On paper — and online — I look like I’m OK. More than OK, actually. At 21, I’ve built the kind of life some people spend years trying to create: I’m at an HBCU. I’ve had internships. I’ve been published across editorial platforms, worked as a content creator and brand ambassador, organized a book signing for a New York Times bestselling author, and started building my own media agency. If you were to scroll through my social media, you would probably think I have it all together.
But the truth is, success and feeling OK are not the same thing — and I’ve been learning that in real time. What I’ve learned is that when you become the “high-achieving girl,” people stop asking questions: Success gets read as stability. Visibility gets read as wellness. Constant output gets read as proof that nothing is wrong.
That assumption is not always true, especially for Black women.
And for a long time, I let that “happy and successful” version of me speak for everything else. I let it answer the “how are you?” texts. I let it fill in the gaps. I let it be enough. But now, as someone with high-functioning depression, I’m realizing that it isn’t.
My depression does not always look like what people expect it to look like: It does not always look like disappearing. It often looks like showing up anyway.
Black women are often among the most active users of mental health services, yet we are still significantly less likely to receive consistent, culturally competent care. According to Johns Hopkins, only about 50% of Black women with mental health conditions receive treatment, compared to higher treatment rates in other groups. Additionally, research from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities shows that health inequities are shaped by “a complex mix of social, environmental, and structural factors.” We experience higher rates of chronic stress, anxiety, and depression, yet are more likely to be misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed completely, often because of stereotypes that frame us as “strong” by default. Strength becomes expectation instead of humanity.
And that expectation follows us everywhere.
My depression does not always look like what people expect it to look like: It does not always look like disappearing. It often looks like showing up anyway. It looks like deadlines met, emails answered, outfits planned, content posted, conversations had, and laughter given. It looks like functioning so well that no one thinks to look deeper.
This is the invisibility of high-functioning mental health struggles: When you are still performing, still producing, still achieving, your pain becomes harder to name — and easier for others to ignore. You become the person who is “doing amazing, sweetie,” even while internally barely holding things together.
When you are struggling, it does not always translate. Sometimes, it does not even feel like it counts.
This is especially true for Black women navigating spaces where we are often celebrated for what we produce, but not always held in what we feel. We are expected to be resilient, composed, and endlessly capable — even when our internal worlds are anything but stable. So when you are struggling, it does not always translate. Sometimes, it does not even feel like it counts.
The question becomes: how can you be depressed when everything about your life looks like it is going right? The truth is, achievement does not cancel emotion. Productivity does not erase pain. Visibility does not guarantee being seen. As Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
And maybe that is what this comes down to — the silence. The way pain can exist in plain sight but still go unnamed because it does not match what people are willing to see. The way high functioning struggle becomes easy to dismiss. The way strength becomes a mask instead of a truth.
Mental health doesn’t just show up in the obvious moments. It lives in the in-betweens — in the smiles that look convincing, in the routines that never break, in the people who keep showing up no matter what they’re carrying.
There’s not enough conversation around what it means to keep going quietly — being high functioning and still hurting, being surrounded and still feeling alone, being the girl everyone assumes is OK when she isn’t. Awareness is not always visible. Struggle does not always announce itself.
But, you do not have to look broken to be struggling. And you do not have to prove your pain for it to be real. Mental health doesn’t just show up in the obvious moments. It lives in the in-betweens — in the smiles that look convincing, in the routines that never break, in the people who keep showing up no matter what they’re carrying. And awareness, real awareness, means paying attention to that too.