Let’s Talk About Women | Selena Gomez's darkest secrets aren't hers alone

Selena Gomez’s new AppleTV+ documentary Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me triggered something deep inside me. Flashes of extended periods when I have been unwell started to play in my head like a sketchy reel of disjointed videos. Footage that I had buried in an obscure corner somewhere inside of me, fear that returns each time I fall sick, all resurfaced.

I think about illness a lot. Call it teen arrogance or acute myopia that comes with not having lived long enough, I’d ignored it as if it didn’t exist until I no longer could. I was living on my own in Mumbai in 2018 when my PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) flared up. My menstrual cycle had been irregular and gut-wrenchingly painful ever since I started college. The kind of terrible where it makes it impossible for me to get out of bed for the first three days, where I would bleed for 25 days non-stop sometimes and get so exhausted of all the pain and staining that I’d crouch on the washroom floor howling, too weary to care about the pool of blood around me.

I was working in Delhi when I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2016, doing night shifts one week and early mornings the next, some days putting in over 12 hours, feeding off bread, coffee, roadside lunches, and oatmeal made from milk that did not spoil for 15 days. I didn’t think much of my PCOS since I was told it was as prevalent as one in five women. I was given corrective meds and told to get on with life. So I did. At breakneck speed. I think it was the casualness of my then gynecologist that harmed me more than the cysts that were slowly growing on my ovaries.

Cut to three years later, I was sitting in the posh clinic of one of Bandra’s celebrated gynecologists, waiting for my turn. I had a fat file of reports on my lap; I had come to him for a second opinion after a few weeks of rigorous tests. My chums had never been worse. To add to it, I was falling sick almost regularly as if it were a ritual. Anything could trigger it—an evening out with friends swimming at the nearby sports complex, a long day a work, a fire in the next compound. I was fainting a lot too; each new incident worse than the previous.

After conducting a few invasive tests and prescribing some more, he concluded that along with PCOS, I also had a uterus infection and was at a high risk of cervical cancer. I was 27. He added that I needed to make radical changes in my lifestyle or it was only going to get worse. He asked if I could switch to a job that was less stressful and demanding. I almost laughed thinking how I had to argue with my editor to get a few hours off on a weekday so I could see a doctor.

The hormonal meds made my brain foggy. I gained a lot of weight and lost tufts of hair. My luxuriant, voluminous mane turned into a wiry, spindly mess; patches of my scalp began to show. Emotionally, I’d become unpredictable too. I would break down for no reason. Once solid and invincible, I was reduced to a pulp of nerves and mush. I desperately began looking for joy and meaning in anything I could. Sometimes, I would search hard and still not find either.

Gomez’s film documents six years of her life from 2016 to 2022 when she was battling one health crisis after the other—lupus, kidney transplant, psychosis, bipolar disorder. We are the same age, she and I, and our health woes started around the same time too, derailing our prodigy, diminishing our potential. It’s true, disease breeds disease. It’s an uncontrolled spiral. A weak body is more vulnerable and less equipped to fight back. In my case, PCOS led to uterus infection, and then there have always been mosquito-borne diseases. Chikungunya, dengue, malaria, I have had them all. Dengue, twice. The last time was dramatic. It was in 2019. My mother often says she’d almost lost me.

Ever since then, I’ve developed claustrophobia. And it’s not just related to physical space. A lot of times in stressful situations, I feel the walls closing in on me and I struggle to breathe. In the documentary, Gomez repeatedly talks about it too—the need for her to be able to breathe. I felt one with her like you can only do when you have been there too.

At 185 minutes, the documentary, directed by Alek Keshishian, is as intimate as anything being filmed on camera for mass viewing can be. It borrows heavily from the personal journal that Gomez kept during this time to document her feelings. One entry reads, “My world is so empty, my world is so big and cold. I want joy and hope. Clean air where I can finally breathe. What has been is not what will be.”

I was surprised at how much it mirrored my reality when I was in Delhi and Mumbai meeting celebrities, constantly planning for my next meal, and trying to forge relationships as warm and tender as the ones I’d grown up with. If you read my journals from my time in these cold, lonely cities, you’d find different combinations of words describing this same emotion over and over again.

In the search for joy, hope, and clean air, Gomez travels to Masaai Mara in Kenya where she spends time with the students of a local school for underprivileged children. Jaipur, my hometown, turned out to be my Masaai Mara. I decided to return to my parents, who have a big house with ample space to breathe and be, and hearts that are even bigger.

Towards the end of Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, the singer-actor says, “When you’re struggling with your mental health, the essential part of it is knowing what to do and recognizing that. It’s something I’m not ashamed of.”

“I know it’s a lot, but this is the reality. I found having a relationship with bipolar and myself, it’s going to be there. I’m just making it my friend now,” she adds.

Whether mental or physical, an illness takes you to a dark, isolated place. Sometimes, you stay there longer than you anticipated or can deal with. But that’s the thing, it is what it is. The best you can do is continue walking towards the end of the tunnel, hoping there is one and that you’d get to see light again. Then why not take it a step, a day, a breath at a time? There will be tomorrow.

When not reading books or watching films, Sneha Bengani writes about them. She tweets at @benganiwrites.

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