the golden lows

a personal history of longing, proximity and timing

the golden globes have taken place every year i’ve been alive (minus 2022), which i think we can all agree is blake lively and ryan reynolds’ fault. not for any logical reason. just morally. someone had to absorb the blame and they seem like the perfect pair.

over time, i’ve noticed the ceremony coincides almost perfectly with what i now call my golden lows. it seems that every year, as the red carpet unspools and everyone else is debating gowns, seating charts, and whether nicole kidman looks transcendent or botched - i find myself in a quiet internal decline - that kind that doesn’t announce itself, but gently dismantles you from the inside.

pretty, shinny things

the globes are not the cause of my lows - that distinction matters - but they’ve always provided the perfect lighting for them. glossy. comparative. national. a shiny backdrop against which my brain could run its oldest, most reliable, tired programming.

i’ve struggled with my mental health for as long as i can remember. binge eating showed up early - around age seven - and comparison followed quickly behind it. longing to be someone else became reflexive. dissociation became a skill. fantasy became both protection and escape - a way to exit my body without technically leaving the room. if i could imagine another life vividly enough, maybe i wouldn’t have to feel the one i was in.

most years, that sunday has looked the same - me on the couch, watching people be publicly affirmed while i remained privately unremarkable. wanting to be someone else, somewhere else. or at the very least, wanting proof that there was a version of me that made sense in the world. someone legible. someone finished.

celebrities function like the popular kids in high school, except instead of a cafeteria it’s a red carpet, and instead of gossip traveling by word of mouth, it travels at the speed of the internet. they somehow unite the nation. even people who insist they “didn’t watch” know exactly where kylie jenner was sitting, what she wore and how she and timmy kissed tenderly after his win. it gives everyone something to talk about - a shared language, a low-stakes intimacy. a distraction that briefly passes for connection.

the irony is that i know these shows are not what they appear to be. they are long. hot. uncomfortable. a real zoo. everyone is hungry, thirsty, hyper-aware of their posture, and silently counting the minutes until they can leave and visit a drive-through. my father always avoided them entirely. refused to attend, to watch - as if proximity alone might contaminate him. he wasn’t wrong.

i know realistically that i would hate being there. i don’t want the crowded room, the hot lights, the noise or the performance of gratitude, but when i’m in a funk my mind doesn’t crave the reality. it craves what the night has come to symbolize - belonging. permanence. proof that i exist in a way that can’t be revised or forgotten.

this year i didn’t even watch and still, i was deep in it. a depressive funk so thick it felt atmospheric - lonely, dark, viscous. the kind of sadness that rearranges the furniture in your brain and leaves you pacing, wishing for something else without being able to name what that something is. i didn’t need the golden globes on my tv to feel it, my body remembered the timing on its own.

when i was fourteen, i spent one golden globes night eating bowl after bowl of cold soba noodles with tahini and hoisin sauce. the food choice alone should have prompted an intervention. i kept eating until i threw up. it wasn’t about the show. it wasn’t even about food. it was part of a years long pattern of trying to quiet something unnamed and feral. the globes just happened to be on, flickering in the background like a laugh track to my own undoing.

another year - much earlier - i ate an entire industrial-sized tub of frozen peanut butter cookie dough. the kind sold by elementary school kids fundraising for something wholesome, like new uniforms or a field trip. not baked. not shared. frozen, straight from the freezer. every rushed bite was a way of stuffing away pain, shoving feelings back down before they could surface. and with every bite came more self-loathing - accruing interest, compounding quietly.

that wasn’t indulgence. it was maintenance. it was survival. it was how i got through the night and many nights like it.

my binge eating lasted for years. it appeared on plenty of unremarkable days and evenings that had nothing to do with awards shows or red carpets. the only reason the golden globes stand out is because of the contrast they offered so effortlessly - abundance, beauty, elegance, happiness, validation glowing on screen, while emptiness, disgust, sadness, and repetition sat beside me on the couch.

i don’t binge eat anymore. now the night is quieter. there’s nothing to interrupt the thoughts, nothing to blur the edges. just the familiar inventory of where i am versus where i assumed i’d be by now.

the show has always triggered a very specific kind of comparison. not distant or abstract, but uncomfortably close. i knew people on that carpet. friends. acquaintances. people whose lives didn’t feel mythic, just adjacent. close enough that it was easy to believe whatever separated us was a personal failure - some missing quality i never quite acquired. a gene skipped.

there’s a lie my mind tells me in moments like this - that being visible, desired, and publicly affirmed is the same thing as being seen. that recognition offers a kind of safety - a sense of permanence, of being anchored in other people’s awareness. it’s an elegant lie. persuasive. it almost makes sense.

but what i wanted wasn’t hollywood. it wasn’t success or status or a seat at the right table. i wanted to feel loved and liked and part of something. i wanted to feel held without having to earn it. i wanted the sense that my presence registered - that if i left the room, it would be noticed. the golden globes didn’t create that longing. they just happened to air while it was already there.

every year, that sunday arrives and my body reacts before i do. the heaviness. the stillness. the sense that i’m marking time while other people are being marked by it. that’s why i call them my golden lows - not dramatically, just descriptively.

the show ends. the lights dim. the dresses get packed away. and what remains is the quieter truth i keep circling - my depressions been long in motion, always looking for material to keep me in destructive patterns. it didn’t need the golden globes — it just used them. faces, dresses, outcomes, fantasies, a narrative it could weaponize.

my brain has never needed a cause. only symbols. only meaning. and every january, it finds both — dressed in gold, asking to be believed. so thank you to the hollywood foreign press, for the structure and the annual reminder. see ya next year.