There’s no manual for what happens when your name becomes the story.
When strangers dissect your character, mock your mistakes, and define your worth by headlines.
And if there is a guidebook somewhere, I wasn’t given one.
I found out the hard way that public scrutiny doesn’t just affect your reputation—it affects your sanity.
And mental health, when tested under the spotlight, becomes something far more fragile than I ever expected.
The Collapse
When everything unfolded—the backlash, the headlines, the internet noise—I didn’t sleep for days.
Not in the poetic sense.
In the body trembling, skin itching, breath shallowing, clock-watching kind of way.
I stopped eating properly.
I started forgetting simple things like the day of the week or whether I’d said goodbye to someone.
I couldn’t tell if I was having a breakdown or if this was just what shame feels like when it’s broadcast to the entire world.
Every comment.
Every video.
Every think piece from someone who had never met me but was absolutely certain of who I was—
it all landed like shrapnel.
You can say “don’t read it,”
but when your face is plastered across social feeds, and even the silence feels accusatory,
it’s not that easy.
What They Didn’t See
People saw a headline.
A mess.
A name trending for the wrong reasons.
What they didn’t see was me, curled up on a kitchen floor in the middle of the night,
trying to remember why staying alive mattered.
They didn’t see the moments I’d rehearse phone calls to friends—only to delete the number mid-dial.
Or how often I’d say “I’m fine” because explaining what I felt would only invite more judgment.
Coping Wasn’t Pretty—But It Was Real
I didn’t “rise.”
I didn’t “bounce back.”
I didn’t have a breakthrough epiphany with motivational music playing in the background.
What I had were moments.
Tiny, hard-won moments where I took a breath and didn’t panic.
Where I walked outside for 10 minutes instead of staying in bed all day.
Where I didn’t check social media.
Where I called someone—actually called—and said:
“I’m not okay.”
I found help in unexpected places.
A friend who checked in.
A therapist who didn’t ask me about the headlines, just how I was sleeping.
A mindfulness app that reminded me to come back to my breath.
A notebook.
A walk.
That’s all I could manage at times.
And slowly—not cleanly, not quickly—I started coping.
What I’ve Learned
-
Your mind is not built for mass judgment.
Human beings weren’t made to absorb the opinions of thousands of strangers all at once. It fragments your sense of self.
That’s not weakness—it’s neurology. -
Shame feeds in silence.
The more I tried to hold everything in, the worse it got. Speaking didn’t always help, but being heard did. -
Resilience isn’t loud.
Sometimes resilience looks like making a sandwich. Like washing your hair. Like writing one line when you feel like a ghost. -
Not everyone deserves access to your pain.
I learned to stop explaining myself to people who had already made up their minds. My healing wasn’t their business.
Moving Forward
I’m still learning how to take care of myself.
Some days are better than others.
I still have bad hours, but they don’t stretch into bad weeks the way they used to.
Now I focus on small wins.
Writing something that feels true.
Sitting in silence without spiraling.
Connecting with someone who sees me, not the caricature they scrolled past online.
Mental health doesn’t always get a redemption arc.
But it does deserve honesty.
And this is mine.
Final Thought
If you’ve ever felt like the world collapsed on you—
if your name became a target, your face a meme, your story a weapon—
you’re not alone.
You’re not broken.
You’re just human.
And healing, even in the rubble, is still possible.
One breath.
One step.
One storm at a time.