On January 30, I went to bed following some tragic news. It was reported that the 2019 pageant queen Cheslie Kryst had died of suicide. Before I really dug into the story, one thing was abundantly clear. There was a subtext to this discovery. I found it underneath a friend’s post on Twitter talking about the importance of mental health and why we shouldn’t be afraid to reach out. Not fully understanding the situation, I reached out to her and shared my agreement. Through the brief exchange, the conclusion was reached that if I ever felt alone and depressed that she would be there to listen. To say the least, it was an incredible feeling to have that door open.
It is difficult to provide any great insight into Kryst as a person. Before this evening, I wasn’t aware of her achievements. I hadn’t known that at 28 she became the oldest Miss U.S.A. winner, or that she was a fairly accomplished lawyer. In some respect, this knowledge isn’t likely to make me any more interested in beauty pageant culture nor will I be decrying any of the practices. I’m aware that there are standards for successful women like her that I have never been scrutinized with. I can’t imagine what all they were, but I will say that in doing research on her life I discovered something else that felt painfully real.
Somewhere in the familiar exchanges of grieving loved ones was a link to this Allure article called “A Pageant Queen Reflects on Turning 30” that she had written in March 2021. On the one hand, it’s a boilerplate paranoia about growing old. Socially, one’s 20s are seen as the peak of their vitality. Everything that is deemed relevant will happen in that decade of your life, regardless of if you live another 80 years. It’s the type of pressure that is seen everywhere, where even Kryst’s Miss U.S.A. win lead many to argue for age restrictions. When she reflects on this moment and said, “I cringe,” it felt like a familiar feeling. Even for someone as accomplished as her, the stigma around 30 is a painful hill to climb.
For a lot of reasons that I cannot understand, I notice the ways that she writes about pain in her prose. It comes from the familiar ticking clock analogy that our usefulness is running short when we’re 29. We only have months and weeks left. Again, I cannot speak to what she’s accomplished since March 2021, but what I can guess is that she was overwhelmed by pandemic culture, the lingering sense of inequality, and a potential sense of isolation. What can be achieved when the world is uncertain of how it’s going to reach November? There’s so much death and negativity in the world that for someone who is struggling with mental health it can be too much.
I think that I responded to Kryst’s death not so much because it was a suicide but because of how on some level I understood it. To preface, I do not believe that anyone outside of the individual person can fully understand what draws a person to suicidal behavior. While they can be clairvoyant about the matters, mental illness can be dangerous if not properly treated. In modern times when hospitals are overrun and stepping outside can be risking life or death, what security is there in the fool-proof systems? Even the face-to-face interactions being replaced by Zoom calls feels like it can be an accidental step into dissociation behavior.
But I notice Kryst’s behavior because there are aspects of her journey that felt like mine. I turned 30 in July 2019. Back then, it felt like business as usual. I had just gotten my A.A. in English (with Honors) and the plan was to just continue with the B.A. program. Dominoes fell and long story short, it would be another year before I was accepted to any university. Even my plans to start 30 on a productive note felt shortsighted because, by December 2019, the pandemic was moving into full swing, and living through those early days is only slightly less of a nightmare than the prolonged months of not knowing what next month looks like.
As someone who is overtly sentimental about aging, I was aware of what turning 30 meant. While I had been an adult for a decade, it was a period of moving from the primal demographic to a slightly less desired one. What had I shown for those years but a largely independent writing career that is all dependent on how I feel on any given day? The effort to push forward and maintain even the physical energy was waning. You become less jaded as you reach 30, finding yourself realizing how quickly you’re about to be closer to 50 than high school graduation. Again, the ticking clock leaves you wondering just what any of this means.
Some days it leaves you disappointed, realizing that you never amounted to your true vital self. Reading Kryst’s post, I am reminded of how she commented on what it meant to actually achieve goals. Who was she trying to impress by taking on things that no longer interested her? Even if there was a push towards optimism, the self-criticism was at times scathing and showed someone questioning what their own future looked like. What did she have left to say? Again, I don’t personally know but one thing was clear. In the deserving expansion of mental health conversation, the key point of suicidality is thankfully revealed to not be rooted in one’s success. Those who saw the phenomenal Spencer (2021) will recognize this concept.
But it’s a question I’ve continually asked myself, even needing to open up just for my own sanity. There was something about 2020 where I realized that I wanted to be more transparent, and that means realizing all of the things that I hadn’t been honest with myself about. The Memory Tourist became as much a place where I proudly explored media, but also understood that somewhere deep inside, I was questioning what I even had to say anymore. After an impressive yet exhausting output in 2020, I had found myself no closer to being happy or fulfilled in this project than I was when I started – or barely.
I can’t speak to if Kryst reached out to anyone. Even then, I recognize how difficult that can be, especially with judgment hanging over someone like her. There is a need to succeed. She has a reputation to uphold. Though if you’re not pleasing yourself, then what is any of it for? In a capitalist society that celebrates wealth, the inability to maintain a steady income is enough to make one feel like a failure, where to move fewer units than you did the year before feels like an insult to productivity. The pressure to always be on is there, and I’m confident Kryst experienced it at some point.
I think one of the bigger differences is that Kryst was clearly in a much worse headspace than I’ve ever been. While I felt like a failure through the latter half of 2020 and into 2021, I have never felt suicidal. This isn’t to say that I wasn’t depressed. I self-harmed and have been open about my journey with that. However, there is a level of despair that isn’t understood unless one has been there. It’s the type that in more insensitive circles would be called selfish. It’s that moment where one becomes trapped in a terrible emotion and cannot imagine a life before or after. I’ve been thankful to get out of it. Still being so close to the epicenter scares me sometimes, but right now it’s giving me the motivation to work on myself.
I think the kicker is that for as much as I notice our differences, I still come back to that fact that this was somebody who was turning 30. In theory, she had years of potential ahead of her, and yet the message was clear. She was becoming obsolete, and her perspective was no longer valued.
There are days when I feel that way, albeit on a smaller scale. Because I never had that traction as a creator, I don’t have as many critics of my every move as she did. With that said, the lack of success and perceived downward slope from here only makes me feel intimidated by what the future holds. Can I possibly do better than what I had done? I look at younger creators who have achieved so much by the time I was barely figuring things out (25). Is it just a business mindset or that what I saw as carefree activities are now slowly transitioning from hobbies into financial incentives? I am missing something there, and in some ways, I recognize the helplessness to feel like everything that I worked for has any permanence. More importantly, do I have what it takes to keep up with everyone else if I ever do?
I think the thing that I admire most about the younger generation isn’t so much how more successful they are navigating a digital world, but that they are willing to have conversations that held me back. The idea of mental health is important, and to see pop stars like Billie Eilish or Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka openly talk about it feels empowering. There is an effort to remove the stigma and make everyone feel validated by their experiences. Given what the past three years have felt like (or basically most of my 30s), it’s been a relief. I’ve lived in that isolation and fear, and I know how scary it can be. To see people be validated for admitting it publicly has in some ways made it easier.
It's easy to simply argue “You are not alone” as the feel good buzzwords. Who wouldn’t want to feel that way? The issue is finding a connection that actually is productive and healthy. Given that I’m confident everyone is experiencing some shared trauma from COVID-19, I don’t know if anyone has a great answer right now. The best we can do is listen and give each other a break. With some compassion, maybe we can seek to make positive change. From personal experience, having someone listen to my bad day has helped immensely, even if they don’t do more than an elegantly worded version of “I hear you.”
I don’t know Cheslie Kryst, and yet what I think happened to her is devastating for reasons that go beyond her death. It’s the pressure to feel valued that most people face, and I imagine those in more social positions have it worse. Still, to feel like your life deserves to be over at 30 is a tragic indictment of the message we send to ourselves. It’s been that way for decades now. It’s impacted her and it’s impacted me in different ways. I’m not saying that this would’ve changed the outcome, but I do hope that in the changing of how we frame the discourse we come out of this pandemic (whether it be months or years) with a better view of each other. For some, it’ll be too ingrained from decades of suggestion to ever be that way, but hopefully, we can try to feel valuable in a world that could really use some compassion right now. It starts with opening up. From there, anything can happen.
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