I'm six deep into a bag of mini Daim's. I've not long ordered a twelve pack of Tony Moly facemasks on Amazon. A van driver made a comment about my legs as I walked home today and I flipped him the bird.
Any normal day, I'd be alright with this. Yet as I got back from work, dumped my lunchbox on the kitchen counter and got a glass of Ribena, I felt uneasy. Sad, even. I call myself strategic online. Twitter is where I release my inner monologue, though an edited version. It's full of feminism, Drag Race references, pictures of Jeremy Corbyn and questions about what Kanye West song is the best. Answer - Devil in a New Dress. My Instagram is pictures of my boyfriend, gigs I went to and nice views from a riverside bar in Berlin. My social media presence is me, but a carefully constructed version. Even in my blog, where I've spoken about mental health, I've been careful to not give the game away. So when - after about three minutes after finishing my glass of Ribena - I cried this afternoon, I felt good. I had released something pent up inside me, something I couldn't put my finger on. Ask anyone who's seen me do it, I am an ugly crier. That Kim Kardashian crying meme has nothing on the red faced, puffy eyed, messy haired animal/beast hybrid I become when I cry. And not just when I'm sad. I finished a book and enjoyed it so much I cried. I listened to a podcast with a nice, moral ending, and welled up at my desk. I am a crier.
But today it struck me that, whilst I can admit to myself that the reason I'm always so dehydrated is that I sob so much, that I carefully skirt around the issue when online - somewhere, arguably, I am at my most Hope-like. So why do I do it? I know I'm not the only person. We all have habits of putting forward idealistic versions of ourselves so people who are equally enveloped in their own lives think we're cool or happy. I could skim back to December on my Instagram, and still see the same Louis Theroux screenshots and punny coffee shop A boards I still post now, and I was in a bad place then! But you wouldn't have known that.
What's especially funny to me is my emo days, the period between ages 12 and 15 where I thought I was edgy and cool because I had all the My Chemical Romance albums, watched Kerrang and had seen Fall Out Boy (I wasn't cool, I saw Fall Out Boy with my dad). Back then when everyone had Bebo, Piczo, or if you were especially trendy and your mum let you dye your hair, MySpace. Then, everyone would gladly say how sad they were. It was the DONE thing. I am sad, I am gonna tell you about it and you're gonna say "same". Or maybe "rawr". Where did that go? The days of sharing your teenage angst and emotional complexities on social media via images of Emily the Strange or Pon and Zi illustrations.
This isn't some massive announcement to let you know I'll be tweeting whenever I've had a bad day at work or that I'll live stream with mascara stained cheeks when my favourite jeans don't fit me anymore. This is, as always, a rambling mess of at least one pun (idk search for it) and pop culture references that I hope make some kind of sense somewhere down the line.
But I feel braver now, because having an emotional range that causes me to bray like a donkey regardless of if I'm in a good or bad mood doesn't make me weak. It doesn't make me silly, or childish to be myself, wholly. It makes me myself, and that's something that I'm going to think about later and probably cry about. I'm a brave girl and I cry and that's okay.
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