gym, force ourselves to read a chapter of a book every single day, walk 10K steps a day, eat perfectly healthy every single meal, and listen to an hour of a self improvement podcast before bed. All while working a full time job or studying alongside it. This might look like self care, but we are leaving no room to exist, no time for our feelings to be felt, and not a moment of quiet to listen to what our bodies and minds are telling us.

So here are some habits my nervous system has been loving recently, that don’t revolve around fixing myself.

Number one: feeling my feelings

Instead of over-analysing them and finding ways to ‘’fix’’ them.

Every time a feeling comes up, whether this is sadness, anger, anxiety, we immediately go to figuring out why we are feeling a certain way, and what we can do to stop this. However, doing this takes us right out of the feeling and present moment, and back into our heads.

We become our feelings. But our feelings are not our identities. They are not something to become, just something to let pass through us. By trying to understand and resolve them, we cling onto them, start carrying them with us for longer than needed. Sometimes all our nervous system needs is for us to just experience the emotion, live through it. Let it flow into our lives, and out again once they have served their purpose.

Number two: doing things in silence.

It has become so easy to constantly surround ourselves with noise. I think we’ve all had moments where we realise we’re on our phones while music is playing and a tv show runs in the background at the same time. No wonder we feel overstimulated. We are overstimulating ourselves.

Instead I have been consciously doing things in silence.

I eat my breakfast every morning without distraction. It allows me to start the day being fully present and connected to myself before the business of the day starts.

I go on walks without putting my headphones in. This gives me space to think and reflect. I’ve also noticed this is when creativity returns to me. I walk through nature listening to nothing but the birds chirping and the wind rustling through the leaves, and suddenly ideas will come up now that there’s space for them. And opening up one of my senses makes others more present too. I smell freshly mowed grass, blooming flowers, the dampness of the earth after it has rained. It allows me to simply be, not become.

This leads me to number three: going for walks.

Moving my body without expectations. I don’t need to hit my thirty minutes of cardio every single day or complete my 3x8 reps of hip thrusts. I also don’t need to obsess over hitting my 10K steps. I just walk for the sake of walking. To spend time in nature, let the wind blow through my hair on the beach. Maybe I’ll stop to get a coffee along the way, let the takeaway cup warm up my hands on a particularly cold day. I smile at strangers passing by. I sit on benches and breathe. It is amazing what a walk can do if you remove the pressure.

Number four: a moment of reflection a day.

I do this in whatever form feels right that day. It can be something as simple as watching the sun set from the wooden chair on my balcony, or doing a small meditation session, and other times it’s getting my notebook out to journal.

Number five: creating without perfection.

It is so important to allow yourself to be bad at things. To create without the expectations to be good at it or perfect. I’ve been loving bringing my notebook with me to sketch the things and people I see around me. I don’t overthink it or try to make it look perfect. I came across this idea when I did a live drawing session, and our first tasks were: ‘’Draw with your left hand’’, and ‘’Draw with your eyes closed’’ They started with these tasks to remind people to have fun, and to not take it too seriously. That evening I realised I had taken away the fun of creating by introducing perfectionism to it. And that by allowing myself to be bad at things, I enjoyed them more.

Number six: solo dates.

As an introvert I’ve always loved doing this anyways. But lately it has been helping to feeling calm and present with myself. Sometimes I find a nice cafe to sit and drink a coffee while reading a book, other times I take myself out for lunch, or sit alone at a bar sipping a glass of red wine. How often do we truly spend quality time with ourselves? And how are we meant to know and love ourselves if we don’t invest in that bond like we would with any other partner?

And lastly, but maybe the most important: making decisions like someone who loves themselves.

Sometimes ‘’I simply don’t want this for myself anymore’’ is enough reason to change something. I’ve started setting boundaries with people so I can finally show up for myself too. I cut contact with the person I couldn’t get over for the past year, too scared to let them go, while convincing myself the breadcrumbs of attention they gave me were better than nothing at all. I make myself a nutritious breakfast, not to make my body look a certain way, but because I love myself enough to feed myself properly. This also means eating enough. I speak up for my wants and needs because they matter. I take care of myself because I love myself. And by doing that my nervous system has been loving me in return.

Here’s a couple of tips on how to be successful on TikTok:

• Hook the viewers within the first millisecond. Whether this is through a shocking sentence, a visual hook like putting your drink down, sound effects or text on the screen. Preferably a mix of all the above. 

• NEVER post ‘’selfish’’ content. Posting what you want to post? Forget about it. 

• Pick a niche. You cannot have, or post about, multiple interests. 

Et cetera, et cetera.

Doesn’t all of this sound so damn exhausting? 

Now I cannot sit here on my high horse, because the reason I even know any of these tips is because I looked for them myself in hopes of gaining views and followers.

Another night sitting on my white, ruffled Pinterest-esque bedsheets, a vanilla scented candle burning in the corner, my  face lit by the blue light of my screen as I scroll through TikTok until my phone leaves a dent in my pinky finger.

I type ‘’How to grow on TikTok’’ into the search bar, and after pressing enter, thousands of results pop up.  There’s enough people researching this topic that it has become a niche in itself. It is almost like to be successful on TikTok, all you  need to do is create videos explaining to others how to do exactly that. 

I spend my evening doomscrolling down the ‘’How to go viral.’’ rabbit hole, noting down every tip I think could help me. Over the next couple of weeks I apply all of them to my videos. 

When I start filming,  I make sure to use an attention grabbing sentence. If I come up with an idea to film that would be considered ‘’selfish content’’ I push the urge down and create something that would perform better instead. I pay for a 100 euro Capcut pro subscription and justify it as investing in my future. Then make sure to get my money's worth in added fonts, sound effects (I can basically still hear the keyboard sound effect in my sleep), and all templates now accessible to me. 

Who knew it would only cost me 100 euros to feel like an accomplished content creator?

And my dignity. 

But that’s besides the point, I tell myself. 

And the worst thing is:  it actually works. 

My videos get consistent views, likes, comments, and saves. Some perform better than others, but always consistent enough for me to keep going. They perform well enough that brands start sending free things to my house, cafes and stores pay me to shoot content for them, sometimes in money, sometimes in free stuff, most of the time both. 

Here it is, I think, the moment I’ve been longing for, the life I’ve been longing for. But I’d go home afterwards, unpack all the things I got for free, and still feel unaccomplished and unsatisfied. 

I felt more like a human advertisement channel than a content creator. 

I didn’t feel accomplished because I wasn’t passionate about the content I was creating. I wasn’t filming and editing videos because I loved doing it, I was filming and editing videos because I loved the outcome.

I got so caught up in the rule of creating ‘’selfless’’ content that I had completely put my own passions and interests aside. 

I let down the twelve year old version of me that filmed youtube videos in her room for the fun of it, videos that never even got uploaded. I let down the current version of me too, the one who wanted to create content that means something, helps others, and leaves an impact on the world, even if only through one single person. 

And I know I am not the only one. 

With TikTok, and through that short-form content, becoming the main platform for content creation, there’s been a big shift from the youtube era . Back then, we’d watch hour-long videos of people showing what was in their bag, or doing ‘’get to know me’’ challenges. Now, we watch a minute long video on TikTok and still press the 2x speed button, because the next dopamine rush is only a thumb scroll away. 

Especially in the earlier Youtube days, creators made videos because they were genuinely passionate about it. They created authentic videos that they wanted to film. Not ones they felt obligated to make. They filmed a makeup tutorial one day, and a ‘’who knows me best challenge’’ the next, because they didn’t need to pick one niche. They’d upload hour-long vlogs of them going through an objectively boring day, running errands and cleaning the house, because there was no such thing as ‘’selfish content’’. They created from passion, not from a want for the results it could bring. Because they didn’t even know what those could be yet. 

Nowadays on tiktok it is easier to get caught up in only wanting the outcomes. Because now we have a clear view of what those are: PR packages, money, brand trips to Coachella with other influencers in an expensive villa, never having to work a 9-to-5 ever again. People don’t necessarily like content creation, they love everything that comes alongside it. And that’s  what makes the space feel lacking in any authenticity and passion.

However, this is not the creators fault, when we are constantly spoonfed not to post what we want, only what others want to see, how are we meant to create authentically? We all sacrifice our own interests and creativity in return for 10 seconds of fame when a video goes viral. 

Instead of asking ourselves ‘’What do others want to see?’’ we should start asking ‘’What do I actually want to create?’’ 

That’s when authenticity returns, when we find our own voice again, instead of the one we were told to have. And with it, our feelings of accomplishment, and creativity return too. 

People are slowly becoming tired of all the fast paced, inauthentic, and overly edited content anyways. So it is only a matter of time (if we aren’t there already) that the answer to both those questions becomes the exact same thing. 

If you enjoyed this it would mean the world if you could subscribe and enjoy my little community, thank you!

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Now what if I told you that your people-pleasing tendencies actually make you a worse friend or partner.

We like to label ourselves as people-pleasers with the underlying belief that this makes us good people. Thinking it makes us easier to love. But constantly crossing our boundaries and not showing up for ourselves, just for others, is far less pleasing to the people around us than we think it is.

We use people-pleasing as a way to keep our relationships, platonic or romantic, on track. But it actually derails it. It is just harder to notice because it all happens inside our own minds.

I’ve done this for many years of my life too. I first saw it in my mother, who did not have the word ‘’no’’ in her vocabulary when I was growing up. She hated confrontation and would cross her boundaries daily to keep everyone else happy.

Now if you take a quick glance at this, you’d think these were good qualities. As a society, we have come to associate being a good person with being selfless. But I saw my mother tired and burnt out, quietly resenting others, never able to speak up for her own wants and needs. And the only thing I could think was: I love you but I do not want to be like you.

And yet I was.

I’d work 60 hour weeks (which is already a boundary issue in itself) and still help my best friend paint her walls. I’d be in relationships and never have a single argument, not because there weren’t any issues, but because I was too scared to bring them up. I’d feel left out by my friends, but happily show up next time they did include me.

I buried all my wants and needs so far down, I forgot I even had them.

People-pleasing is the road to resentment. Not speaking up and letting someone know when they’ve upset you actually robs them of the chance to explain themselves and fix the issue at hand. If they never know what they have done wrong, how are they meant to do better?

Usually these issues have a reasonable explanation, and once you allow the other person to share their side of the story, it becomes easier for you to see their point of view.

Bottling up your anger and choosing to ‘’forgive’’ is not real closure. Telling yourself it doesn’t matter in hopes not to seem needy won’t make it matter less. Saying ‘’yes’’ when everything in you wants to say ‘’no’’ is not the foundation of a healthy relationship.

But every time you choose others over yourself, you build resentment towards them. You resent them, when in reality, it is you that keeps crossing your own boundaries.

Your anger grows inside of you because you never give people the chance to make things right. You create scenarios and reasons for their actions because you never allow them to tell you themselves. You decide for them how they feel about you, and that decision comes from your insecurities, not reality. And most of the time, that reality is far from the one you created.

How can you expect people to meet your expectations of them if you never tell them what those expectations are?

Setting boundaries does not make you less lovable. And if you’d show up for yourself even half as often as you do for others, you’ll realise most of the resentment you’ve been feeling towards them is actually misdirected anger toward yourself, because you’ve been the one crossing your boundaries.

In being kind to others, you have forgotten how to be kind to yourself.

It all comes down to communication. You are allowed to voice your wants and needs without worrying that this makes you difficult. You’re allowed to let people know when they’ve hurt you, and you are allowed to want people to show up for you in the ways you find important.

The right people want you to set boundaries, and will not run away when you tell them what you need from them. They will want you to tell them when something has upset you so they can fix it.

You do not have to turn yourself into a human doormat to make people love you. You are enough as you are, and you do not have to shrink yourself to someone without wants or needs just to keep people from leaving.

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Those would be the words out of your mouth, or thoughts in your mind, when seeing a starving dog on the street. Malnourished, bones showing, you’d know it was starving and hungry. The appropriate response would be pity. So why, when you see yet another celebrity debut their thinner and ‘’new’’ body on the red carpet, do you turn to guilt instead?

We can try to turn a blind eye, but it’s gotten impossible not to notice how recently celebrities have been popping out left and right after dropping a significant amount of weight. Even those who were already thin before this metamorphosis suddenly seemed to have a couple more pounds to lose. Before opening your social media, you can basically place a million dollar bet there’ll be another red carpet picture of your favourite actress, tight dress hugging her hipbones, collarbones where a necklace used to be the accessory.

In a world where the singer of ‘’All About That Bass.’’ a song about body positivity, debuts her body being a size two with no curves in no places, it is easy to turn to yourself in the mirror afterwards and ask: did I miss the memo? Is this what’s being celebrated instead? It is almost disheartening, simply waiting for the next person to show up in their ‘’new’’ body, knowing they just keep coming and coming.

Commenting on people’s bodies is a sensitive topic, and one where opinions differ by miles. Go to the comment sections on those pictures and videos and you’d find soldiers of both sides fighting each other. Yet the world is so divided that neither comes out on top.

One side of the body positivity war: Yes people can lose weight, be healthy, and flaunt their bodies at any size. Even if this means a body skinnier than society deems acceptable. Just as hurtful as words can be towards someone with a bigger body, the same can be said for the latter. Every body type outside of the ‘’norm’’ becomes a walking target for comments and judgements.

Which also means body positivity isn’t just a term reserved for people with bigger bodies, but one allowed to be claimed by people on both sides of this spectrum. Some argue that women don’t owe anyone to ‘’set an example’’ with their bodies, even in the spotlight. That they should be allowed to exist without their body being a statement or message. That some people are just naturally thinner, and losing weight doesn’t automatically equal disordered eating.

On the other side: seeing an unusual amount of celebrities drastically changing their bodies to extreme levels of thinness is harmful. Even if unintentional, it sends a message to everyone watching. The extremity of debuting these bodies on the red carpet, like the newest designer dress, promotes disordered eating. Especially when most celebrities were already thin before the transformation, the mind naturally associates such drastic changes with unhealthy behaviours.

Celebrities wear their thinness like an accessory but do they realise they are dressed in all behaviours it took to get there as well? When we see this, we don’t just see a changed body. Our mind fills in the gaps. We imagine the drastic measures it took to get there, for example: not allowing yourself to do the most basic things humans need to survive, eat. Because an unhealthy looking body doesn’t feel like it comes from healthy habits.

I don’t think there will ever be a middle ground in this debate. Women’s bodies have always been, and will always be a topic of debate in society. And this is part of a much bigger picture than just the stars on the red carpet.

However, we can control our response. The debate stems from the impact these bodies have on the people that see it. The ones reading the comment sections, trying to figure out how to feel, locking their phones afterwards just to stand in front of the mirror and pick apart every part of their body that doesn’t match what they just saw. Breakfasts skipped because their bellies are too full of guilt to want food.

If we didn’t let the media affect our perception of beauty, would that fix the issue? Would people then be able to exist in their bodies, whichever way it looks, without it becoming a statement or example? Should we look inward for what we want, instead of forcing ourselves into a mold we don’t fit, shrinking ourselves to a point where there’s so little left of us, until eventually, it does.

Are we the ones that created the pressure celebrities feel to change their body, and do we hold the power to break this cycle? Maybe if we would pay less attention to others, we could maybe not fix this problem, but at least steer it in the right direction.

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And sometimes I’d like to go home but even the flight I permanently have open in my browser won’t be able to get me there. Because home would be a fairy keychain hung up by the door, and late night conversations over wine as red as our bleeding hearts and your hair. It would be friend groups, still untouched; holding hands over the dinner table, warmth on my face from burning candles, in my heart from all the love around me. Group chats, not yet buried like an old photo album you dust off every blue moon to remember what used to be. Or broken friendships I was put in the middle of, which meant I was halfway gone from either side, and we never got anywhere. I tried to do good by everyone but my intentions were twisted until it fit their reality, and there, I was the villain. Home is where the unspoken words between us hang thick in the air, even an ocean away their heaviness still wears me down. On rainy evenings I make tea, strong and sweet, like grandma did. Maybe that’s what she wanted me to be. I hope it washes away the taste of grief in my mouth. It never does. I’ve collected countless bruises on my heart, they change colours with the seasons and they’ve changed me. They won’t leave, so I did instead. But I’ve carried my pain around for so long I became it, and with everything and everyone that has left me, I will not.

my hands intertwined,

head rested against hardwood.

The air to an organ,

escaping unseen

behind a deceitful harmony.

I'm a fool

of blind faith.

A victim

of betrayal.

So water down the blood from

the knife in my back

and taste its wine.

However,

a sin

is no longer

a sin

once baptised a chosen demise.

Here I worship

on

my knees,

at

your feet,

in search of

mercy.

Wake up at 6 a.m. Read a book for half an hour. Also read 10 pages of a self-help book. Go to the gym. Drink water. And more water. At least a gallon a day. Go on your hot girl walk. 10K steps a day. Journal before bed. No alcohol. No fast food. No partying. Commit to this every single day. No breaks allowed. You do this if you want the best for yourself. But are you actually hiding your self-hatred underneath a coat of self-love? Is it self-care or self-harm?

Let me start off by saying, I don’t think any of these “rules” are bad by nature. I actually think most of us would benefit from implementing more of these habits into our lives. I applaud anyone who is dedicated to bettering themselves. And I in no way mean to shame anyone who goes to these extreme lengths, merely just warn them. That being said, let me share my thoughts.

The name of the challenge already exposes itself without me having to do it. 75 Hard. The challenge is designed for people to be hard on themselves. To make their lives and the rules they have to follow so difficult that they eventually will fail. But the truth is, are you really failing if the thing you are trying to achieve has been made to be impossible? You can’t succeed at something that’s designed to make you fail. 

As a society, we’re constantly getting caught up in the hamster wheel of bettering ourselves. Let me be the one to tell you that you don’t need to constantly find the flaws within yourself. You are not broken. You are not something in dire need of fixing. Be soft with yourself. Let yourself be human. Let yourself experience all aspects of life.

Feel the sand between your toes. Listen to the wind pushing its way through the trees. Look up and see the stars. Bathe in your friends’ laughter. Wrap yourself in a blanket of love and watch how easy it becomes to be soft with yourself. And yes, of course, take care of yourself and your body. 

However, allow yourself to have off days. Or days off. Depending on how you look at it. You’re not meant to be ‘’on’’ all the time. Your body and mind cannot sustain being in a whirlwind of working on yourself every single day. Strive to implement small habits that will make you feel better, without going through a speed course towards a self-inflicted burnout. 

Instead.

Go for a run because you love the wind in your hair and feeling the ground under your feet. 

Read a book every single day because the book you picked is simply so good you don’t want to put it down. 

Eat a salad because it energises your body, but when you crave dessert afterward, allow the flavours to melt on your tongue without an aftertaste of guilt. 

Go out to party with your friends and dance until your feet hurt, then follow up on the promise to meet them at yoga the next day with a green juice in your hand.

Balance is key. Joy and health. Living and growing. Discipline and leniency. All of these things can coexist. Self-care comes in many forms, there’s no good or bad if you look at it through a lens of moderation.  

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Lots of love,

Chiara

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I want to be honey, dripping off the lips of every soul that crosses my path.

May I leave a sweet taste in their mouth.

May it stick even after I'm gone.

••••

And I will declaw myself,

file down my teeth,

take away my voice,

bottle up my anger.

For I want to remain kind.

••••

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thanks friends!

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I stare at my shelf in the fridge. Living with two housemates means all my groceries are crammed on top of each other onto one shelf. My eyes land on a take out box amidst a jar of pesto that’s slowly started its own ecosystem inside and a half-eaten avocado in a ziploc  bag. I take the box from the fridge and remove the lid. Silken tofu. Half the sauce thickened from being left in the fridge overnight, and the other half absorbed into the carton. My favourite dish from an Asian place in town. My roommate, aware of this, ordered an extra portion to take home for me on her date last night.

I tell myself: I am not unlovable. My friends are proof that I am loved, always and unconditionally. Yet my heart doesn’t obey that thought. It is stubborn and hurt and will not let platonic love run through its cracks to mend it back together. It screams for romantic love like a child screams for their mother when they are hurt. The sound of it is sharper than nails on a chalkboard.

And I wonder why it is never enough. Platonic love. Why the weight of it doesn’t measure up to the heaviness of its romantic counterpart. Why the heart decides it’s a rusty old coin in a pawn shop. Why it constantly lives in the shadows of romance when it shines bright enough to be the sun in the sky. We should orbit around it. Let us stop longing for rose-coloured glasses when it already painted us a sky in oranges and pinks.   The darkness is not as dreadful with the knowledge that the sun always rises.

A cup of coffee.

A splash of milk, no sugar.

I know.

Buttered toast.

I scraped off the burnt pieces for you.

Raspy voices.

Good morning.

I love you.

My fingers trace the freckles on your back.

My lips find their home on your skin.

I awake belonging to you.

What a privilege it is, to own all your sunrises.

I haven’t seen my ex-girlfriend since we broke up about three years ago. With tears running down both of our faces as we said goodbye on the train platform one last time. When I got on and picked my seat, we texted each other one red heart. She joked about which Taylor swift songs I shouldn’t listen to because they’d make me cry even more. And that ,by itself, made me sob so uncontrollably the train conductor shot me a sympathetic (and possibly also worried) look. My ex wanted to stay friends but when I got home I cut off all contact so I could heal. That was the first time I allowed myself to let go of someone. When normally I’d hold on to someone until it suffocated them. I did what was better in the long run instead of listening to my breaking heart that wanted to hold on just to ease the pain temporarily.

My best friend is still my best friend. But the reality of adult life, and moving to different cities, focusing on school, having a job, finding new friends and finding ourselves has slowly morphed our friendship into a new dynamic over time. We have been shaped into different people and those shapes simply don’t fit together just as well. She told me this two years ago, hesitant about whether our friendship was still working. I felt like the world was being kicked out from under me, but told her our 21 years of friendship was a strong enough foundation to withstand the changes of growing up. It’s when a friend becomes family. No matter how different you are, you will always stay in each other's lives. Because when you are family, those things don’t seem to matter. 

So we moved forward, and accepted the new shape of our friendship. Making it work for the both of us. But that doesn’t mean that the memories of how things used to be don’t sting, like a wasp on a hot summer day. You might remove the stinger, the thing that harmed you in the first place, but the damage has already been done. And do you ever fully come back from that? 

 The hardest part of all is knowing when to let someone go. Deciding when to hold on and fight for something, or accept that something is simply not working and walk away. People always say that love is all that matters, if someone is meant for you, you will find your way back to them. I believe the truth lies somewhere in between. 

Sometimes love just isn’t enough, when there’s so many circumstances around that seem to be working against it. Sometimes ,even if you love someone and the potential is there, the most mature thing to do is accept that loving them means letting them go. You can’t expect someone with a broken leg to run a race for you, you need to let them heal. Running on that broken foot will only break it more. I know this sounds like another stupid metaphor but what I’m trying to say is: sometimes there is a wrong time. Sometimes despite the love, the cards that have been dealt to you by chance are not the ones you can win a game with.

This is when you have to open your hands and let something free -hoping the winds of change will bring it back to you at some point. But you can’t trap people locked in a cage, even if it’s made out of love. That’s when love turns selfish. And true love is selfless. It’s wanting the best for the other, even if it rips your own heart out of your chest. And you won’t sit there and wait for them to come back, but you’ll keep your arms open, ready to welcome them back safely into your arms in case they return. You’ll leave the door open a crack for your light to shine through, in case they need to find their way back to you. And in the meantime you’ll keep adding to that box under your bed. The box, proof you are living a life special enough to make you long for your own memories.