Four pictures on my personal Instagram account brought about a wave of hurt and an unwanted confirmation.
I’ve never felt fully comfortable being 100% myself around my family (something I talked about in Being in a Closeted Blogger), which always brought about feelings of not being accepted and pure loneliness at family gatherings.
When I posted these four photos, the feelings resurfaced with full force.
Here’s the thing: It was all a joke. I captioned these pictures “gluten maternity shoot” because whenever I eat pasta, my stomach gets so bloated and round that I look like I’m having a baby. There’s a serious chance that I have a gluten allergy or something, and that’s simply what these pictures are showing but in a way that is totally Jamilah.
For people to discuss these pictures [I know the vaguest of what was said. I don’t even know who said what, but I am betting the small change in my bank account that it was people in my family that I A) am not blood related to or B) don’t talk to anymore], it shows that they don’t know me. They don’t know my sense of humor, my natural reaction to food.
They don’t know hardly anything about me. That’s been a dwindling thought in the back of my head for a while now, and it’s been reaffirmed.
On the morning after the pictures were posted, I received a text with phrases like “You may want to rethink what you put on social media” and “make sure you’re making good choices.”
Then I proceeded to cry and scream-rap the first few lines from “Tyler Herro” by Jack Harlow: “The ones that hate me the most look just like me/You tell me what that means/Make a slick comment and see what that brings.”
Those lyrics never hit as hard as they did in that moment; now I know why I gravitated to that song immediately.
With this instance, I’ve learned I must continue to keep my passions private, and I guess I’ll still be lonely in a room full of people, even if they’re my family.
Because of this whole thing, I deleted my personal Instagram account.
I only accept acceptance in the spaces I create.
