Fii Flora
What have you been thinking about lately?
Finding comfort in my feelings of being lost. Although I have always preached this, emphasizing that being lost merely means you are on your way to being found again, I have struggled with this after travelling all summer and having to come back to reality, as a different person trying to fit into the mold I left behind.
You’re very open and honest on social media, is that something that’s important to you?
This is something that is very important to me. I wrote a piece about this just last year which was published on the Messy Heads online magazine. People like to fabricate their online personas into something really artificial and unrealistic. Of course having a different identity can be fun, and get you a lot of followers or whatever but these personas are hurting so many people. Living in LA, I am surrounded by Internet personalities and let me tell you, their lives aren’t all that their Instagrams make them out to be. I used to scroll through my feeds and cry thinking about how I would never have a face like hers, or a body like theirs, etc. I didn’t recognize the calamity of the situation until my young cousins, not even teenagers yet, were idolizing my frail eating disordered body. It really shook me to have an eight year old telling me how jealous she was of my skin and bones. From then on it was my mission to become as real and transparent as possible on the Internet, sharing my highs and lows and everything in between.
What is your favourite and least favourite thing about social media?
My favourite thing about social media is the connectedness it has given our world and everyone in it. When I was in high school I was constantly being fucked over by people, and I become really lonely and depressed. I found solace in the Internet and being able to make friends through it, and now it’s such a norm to me, that 90% of my friends are ones I’ve made through the Internet. On a less personal level, the Internet helps make local issues, national and even sometimes global. For example, with the Houston flooding occurring, my twitter feed has been flooded with ways to donate, and help, including people putting out their location in order to be found and saved. Although this is a disastrous situation, it is quite beautiful seeing the energy of people across the country trying to help in any way they can. I think my least favorite part of the internet is what I discussed before, these false realities which people look up to. Although I have been able to recognize and separate myself from these myths people create, not everyone can and I have seen first hand the affects that this can have. It is so easy to get caught up in people’s feeds, jealously scrolling through them wondering how they got it all right. It is hard to recognize that what someone posts is not their real life, even if they post 10 times a day.
When and where are you the happiest?
As someone diagnosed with depression, I think I am the happiest person I know, meaning I am quite happy in most places but if I were to have an ideal happy spot it would be: my bedroom, in the middle of a forest, with my soulmates, dogs, and a lot of weed and water. I guess in reality, I am the happiest when I am alone with myself, in my bedroom doing a million things at once. I love giving myself time to just dance around my room and paint, clean, read, smoke and do coursework simultaneously.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Wow, that’s a hard one, and I’m not sure I have a very good answer. I write an advice column and I am too many peoples fake-therapist!
Images courtesy of Fii Flora
interview Hannah Glenn
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