Catfishing my way...

Dear Flawsome human,

I have had more blank days than the days that made sense. The definition of days that make SENSE is inconsistent for everyone. For me personally, as a multipotentialite, it is very easy to either get anxious with the unknown or too comfortable with the known so much that it stops exciting me.

It's like learning to jumprope, first you learn how to hold and swing the rope, then you learn to jump with just one leg and eventually with both your legs literally jumping. Till you get to the point where you can jumprope maybe a 50 times until you keep on breaking your own record of maybe 3000 jumps. I think this mindset of doing better with time comes with the colonial way of education and India does have a dark history.

When your work is on the social media, the pressure to perform alone is so high that the pressure to perform better often throws the introvert in me in the vicious cycle of performance anxiety. It took me a while to accept what it was, but my therapist is a sweetheart she makes sure to slip one or two new terms every month to make me realise how fucked up I really am. Whatever my past was, it surely is affecting my present and if you know anything about anxiety, you know it has a lot to do with the fear of the unknown aka the future.

Your experience with the fear of being not enough or perfect is going to be totally different. But know this for sure that it comes with a thought. A thought about what you think about what you want and what you need. A thought about what the society or the industry expects you to do and what you really want to do . When your reality and your ethics are different there is often a clash. If you have the courage in that moment, you clash with the external forces, and if you lack the courage the one who's gonna get affected or rather wounded is going to be you or should I say your inner child. Because in the end your creativity has everything to do with your inner child.

I am a Taurus women, therefore it's my birthright to be stubborn. But then again I am an INFP and my ethics are way more important for me than how I earn my vegan butter and bread. The homemade strawberry jam on the bread is not that I am a dusky skinned unmarried mother to a girl child in a patriarchal country it is that I am a survivor of many things like childhood sexual assault, childhood abandonment, physical assault, PMDD, PCOS, just to name a few. So my mental and emotional frequency is pretty messed up. I have "daddy issues" like all the men in my life made sure to show me a middle finger before they decided to leave. And keeping that still healing part of my life away from my work life is not easy especially when you work from home and you are the boss of you. Right now I would sell my kidney for an assistant who would just remind me to water my plants and myself. But then again with the amount of medicines I take every month, I wonder if there at all is a kidney or liver even left.

In short, I have been struggling with life for a really long time now. Especially with the fact that I cannot stand silly brands wanting me to follow their script about their DUH products. The work that I do is not fun now. I hate this fake pretentious version of Instagram where the pressure to look and feel aesthetic all the time is real. Even when all the body positive and mental health supportive creators around. Every one of them is doing the same shit for the same brand. And I know you might call me "Privileged" to even talk about it that way, I am in some ways. But when it comes to financial privilege I have none. I am a single mother who does 5 jobs so that she can raise her daughter. You might think I am silly for not shutting up and following the herd.

I really tried ok? Keeping aside my ethics and whatever shit that goes in my mind I tried to do what was expected of me. But then there came a point where I just couldn't. I cannot influence another woman to buy a carcinogenic product or a hormonal imbalance causing sunscreen. For ducks sake she is a human being not some number on a statistics sheet. Your 500 rupees product can make her lose her life by cancer or she might want to take her own life due to depression that hormonal imbalance brings.

I tried playing the customer is the king/queen game for a while. Well that's how I convinced myself for almost 2 years even when every cell in my body asked me to do otherwise. I tried to shut my thoughts by saying well they must be reading the ingredients list before purchasing. People these days are woke you know they know everything. Even while knowing the common sense ratio of an average Indian I was lying to myself to the teeth.

Well here we are, not working with brands at all till I figure out how to be a responsible person and creator. Because believe it or not, I am not walking into the same shit again after getting my feet soiled in it. It had to stop two years ago and but it has finally stopped today so I am going to try to not be guilty about it and find my own way on this journey. Because that is what was causing my anxiety. The guilt of being a catfish.

I can never not make content. You will always find me writing, clicking photos or making video on the Internet at least a few times a month. If not that you will find me reading books on Wattapad or hand making jewellery. But for now I have to continue this break for the sake of my sanity and forgive myself for being who I chose to be. That shit's real and heavy.

Thank you for reading my random thoughts. Hope it was not a complete waste of your time.

With Love,

Harshala🧸