So Sad Today: Personal Essays

by Melissa Broder

But I am an eater who is the worst feminist, probably, because I objectify other women. I compare my body to the bodies of other women. Occasionally, I win. What does it mean to win? It means that my body fits more closely to the bodies of the models in magazines on which I grew up. It means that I am skinnier. It means that I am in some way beyond reproach, or further from reproach. I am terrified of reproach. But reproach from whom? Who is the voice of the reproacher? Does it even exist? Is anyone beyond reproach?

Is there a part of me that knows how to feed herself enough, only what she loves and what nourishes her, and never feel shame or fear if she overindulges a little, because it tastes so good? Did that part of me never exist and must be manifested? Or did it always exist, as it does for the animals, but along the way got buried? How would I even begin to uncover it?

Sorry you are having a really good life and are contented by it: a love story.

I don’t want to be older and wiser, I want to be younger and hotter: a love story.

It takes so little, really. How well do we see someone who we know only for a brief while? How well do we ever see anyone at all? I know too much and I know nothing at all.

There is a large part of me, the committee, that wants to see me dead. If it can’t kill me, it’ll settle for seeing me miserable. It wants me spinning out on what I lack, talking to myself. I don’t know why these forces exist in me that want me to die, I guess I’m just wired that way. But it’s cool that there is this other part of me that must really want to live. I don’t have scientific proof of its existence, and I don’t need it. I’m still alive. So I know it’s there.

It’s weird, you can be “so sad today” and still be scared of judgment. Like, how much mental illness is “acceptable” and how much is going to be “too much”? Someone DMs me, “We convince ourselves that we can own the identity of the anxious or depressed person. Then it sneaks up again.” It’s like, I got this. Then the mental illness is like, No, I’ve got you.

Even writing the word self-love makes me feel stupid. Is anything more bullshit, kale-eating, juice-fasting contemporary American than the notion of self-love? “Be gentle with yourself, you deserve it.” Do I really? My feelings of shame around the condition create a drive in me to overcompensate, overachieve, and never appear vulnerable. These then serve as a catalyst for the condition. I put pressure on myself to perform like a completely healthy person, lest people find out that I am “not okay.” I don’t take sick days. I fear my condition and its implications for my life. I’m like something is very wrong with me and then I’m like what the fuck is wrong with me that I feel like something is wrong with me? None of this is good for the nervous system.

If I’m going to alienate you, I want to curate that alienation. I want to craft the persona that turns you off. I don’t want the real me, my vulnerabilities and humanity, to leak out and make you run. I don’t want to have needs.

Like, what if you found out I am really not okay? What if you knew that I am suffering a lot right now and really scared? Would you flee? I don’t want to find out. So I deflect my vulnerability into humor or “wise platitudes.”

I’m also terrified of other people’s narratives. I don’t want to be perceived as falling apart. Like, it’s fine that I’m frightened of me. But if you are frightened of me, then the problem is more real. I don’t really know how much I am allowed to fall apart. I don’t think I want to find out.

But it took me many years before I realized there was depression underneath the anxiety. They are the flip side of the same coin. I never identified as depressed, despite the fact that all along there was an ocean of sadness, disappointment, hopelessness, and nothingness inside me. I think the anxiety was a coping mechanism; its heightened sensations, as terrifying as they are, were in some way preferable to me than the depression underneath.

My fear among people is that I will be judged for revealing what is going on inside me. I fear others will discover that I am not only imperfect; I’m not even okay. I fear that I truly am not okay. But most people who meet me never know that I am struggling. On the outside I am smiling. I am juggling all the balls of okayness: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, existential. Underneath, I am suffocating.

I know I have an ocean of sadness inside me and I have been damming it my entire life. I always imagined that something was supposed to rescue me from the ocean. But maybe the ocean is its own ultimate rescue—a reprieve from the linear mind and into the world of feeling. Shouldn’t someone have told me this at birth? Shouldn’t someone have said, “Enjoy your ocean of sadness, there is nothing to fear in it,” so I didn’t have to build all those dams?