自用-烘焙

After work, you shop for some groceries – funnily enough, you make food every day but don’t get to eat it, and while everyone thinks you’re a small celebrity, you make just enough money to pay rent and put a hundred or two aside for a rainy day. All you ever do is cook, cook, cook: for TV, for family and friends, for yourself, and still, you find yourself hungry and broke all the time…

...But not broke enough not to buy a new nail polish. Cute bubble pink that you show off when you get home, and your story instantly gets about a hundred likes. Your list of followers is not a thing to brag about; there are thousands of people there, but it’s not like you’re a big name or anything. You’re not a singer or a weather cast girl. You’re just a cook.

The validation you get makes you feel better momentarily: you’re a human, not a zombie, a cute woman, not a depressed wreck. You have a life many would kill for. You shouldn’t even be sad: you have a roof over your head, money in your bank account, you have a job and some cute nail polish on your nails. You should be joyous and proud, not paranoid and tired…

The phone buzzes again, this time with a message. It’s from someone you don’t follow, and you have to go check the message from another folder.

It only says:

There’s no emojis, not even a full stop. It’s just some guy, you shrug mentally, and accept the message without even checking his profile. You’re busy saying thanks to your other followers, mainly friends and a few accounts you follow back, tiny celebrities just like you are. It’s stupid how you have to shower them with your attention everytime they say you’re beautiful or send you a flame or a heart emoji. Can’t they just leave you in peace? You know they don’t mean that. They know you don’t mean the kiss emojis you send them back. It’s all just a stupid social game.

On the weekend, you cave in again and put another pic on Instagram. This time of cute little cupcakes you baked just for the occasion of getting more likes. They have a pink frosting – what is it with the colour pink that has you so obsessed these days? – and some mini sugar hearts sprinkled on top. Fuchsia, of course, to go with your nails as you fake another picture of the happy, adorable life of a perfect little single girl who doesn’t need to be saved from herself.

“I know how to bake, too, you know 😘” you write in the text box before hitting Post.

A message drops in your DMs before even half a minute goes by.