I am mentally ill, and I have been since I was fifteen. I’ve been correctly diagnosed for two years now and gone through appropriate treatment. Many days are good, far more than before, but other days still feel like walking barefoot over glass and turning around to do it again.

I am lucky in my disability in that I can hide it so well. I excelled in school, passing all of my classes comfortably and taking part in far too many extracurriculars. I had enough friends and got invited to parties or other events. …

It feels like a bad trip, a psychedelic dream. As I can remember it so clearly, looking in the mirror and clutching the fat on my stomach or changing out of a pair of shorts at the way my thighs bunched around them. Photos I couldn’t manage to post on Instagram, as after close examination, they revealed countless impurities.

But now I’m looking at those photos, I’m looking at the proof of how I looked at that age, and all I see is thin. …

To an anxiety sufferer, it can seem crazy to imagine that there are people who don’t feel this way. Who enter social situations with ease and didn’t plan conversations and talking points on the way over. Who doesn’t lie in bed thinking of the worst things that could possibly happen or get struck with terror for no discernable reason?

Do these people really exist? I’ve met some, but I just can’t imagine it, as anxiety has been a black cloud over my life.

If you suffer from anxiety, you would likely do almost anything to reduce it. You should always…

I’ve always been a girly girl.

I hate that term, but for this article, I’ll use it, so that you can understand the point I’m getting at. I’m one of those typical girly girls — the kind that dresses up, puts on makeup, learns fancy braids for my hair, and hangs out with other girls.

Basically, the kind of girl that people now mock and distance themselves from. I’m the type of girl you’re referring to when you say that you’re “not like other girls.” Which, by the way, you need to stop saying, because it’s so misogynistic. But we’ll…

We’re living in unprecedented times, how often have you heard that by now? We could simplify it further if we wanted to. We’re living in difficult times. Or even, we’re living in crappy times.

Because that’s how it feels some days, you want to be positive, and you want to do your part to keep others safe, but that doesn’t mean things don’t affect you. When a lockdown is extended, when another thing gets cancelled or postponed, when the day feels heavy and weighs you down, it’s allowed to affect you.

It’s affecting me. I lost my father a year…

Sometimes you wake up in the darkness; you open your eyes, and you somehow know today is going to be awful, at least that’s what your mind tells you. You might try to shake it off, or you might lie in bed for another hour on Instagram looking at people who seem to have it so much better.

Sometimes the day starts right, until something goes wrong. You make a mistake, bad fortune occurs, or things just aren’t going your way. Small things, the type that many could brush off, but not you. …

My friends banned me from talking about Olivia Rodrigo and the ‘drivers license’ drama. I can’t blame them, as it got to a point where I sent multiple Tiktok videos per day and entered the realm of conspiracy theories.

But I’m far from the only one, and my Tiktok feed confirms it. There is an entire community of people motivated by the ‘drivers license’ drama who consider themselves far too old to be this bothered by it. The “much older” girl that Olivia sings about is years younger than me, and that was painful to realise.

For some reason, we’re…

It’s never easy to recognise how our behaviours can affect others. As humans, we’re designed to be selfish; it’s part of our evolutionary survival. We have to think of ourselves, and so we often carry inflated egos and assume that people appreciate what we do.

But nothing can tear you down harder than a toxic friend. A toxic friend has the potential to do long-lasting damage to your confidence and identity, and we all have known at least one in our lives.

Almost everyone can name a toxic friend that they’ve experienced, which means that it’s likely that some of…