…But hot girls can’t be depressed!

It’s funny—although I am capable of brutal transparency and cringe-level honesty, I never want to come across as depressed.

I’ve spent a lot of time around people who were deeply, zombifyingly depressed: chemically numb, unable to stay awake, much less leave the house for weeks on end. I have been girlfriend to that sort of depression and I have lived through it myself. I know, first- and secondhand, how boring depressed people are. I never want to give off that impression of me. God forbid. Maybe that’s why it cuts me so fucking deep when my own depression suffocates me: I don’t want to be one of those misery-guts zombies.

Even as I’m falling apart, I wear my Clarins, Dior, Chanel, Rare Beauty —a glossed smile. Whichever slim, twist-to-open tube I dig out from the bottom of my designer bag first. If I have things to do, I take Klonopin or dex —usually both— and get shit done in a cute outfit, smelling like Tom Ford Rose Café with an added spritz of the Pistachio Glaze body mist I picked up at the new Bath & Body Works on Oxford Street. (Shops I perceive as American, shamelessly entice and excite me).

Then I come home and contemplate drowning myself in my nightly coconut-scented bubble bath. I remove my makeup with the classic pink-capped micellar water on a cotton pad, close my eyes and lay back beneath the water— holding my breath as I wipe my face clean with my palms.

I never like to make my depression other people’s problem. Even with my loved ones, the people I’m closest to, I try to make it all a joke: laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

And it is ridiculous. I haven’t really left my bed in two weeks. At first this episode was provoked by fatigue and depression after the best, busiest five days I could have hoped for with my favourite flirty Floridian friend. Feeling depressed and exhausted after anything remotely fun is pretty textbook for me. Not my first rodeo.

But then, just as I might have started to feel better, PMDD made its monthly return —bleeding into screaming depression and shouting anxiety, and, you guessed it, more fatigue and pain.

I’ve forced myself outside a few times in the last fortnight to do incredibly simple, basic, short-lived tasks. Tasks so simple that taking a Klonopin felt like overkill. But if I hadn’t taken anything, nothing would have gotten done. A handful of dog walks, a few M&S trips to buy vegan cookies to binge-eat in bed. I haven’t really seen anyone besides the people I pass on my errands.

The loneliness is so loud, self-loathing thoughts are like banging drums. I can’t bear being fully awake, enduring the racket.

So sometimes I take half an Ambien morning and night to stay in a permanent, half-asleep, numb fog. I tell myself this is temporary — and things will feel better when my period resolves. Girl hormones are truly something else.

Next week will be different. I have unmissable things to tick off my calendar —appointments with automatic debit-card fees deducted if I miss them. My hair salon and laser-hair-removal appointments. Nothing makes you feel more alive than zaps to your most intimate areas; the adrenaline rush after pussy laser is a sober girl’s cocaine. My hair appointment should be grounding, too. I love staring at myself in the mirror when the cut is complete, feeling like a new, out-of-the-box Barbie doll. As I’ll be in the area, I’ll head into Camden after for the best vegan pizza London has to offer.

Then I fly to LA —and that will absolutely remind me why I’m supposed to be alive and why life is worth living. I’ll be on cloud nine for ten days —high on life, edibles, benzos, dex— wondering how I could ever have been too depressed to get out of bed for two weeks, how I was in such physical pain from my mental plights that I had to breadcrumb myself sleeping pills just to numb myself all over.

I hide my depression because it doesn’t fit the persona I have spent the last decade curating and performing. Ella is fun, flirtatious, nonsensical: a character assembled from women I worship — Anna-Nicole, Brigitte, Paris, Pamela, Marilyn… Women who turned pain into something larger: sex appeal, activism, legacy. Not just hot blondes, though they all looked stunning with the hair.

I’ve never truly felt like the face I show the world. I cherry-pick my personality from women I admire. Living as them helps me learn how to live as myself. I learned the secretly smart dumb-blonde archetype first from Barbie in childhood; she had so much soul for a plastic doll. Yes, I’m a little crazy, but not in a way that’s detrimental to you —only detrimental to me.

Underneath it all, I’m thoughtful, sweet and “too sensitive.” I love pretty things for the —albeit false— sense of worth they bring me. I may not feel great, but the nine Tiffany diamonds set in platinum on my finger do. Expensive perfumes conjure an aura of specialness and unforgettable-ness. Curated baby-doll, sex-kitten, or chic-cool-girl outfits display the best parts of me —the physical. For the male gaze, my favourite concept I’m perilously told I pander to (which is both true and a misconception): I don’t do any of this for men. It’s damn clear I do it for survival.

My commitment to high heels is a painful statement of devotion to femininity: feet always sore, but also, always manicured. My salon blonde, never too much root to look unkempt, announces that I’m a high-maintenance salon babe, unafraid to drop hundreds every appointment. My laser-smooth skin speaks of a permanent commitment to a forever noughties porn-star body. My natural-but-precise makeup demonstrates patience and an understanding of my own season and colour palette. French-tipped nails, all uniform, make satisfying ASMR tappy-taps when I use my phone.

All these things —and more!— are part of an ensemble that makes the world, and myself, believe.

Where I can hope, I can dream. Where I can dream, I can be happy. You may think it’s vapid, un-feminist nonsense, pushed by pop culture and porn to subordinate women into polished housewifery. Perhaps that is one take.

But it’s also the only salvation I’ve found.