Yet, I am ashamed. I am so ashamed, so guilty, of being, living, doing anything at all. The feeling settles deep in my stomach, ever-present and unending. It burns, crawling into my dreams, keeping me up at night. It knocks on my skull, sinks in the crevices between my fingers, it covers my whole body, head to toe, inside out. I am ashamed I cannot play the piano, that I did not, and do not always act on my dreams. I am ashamed I am not more, I am less than, I did not wash my hair, I was cruel, I was angry, I hurt, I loved, I made a mistake. I am too ashamed to write and too ashamed to not. It shames me to admit my shame—is it not so disgustingly self-indulgent? I am so ashamed of myself; I want out of this body that takes me back to me again and again.

Is it possible to be otherwise? To think less about myself, want other things, be less me? I want to be trapped inside a verse drawled out on my favourite song, to be a drumbeat, a bassline. I want to be a colour of the rainbow, the stem of a flower, a droplet running down a glass of water, a spot on the wing of a butterfly. I want to be a word resting in the middle of a sentence. I want to be small—must I want to matter so much, for it to all make sense? I want to be appeased of this hunger that cannot die, be let out of this mortal cage. I am tired; I am sick of how this shame haunts me. I want to be with the waves, be one with the sea. How I long to live unashamedly, to finally be free.

I met the children because I was their teacher. A friend of a friend was looking for someone to teach underprivileged kids for a short while. I was the best she found. Most people would turn their heads away at the garbage, at the dirt, at how the rain would come in through the school windows. Not me.

How deeply I had wanted to be the light in that dark, damp corner classroom. I made myself pretty at 6 a.m., my smile stretching tight over my cheeks, always, always pretending. They were grieving when I met them—their previous teacher, who had raised them and then left to pursue real life, leaving behind a cupboard full of toys and a classroom of broken hearts.

But the children had fought bigger battles than that. They were used to people coming and going, to the many unnecessary cruelties of the world. I don’t know what they saw when they looked at me, but five minutes, and I was the trusted adult of choice. I had been chosen back.

They were naughty. I remember how their quick, nimble hands would grab my phone off the desk when I turned my back to write on the blackboard. They’d take pictures, make funny faces in them, “just to remember teacher, just so you can remember us”, give the phone back. I remember the little girl who was quicker, brighter than the others; how she would touch my earlobes, whatever shiny earrings I had on that day.

I remember how they would stand by my desk and whisper in my ear, invite me to their houses, tell me about their parents, their siblings, their many illnesses, all their pains. I remember how they wanted me to eat their lunch, to braid their hair, how they wondered if I had a boyfriend, if I had parents, a car, a house with a roof, if I played football, or watched TV, if I had ever been in an aeroplane.

I remember the little boys, how I stroked their little heads, so troubled. How they would cry—their tear-streaked cheeks, runny noses—I loved them all. I remember the kids who got hit, who would hit in turn. I remember their anger. I remember the day tiny feet shoved me during playtime, in the middle of a fight. I remember how my eyes welled up, how they all fell silent. Never hurt the teacher, never ever, we’re so sorry, so so sorry, never again.

I remember how they wanted to break out of those walls, to live, breathe, play, how the girls would dance. I remember how they would run in the rain to catch an auto for me, wave goodbye with gummy smiles. I remember how I always wanted to cry on the way home and I never knew why.

After a month, real life came calling for me too. I went back to university, to do some important things, like important, real, whole people do. “Thank you for your help. The children are fond of you. They deserve permanence. Someone who can stay.” I agreed, “I will miss them.”

I don’t know if they remember me, or anything I taught them. I want them to remember how much I loved them for those slippery days we had together. I did not need to be the light in that classroom. I couldn’t have been. I remember how they were jealous, how they were kind, how they laughed, and loved, and fought. I remember their names, all their faces, the stories they told me.

I remember how they filled up my heart, my tiny bright innocents, so full of love, so willing, only looking to give. They were not mine, but I was theirs. We were all trying to fill our gaps with shapes that didn’t fit. I remember that momentary respite from the darkness. I remember my month with the children.

Because picture books of dinosaurs turned into fairy tales and textbooks and library cards and movie summaries on Wikipedia because as long as there was a story, I would bite. Because I knew I wanted to be a writer at ten, even when I suddenly thought it was silly to be anything at all.

Because I read and I wrote till my head was exploding, even though everybody said I had the brain suited for delicate surgery, or being a politician, or an investment banker. Because I really wanted to be a writer at fourteen, and I told my mother she wouldn’t understand, and she doesn't. Because I paid attention to all the lyrics, to the subtitles, the street signs on the road, to what everybody was saying, even to the back of the shampoo bottle. Because I always hoped and I always wondered and I wanted it so bad. Because I started to question if I really had it, because it would all be useless otherwise.

Because I knew I had to, and that was it. Because all my nights passed sleeplessly figuring out how to get there. Because movie summaries and comment sections and video essays turned into papers and novels and books about heroes and villains and people, and love and hatred and grief, and about capitalism and patriarchy and the internet and music and history and poetry and art. Because I would scroll through the Pulitzers and the Bookers and the Nobel lists until I forgot to eat lunch and then dinner. Because it made me so hungry for greatness. Because I realized it is not something you have, it is something you have to be.

Because I use words well; I was always sharp like that, and you have good taste. Because it is such a rush, because it gets me so high. Because I'm so desperate, I’m so passionate, I’m so attached. Because I love it so much. Because I have nothing else. Because it is so much work. Because I will do it. Because I would rather write badly than not write. Because I would rather be poor than not write. Because I would rather be dead than not write.

Because I will tell you everything about myself, and nothing scares me more. Because I will tell you everything about you. Because I still want it so bad. Because I always will. Because I care so much. Because I admit it.

Because I’ll keep writing—even if you see me, even if you don’t, even if you love me, even if you disagree. Because I was little and I had things to say and there was nobody to hear me. Because I was little and I would always say the wrong thing. Because I've been playing librarian to people who would never visit for a long, long time.

I was sticky palms and acid down to my core when life reached out her hand, and I tasted friendship. I knew there would be nothing sweeter. Like all who write, I too write about love. Mine is a love we do not worship often. The kind that smells like other people’s habits. The kind that keeps you alive even when you’d rather not be.

Friends made everything okay. For the first time, I learnt how good it felt to be chosen by someone just because. I had never imagined it could be possible for me, that my presence could be enjoyed, my advice deemed necessary, my company looked forward to. For the first time, I understood how wonderful it was to want each other, to love each other so. Foolishly, I had somehow believed it to be a casual affair. I was wrong. I know that now.

Love like that is bigger than anything. It is the comfort we take for granted, the habit we unhealthily depend on. It is natural—what we were born to do. We can't help going back for more. We can never have enough of it. We change each other so deeply we can never return to our original states. I would have spent all my days passing cigarettes on sidewalks, fighting in backseats, talking on the phone for hours. I would do it forever if I could. When you have it, you think it will never end.

Our time with each other is so short, our mistakes are so inevitable. I had seen how love could destroy people, how they built their lives around it only to watch it collapse. I had kept my distance for so long to avoid that ruin. Better to be alone and bitter, I told myself, than heartbroken. And yet, when friendship coloured my days, and I was loved—finally loved—I forgot it all. It seemed so simple, formulaic even, I love you, and you love me, and here we are together. How could it ever go wrong?

The loss of a friend has been the greatest loss of my life. I have never understood how others can bear it, how they can take it so lightly—how they let people drift away as though it means nothing. I wonder how it doesn’t destroy them the way it destroys me. I walk around like everyone else, doing ordinary things, but I mourn those little deaths all the time. The world is a shrine, the graveyard of our love, a testament to something so pure that once was just because we had willed it to be.

I've learnt to savour the heartache, I really have. It makes me who I am. The love that I lost was the love I once had. I think of the people I hurt, who I treated so carelessly, and the ones who hurt me, and I think about how at least we were treating each other like anything at all. What better feeling than to know that in a moment in time, I was known just as I was? What greater purpose than to be loved by a friend? Even now, I will turn my face up to look at you, to want to see you looking at me as you always did. With you holding my hand, I could have done anything. I will give myself to you again and again.

As many seventeen-year-olds do, I developed an eating disorder and lost all my baby fat. My acne cleared up on its own. I learned to talk in a way that only showed the top part of my teeth, which were straight-ish and white. I finally saw potential in my face and I allowed myself vanity for the first time in my life. I embraced all the beauty rituals I had once been too proud to try. I started getting my eyebrows done and my facial hair threaded. My body filled out in a model-skinny way, instead of a lanky, awkward way. I bought makeup and sincerely started learning how to do it. The more effort I put in, the better I looked. Abruptly, and finally, I was beautiful.

That same year, I moved away from home to attend university. I was in a new city, surrounded by new people, and life had given me a chance to start over—this time, as a beautiful person. I knew I hadn't done anything to deserve this, just as I hadn’t done anything to deserve being ugly, but I still liked being beautiful. The more I thought about it, cared for it, and clung to it, the more it clung to me.

My appearance quickly became a defining part of my identity. I started spending a lot of time in front of the mirror, and I practiced and perfected my beauty routine. I would wake up early every single morning to religiously complete this half-hour ritual before class. Because I was usually so meticulous about my appearance, the rare days I missed an alarm or chose to skip makeup didn’t go unnoticed. It meant classmates—and even professors—asking me if I was sick, or if everything was alright. People around me had become so used to seeing me made up that my washed, moisturised, sunscreened, threaded, and dermaplaned face seemed sickly or concerning to them.

I quickly internalised:

1. That without my full beauty routine, I looked sick, depressed, and unpresentable.

2. That I should maintain the routine at all times, because that was the only way I looked “presentable.”

3. That if I let any part of it slip, I would go back to being ugly and unspecial.

4. That I could only go outside barefaced, and not made-up, if I was actually sick, or if something was really seriously wrong.

These rules began to guide how I lived my life. I'd get upset when friends made impromptu plans that wouldn’t give me time to get ready. I started bringing my beauty products to sleepovers. What if we ended up taking pictures for Instagram, or someone saw me bare faced? Everybody would know I was, in fact, ugly. I became so uncomfortable with my unpresentability that I began doing makeup even when I was alone at home. I became uncomfortable in my own skin.

I also started watching, liking, and saving every single makeup reel I came across to trick my algorithm into thinking it was something I enjoyed, so it would show me more. I would let them play in their entirety, even when I wasn’t watching. As a result, a constant barrage of beauty content—advice, products, tutorials, etc.—started flooding my feed.

All of this might seem absurd or extreme, but I saw very real results. I was more liked and wanted than I had ever been. I had never thought about my appearance more than I did at this time. When I look back on my behaviour now, I am saddened by my own desperation. I was young, and like all young people, I had a hunger for acceptance. I wanted to be seen, and my beauty gave me that.

It didn’t take long to realise that doing my hair, my nails, shaving, wearing makeup, and obsessing over clothes, shoes, and bags—all the things beautiful people did—was what society rewarded. The more I performed beauty, the more I was affirmed. Being beautiful was a lot of work, but I was a willing slave. I never showed how much it took from me. I knew I had to be beautiful quietly, make it look effortless. And I was—I did. No one knew how my heart twisted and turned at the thought of being ugly.

I remember I once asked a female friend why we kept at beauty despite the labor, and she remarked, “In this world, it is okay to be a man and be ugly and unwashed. Women cannot be ugly in peace. They are not allowed to be ugly in peace.” I began to feel the erosion of my peace, even when I felt appropriately beautiful. Influencer GRWM videos did not help. If all these people could put so much effort into their appearance, then it must be normal. I convinced myself I should be able to do it constantly as well. Old arguments such as “I’m not doing it for anyone else; I’m doing it for me” did not help. “I’m doing it because it’s self-care” did not help. “I’m doing it because it makes me look presentable, and it’s a good habit to look presentable” really did not help.

Eventually, the beauty content on social media moved past the usual how-to-be-girl-pretty, how-to-be-boy-pretty advice. One afternoon, I watched an influencer promote tiny magnetic metal rods that go up your nose to change its shape. The caption read, “Nose job with me before I go on a date.” Another reel proudly displayed, “This is the retinol that keeps me looking like a fetus.” I wondered, did I need magnetic rods? Where could I buy them? Should I be looking like a fetus?

The internet fed me high-maintenance procedures, sold as investments for a low-maintenance daily life. Fuck the patriarchy. Why do you do your makeup every day? It’s so harmful for your skin, so many chemicals. Just get fillers. Get Botox. Dye your eyebrows. Wax yourself at home. Scrub, polish, and shine, day after day after day. Do skincare before makeup. Do skincare after makeup. Do it before you sleep. Do it after you wake up. Maintain yourself. Look good to feel good.

Except it didn’t feel good. I felt incredibly bad, tired, and insecure. I believed I was getting uglier day by day. I was suffocating in my own ugliness. I couldn’t imagine a day for myself without makeup. I couldn't imagine a future for myself without plastic surgery. I couldn't think of a time when I was not so concerned, so obsessed, so upset with my looks.

In this sadness, I questioned myself. Surely I wasn’t this shallow. I didn't recognise myself or my life. When—and why—had my priorities changed so much? My beauty was not my well-being. It wasn't self-care, or innate, or natural. But I knew what being beautiful got me, how everything was easier, people were nicer, and doors opened more frequently for you. I knew what it was like to live without.

I had been beautiful for four years when I graduated from college, and moved cities again. Shortly after I turned twenty-one, I got my first corporate job. It was a big company, and I was eager to make a good impression. I remember not being nervous about the work I was going to be doing. Instead, I found myself asking people, “What should I wear? How much makeup is too much? Should I wear heels?”

All the working professionals I knew assuaged my fears: “Don’t think about it too much. You're already such a pretty girl. Just look presentable.” I knew ‘presentable’, and I knew I wasn't already a pretty girl. I tried really hard all the time to appear like an already pretty girl. Continuing my ways meant the whole beauty routine, again. It meant being beautiful, meant being liked, meant success. It also meant hating myself more, going against what I wanted, what felt so wrong, what made me so unhappy. I wish I was a better person, because I gave in anyway. I don’t know if there was ever really another choice.

I’ve internalised a disgust for my natural appearance so deeply it feels permanent. When I see my bare face, I feel ashamed and not pretty. When I do have makeup on, and I catch myself in the mirror, I feel beautiful. It is futile to pretend that beauty is not social currency, that it is not power. I cannot act like I am above choosing it. I chose beauty; I still do, still will. I know I cannot be ugly in peace, even if I cannot be beautiful in peace either.

I immediately thought of the internet. In this digital age, we turn to it to solve every problem. The internet is extraordinary. It makes everything accessible. All knowledge is at our fingertips. We can achieve unprecedented levels of development. Nobody in the history of humankind has enjoyed this privilege but us. Through the internet, we can absorb information at a rate no human mind was ever even meant to. Why, then, is it not making us smarter? Why are we still getting dumber?

“There’s no single answer… one key indicator is the sharp decline in reading and the world’s changing relationship to how we consume information and media,” Futurism summarised in its piece on the study. Vice added: “It seems there’s other stuff soaking up our attention that isn’t as intellectually beneficial as the stuff we were doing pre-mid-2010s, a time when it seemed like everybody was at least a little bit more into reading than they are today.”

Most of us aren’t reading, even when we can. Reading feels boring. There’s always something quicker, easier, more fun to do. If we aren’t reading, does that mean we’re not interested in knowledge or real learning at all? Of course we learn. We swipe through infographics, watch video essays at 1.5x speed, and write essays on headlines we didn’t read past. We tweet about subjects we barely understand, as though the act of tweeting itself will convince someone, literally anyone, that we know what we're talking about.

We know of things, but rarely understand them. We scroll in a state of pseudo-awareness and call that learning. That’s what Futurism means by our “changing relationship to how we consume information and media.” We're getting dumber because we're not reading, and not learning properly. We're not reading properly because we're getting dumber.

When we do learn, we learn second-hand with summaries, opinions, and hot takes. We rarely engage with information directly. We don’t go looking for it ourselves, we wait for it to find us. We get distracted by whatever discourse is viral, whatever everyone else can’t stop talking about. Original sources are forgotten. Why would we care enough to research, to learn something for ourselves, when a 30-second TikTok explains it all?

Ironically, I found out about the research I’m referencing through my Explore page on Instagram—a Dazed post (with a photo of Zoolander on it) about a Vice headline about a Financial Times headline about a study. By the time it reached me, it had already been diluted, brightened, and reshaped to fit a screen and a modern attention span.

Everybody wants your attention, because there’s nothing else left to capitalise. When the viewer’s attention becomes the priority, meaning takes a back seat to presentation. Information is flattened into consumable content—a product made palatable for an audience too distracted to engage with anything deeper. The internet becomes a stage, all of us merely watchers.

In a culture of performance like ours, it’s only natural to assume the role of performer. Online validation is addictive. We go one step further and stop consuming to learn—we start consuming to perform. All and any knowledge becomes a commodity, something to be flaunted and displayed.

Everybody is projecting an image, a voice, a personality on the internet. The pressure and need to look intelligent eclipses any effort that might go toward actually being intelligent. There are moments when we are so lost in this showcase that we forget what it feels like to simply sit with an idea. Or to think. Our pretence creates the illusion of depth without ever requiring the struggle of true understanding. And we’re all complicit. More and more, we do things just to be seen doing them, rather than for the sake of doing.

We create a self that is always on. Always consuming. Always sharing. We start to see our own lives as fodder for content and other people as performers, not, well, people. The cycle becomes so strange, so performative, that we forget how to simply be. It’s more convenient to consume than to learn. It’s easier to perform than to actually exist as ourselves.

We perform because we’re insecure, and it brings us validation. We consume performances and feel inadequate. Because we’re surrounded by so many people who seem just like us but better, it’s impossible not to compare ourselves to others. To feel like we are less. Everybody always seems so far ahead, it feels futile to even try to catch up. Honestly, if Rayne Fisher-Quann had already written an essay like this, I’d probably delete this entire draft.

This whole cycle, the act of consuming in order to perform, insidiously creeps into our lives until it starts to feel normal. It might seem bizarre or unrealistic from the outside, but this is genuinely how a lot of us spend our time. I started noticing it in my own life when I’d go out with friends just to take pictures to post on Instagram, instead of going out with friends to have fun and maybe taking some pictures to remember it. I remember listening to specific songs on repeat so that my Spotify Wrapped would look good, and other people would think of me a certain way. We’re addicted to consuming. Obsessed with performing. And terrified of being seen for real.

All of this is part of why we resist thinking. Why we avoid reading. It requires a cost we don’t want to pay. We want to avoid discomfort, boredom, solitude, and most importantly, discipline as much as possible. These are things real learning non-negotiably requires that consumption and performance do not. A digital self is constructed through our posts, our playlists, our finstas, our Substacks, which becomes a stand-in for a personality built through real-life intellectual labour. We normalise this constant performance. Romanticise it. It becomes part of daily life. We forget how we were before. And all of this, for what? For whom?

“I only threw this party for you… I was hopin’ you would come through,” Charli XCX sings in party 4 u. Released a few years ago and mostly ignored at the time, it resurfaced recently—suddenly everywhere, playing in the background of everyone’s April photo dumps. I think it’s because we understand it better now. We relate more to the habit of existing only for someone to see us, to like us, to love us. The hyper-specific Instagram highlight. The obsessive checking of story views. The fake accounts for stalking. The hunger for validation. The careful cultivation of a self for consumption, never for ourselves. It’s the only way we know how to live, always performing, even if no one watches. We’re obsessed with throwing the party, even if no one shows up.

I think we have to start throwing parties for ourselves. Reading is not a performance. Neither is learning, or living. The hot girls need to be working overtime to make real reading cool again. Reading needs a new marketing department. It needs a brat summer. We need to stop performing and start reading. Anybody who reads, who actively learns things will promise you, it is actually quite fun. It just has to be personal, done quietly. The payoff? You become a person of substance. You become someone.

It is difficult to be present in our own lives. To be still. We're constantly working, and when we're not, we're always looking for an escape. We are busy. We are exhausted. We are always somewhere else. There is too much to know, too much to care about, too much to fix, too much to do. It is easier to look away. Easier to let the mind go soft.

I don’t think a distracted life built on forgetting is a life at all. I don’t think living such a life is really living. The cost of never thinking deeply—of refusing to learn—is not just ignorance, or getting dumber. It’s the loss of self. To really live, we must read.

Start reading. Read more. Learn something. Let’s get less dumb together. Watch writers perform a little, reader; after all, we only throw these parties 4 you.