This week, Larissa Pham wrote about growing up in a family that never spoke of mental illnesses. Read that and other essays from Pigeons and Planes, The Cut, Jezebel, and more.
"I Watched My Ex Fall in Love With Someone Else on Facebook" — BuzzFeed Ideas
Kirsten King wrote a too-real essay about watching an ex move on via Facebook. In it, she remembers the break-up and the months of self-inflicted torture that followed. "I saw their relationship go the places ours had gone and to places it had not," she writes. Read it at BuzzFeed Ideas.
Maritsa Patrinos / BuzzFeed
"Discovering My Blackness Through Nirvana" — Pigeons and Planes
In a poignant essay for Pigeons and Planes, Elijah Watson recalls a childhood spent listening to Nirvana and pondering questions about his identity. Paying tribute to Kurt Cobain, Watson writes, "I became uncomfortable in my own skin, trying to adapt to a type of blackness that wasn’t my own. But Cobain made me feel all right with myself." Read it at Pigeons and Planes.
"All About Me" — The Hairpin
Anupa Mistry wrote about the years she spent hating the way she looked — and when she later realized that insecurity is just a state of mind and not an actual existence. In an essay inspired by a tweet from Earl Sweatshirt and Kim Kardashian's Selfish, Mistry explains beauty privilege and how Kardashian's book of selfies actually displays a whole lot of security and ballsiness. Read it at The Hairpin.
Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
"We Don’t Talk About Mental Illness in My Family" — BuzzFeed Ideas
Mental illnesses were never something Larissa Pham's family spoke of. It wasn’t until Pham mentioned her depression to her my mother that she finally found a family member to confide in. "We tamed that wild fox together. It didn’t make my depression any easier, but at least it was a pain we could articulate," she writes in a devastating essay for BuzzFeed Ideas. Read it at here.
Jenny Chang/BuzzFeed