I was lucky to grow up in a loving and prosper-ous home, though you wouldn’t know it from the photographs. Flipping through a family album, you would see, behind my smiles, an unearned world-weariness and an age-inappropriate ennui. There I am, on Christmas morning, age seven, surrounded by presents and parents but appearing, nonetheless, like I’ve just witnessed a human rights violation. There I am again, half a decade later, posing with my little sister, ice creams in hand, grinning but somehow also looking as though I want to die.
This is what I tell friends and doctors, facialists and nutritionists, makeup-counter employees, concerned Instagram commenters, nosy strangers on the street. No, I am not tired. No, I am not sad. I am not hungover or hungry. I don’t have…
