29/05/2026
It was making me ill on the inside. I’m not kidding when I say I had a lot, a lot of emotions stuck in my body. But when burnout hit me, there was no escaping it anymore. I cried easily when people asked me how I was doing. I got angry really quickly when someone crossed my boundaries. Everything that I had tried to escape, tried to push away came back times 10x.
The only thing that helped? Sit down and feel it. Feeling all that surpressed sadness, the anger or actually more rage, the pain. And in that moment I realised I didn’t want to pretend anymore.
I didn’t want to say I was fine when I wasn’t. I didn’t want to force myself in being positive when I felt really crappy. I didn’t want to plaster a fake smile on my face anymore to make people comfortable.
But showing how you really are in a world where highlights, (toxic) positivity and acting as if you’re happy 100% of the time is celebrated, is something else. I felt weird at first, weak, negative, a bad person, and sometimes still have those moments when I share something vulnerable.
But the more I think about it, the more I feel that life is this beautiful duality of shadow and light, and we can’t have one without the other. Going through a bad day, a rough time is part of that too. I’m not saying that we have to post every mental breakdown we have or share everything of our lives online. But I do think that sometimes we forget what sharing honestly does:
It shows you are human, it makes people feel more seen and heard and less lonely and it creates connection.
The woman with the masks had a lot of people that liked her, that thought she was nice to be around, because she always seemed happy. The woman now, feels much more connected with the people around her, knows that she is not everyone’s cup of tea but also is much happier and healthier then she was back then. And I personally would pick genuine connection over masks any day.
What would you choose?