For many of us, having a career or hobby we’re passionate about is our saving grace during times of hardship. Anonymous blogger Brighton Girl discusses the struggles of keeping up a pretence online when all is not as it seems, and the importance of not giving up.
It’s Summer 2014 and I’m heartbroken – my boyfriend, whom at the time I strongly believe is The One (dear reader, how wrong I was) has ended our relationship. And I can’t fathom a life where I care about moving from my bed, let alone logging into the little online platform I started at the end of the previous year and sharing my heartbreak with anyone who would care to listen.
It will take me some time to realise – nearly six years in fact – but eventually the realisation will dawn upon me that the online space I’ve created for myself in the form of Brighton Girl, will be the very thing that sees me through every hardship I’m yet to encounter.
I was always the first person to throw in the towel on anything that served me well when the going got tough – food, hobbies, my career. In fact, during every breakup I’ve encountered during the history of Brighton Girl, I’ve upped and left my online space; sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a few weeks.
Being a somewhat emotional person who tends to guide her life’s decisions via her heart, rather than her head, I was unable to draw a visible line between my personal life and my career, let alone intertwine the two to a level at which I could actually use my career to help me through the heartbreak, and vice versa.
I’d find it almost like that bittersweet feeling of a hangover; you feel so utterly horrendous that you simply do not care about anything else. Someone could inform you that a global apocalypse was due in 12 minutes time, and you’d simply give a flicker of an eyelid and hold onto your Lucozade Sport tighter.
That’s what devastating heartbreak, in whichever form it comes, does to you; you know that you’ll feel better, and that you shouldn’t let it consume you long term, but in that very moment, you just cannot find it in you to care.
“Do not let this break you” a friend told me back in 2017 when I was barely a functioning human after the breakup version of a Southern Rail commuter train had come hurtling towards me and flattened me outright.
“Take the time you need, but keep your dignity, and don’t lose your mind. You’re smart, he was not the one. Remember that you can help people with what you’re going through”.
It was then that I realised I had something at my disposal that not everyone has during a breakup; I had a community of people into which I could expel everything I was feeling, and use as a cathartic and hopefully helpful platform.
As humans, especially living in the Instagram age of apparent perfection through a phone screen, we like to keep up a pretence that everything
is hunky dory, that we are ‘living our best lives’; jet setting here there and everywhere, living in the most lavish home, having the best relationship and friendships and the most elaborate wardrobes.
We aren’t hardwired to want to share our struggles, to admit defeat every once in a while and tell the world that actually, even if we are posting sun drenched selfies in Mykonos, or attending Paris Fashion Week, or leaping for joy in front of the house we just purchased, that everything else may be falling down around us.
I genuinely believe that my blog has saved me in more ways than one; life, and all the troubles it comes hand in hand with, don’t lessen as such with having this online platform, but you can turn the pressure of keeping up a pretence into something positive.
When you’ve spent eight consecutive days blowing up your friends WhatsApps, it can be a nice release to vent on a completely fresh platform, any which way you see fit. Despite sharing personal stories of illness, heartbreak and hardship on my blog for nearly six years, there is still
an element of fear every time I press Publish.
First and foremost is the fact that when your online platform is your income and livelihood, you begin to wonder ‘How much is too much?’ You don’t want to overshare, but at the same time, oversharing is what many of us have built our online lives on.
The first time I ever wrote seriously about any difficulties in life, rather than in a self deprecating manner, I was petrified that I’d crashed the party. It had all been fun and games, mascara and nights out, and suddenly I’d been the sensible mum ruining the sleepover by saying it was lights out and time for bed.
Alongside that, any self employed person or freelancer knows that financially, you get out what you put in, and unfortunately when your personal life is in tatters, it can affect your professional life in a plethora of ways. Grief, relationship breakdowns and personal issues have been known to absolutely obliterate small businesses, just as they do their owners too. The Digital Age, and the rise of influencers and bloggers has been swift the last few years, and people are almost disconnecting from a lot of what they come with.
They see images, but they don’t connect a person to that image. They see poses and pouting, a new outfit everyday, designer bags, luxurious trips and white sand beaches, and without meaning to, think ‘What have they got to worry about?’. We are all guilty of it, myself included. You see a life of meals out, cocktails, parties and clubs and 4am finishes, healthy bank balances, paid partnerships with global brands and #blessed and you think they must not have a care in the world.
We struggle to fathom that the girl who has a wardrobe most of us could only dream about is losing a parent to cancer; we refuse to believe that the person who seems to be heading to a different dream destination every week is in crippling debt; we can’t understand that the handsome young man posting a highly paid AD can barely get through day to day life after the breakdown of his relationship.
We take things at face value, because if someone doesn’t share their struggles, we assume they don’t have any. I understand, completely and utterly, why someone may not open up. The internet is a scary world, and once you’ve put something out there you can’t take it back. I think many of us assume it’s unprofessional, or that it will be taken the wrong way.
This polished image we give off online may be what is bringing in the work, it may be part of the brand we are building. To admit all is not as it seems is to tear down the image of perfection you may have spent years building.
The thing that many of us have overlooked, is that actually, people love honesty. They want to know it’s not just them who feels like their life is falling apart, that it isn’t just them.
I’ve written about holidays, outfits, meals out, and the best eye creams for the past six years, nearly – but the posts that have received the most outpourings of heartfelt responses, that have connected with people, and that I will re-read in years to come when I’m married with children and laughing with bittersweet nostalgia at my old heartbroken self, will be the ones where I spoke about the breakdowns of my relationships, being diagnosed with an illness, and going through an abortion. Those are the posts that for me, are what having my blog is all about.
It’s a form of escapism, and it’s as much for me as it is for everyone else. Having somewhere to write online when I’ve barely been able to tell Tuesday from Wednesday, and can’t remember the last time I ate more
than a corner of toast, has been the scaffolding keeping everything upright whilst I was being rebuilt.
Not everyone has or even wants a blog or a host of social media platforms; I suppose what I’m trying to say, in the most roundabout way possible, is that when it comes down to it, we all just want someone to talk to.
After nearly six years of Brighton Girl, and many a relationship breakdown, I’ve determined there’s a few surefire rules for getting over it; time, kindness to yourself, and letting it all out. Whether it’s to your mum on the phone, your friends, or on a blog to one person or one million people; a problem shared really is a problem halved.