On oversharing, telling lies & Britney Spears concerts

When I was a kid, I rarely told the truth. Instead, I told these strangely elaborate and overzealous stories. One day at school, I convinced my friends that my dad was coming to pick me up in a helicopter to see Britney Spears in concert. We were about eight years old. I was dusting the dirt off my knees while they looked at me with their eager eyes. I had fallen while jump roping again. A tiny pebble had made its way into the abrasion from the day before. I picked at the scab while telling the story I crafted for my friends. I was a clumsy kid and an even clumsier storyteller.

"My dad is playing with Britney Spears now. Keyboards. There's a show tonight. I am going after school," I said. The pebble fell onto the ground. I stood up from the step and walked towards the center of the playground. My friends hung onto every word.

"Your dad is playing with Britney Spears now?!" Christina asked. Her glasses magnified her blue eyes and beads of sweat trickled down her brow. 

"Yup!" I said, half believing my own construction.

When the end of the day neared, they asked where my dad was. I said that he was running late and that the helicopter would be arriving shortly. It would land on our elementary school playground next to the tetherball court and handball wall. I could see it in my imagination vividly. I could see Britney Spears asking me to join her on stage. "Why?" you might ask. I still don't know. But my eight-year-old imagination justified going on stage with Britney. I was starting to get really excited to meet Britney Spears.  She seemed really sweet. So I waited. My friends waited with me. We had never flown in a helicopter before, much less known someone who was flying in a helicopter to see Britney Spears in concert. This was a big deal.

The helicopter never came. Eventually, I told them I had lied when I saw my dad approaching the entrance of my school. 

“Why did you lie?" Christina asked indignantly.

"I don’t know. It was just more interesting," I replied and ran to my dad. He and I walked towards his car together. It was a black Jeep. He had taken down the doors and the roof because it was hot in Los Angeles. I could feel the wind smack my face as we drove down Melrose Ave. But it was not a helicopter at all. It was just me and the stories I told myself that allowed me to fly.

Growing up, I did another form of lying. I had a knack for making friends with anyone anywhere all the time. I wasn't shy. I spoke to bus drivers, neighbors, my parent's friends at dinner parties. I was a performer. I was opinionated even though I didn't understand a thing I was saying. But the grown ups around me seemed to like it. They seemed to approve. But I wasn't ok.

The first time I can recall feeling depressed and anxious was on my twelfth birthday. I can't tell you what brought it on. But it just felt like emptiness. It happened suddenly. I remember clearly thinking, "This can't happen again. This is bad. This is very bad." Then I started having anxiety attacks and I went to the hospital, missed school, and I told my mom that something very terrible was happening to me. I was dying. "I AM DYING, MOM!" I screamed. She looked at her daughter, the storyteller. "My uvula is broken, I will choke on food and die," I reasoned. I was the kind of kid that knew what the punchbag-like thing in the throat was called. And also the kind of kid that doubted that my brain was giving unconscious signals to my uvula to do its job. I doubted myself all the time. So on my twelfth birthday, I read "The Outsiders" in my mom's bedroom and I cried thinking about how empty I already felt. Even though I felt this way people told me otherwise. "Amor, you’re so happy. Amor is always laughing. Amor is always having fun." I thought I had to be this way, because the way I felt inside didn't feel right. The way people saw me seemed better than the truth. 

In high school, I told more lies. I didn’t tell anyone that I had depression and anxiety and that I wanted to die. No one would have ever guessed. Not the way that I told stories about how fine I was. Not the way that I pretended everything was fine and how I had all these plans for my future. I wanted to do a lot of things. But what future when I felt like death? 

In the years since, I have been very vocal about my mental health. I've been honest about relationships I've been in. I've written stories that are now hard for me to read and even harder for me to talk about. But I think years of telling stories has made me feel a compulsive need to be honest, almost to a fault. However, this has come with consequences. Sometimes I fear that I've lost the chance of having people in my life because they don't want to be used as writing material. Which makes sense. However, I used to think that it made me a better artist. It made me feel like no life experience would pass me by without it being transformed into a story that would be immortalized once it was written. But now I have grown to hate this compulsion. I find myself wanting to hide the words away and keep the stories to myself. I have been deleting a lot of things lately. I've erased many stories and the pictures associated with those stories.

Yesterday, I wrote about depression in an Instagram caption. I wrote it because I felt like I had to and I felt like I had to tell everyone. It always starts this way for me. So I frantically wrote the post in the Uber on my way to my other job. I edited the caption in the break room, put on my apron while the post uploaded online for you to read. Then there it was- the performer telling her story of pain. As soon as I posted it online, I felt the pang of fear. My hands started to shake. I feared that people would take it the wrong way. Because I didn’t want to upset anyone; I didn't want to annoy you. 

“There goes Amor droning on about her depression again," I imagined you saying.

And I didn't want anyone thinking that I needed help. Maybe I do, but I didn't want you thinking that. And I didn't want you thinking I was brave either.

Truthfully, I don’t know how to keep this going most of the time. I suppose I wanted to write about what it felt like to be me. That’s the only thing I can do. If I only have one life, one tiny space in this moment of this world then I want to be truthful. I wanted to say how I have been trying. I have been fighting more than ever to feel ok. I have been trying so hard. But it hasn’t been working very well. People seem to think I am doing well. Maybe I am, maybe I can't see it because I'm swimming in the waves by myself. In any case, I wanted to write about how lonely it has felt, how creating stories has been my way of making up for feeling this sinking feeling.

I deleted the Instagram post. Because I don't know what version of myself to be for you anymore. I am still learning to navigate the waters of how much of my personal life will inform my art, how much of myself to put online for you. I have been vacillating between two extremes my whole life-telling you nothing and then telling you everything.

I know that I don't want to give you all my secrets anymore. Not that anyone said I had to. I want to tell you the truth. I really want to, but I made a mistake. 

Some things are just for you. Some stories are just yours. And I think I finally got that.