“I just felt really f–king ugly the whole time I was sick. I could not look at myself. I didn’t look in a mirror, unless I was putting a contact lens in my eye, for months,” the singer-songwriter shared.
Halsey couldn’t hardly look at themselves while battling perhaps the most difficult health battle of their life.
The singer, who uses she/they pronouns, said at the height of her struggle with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder, all she could feel was “really f–king ugly,” telling Paper magazine in a new profile published Thursday that they couldn’t even look in the mirror.
Per the NIH, Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack healthy tissue, while T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder is an umbrella term for a host of diseases related to the overproduction of lymphocytes, which are a type of white blood cell that help the body fight infection and disease.
“Sorry, I want to say something really heavy and intense. I’m debating whether I should say it or not,” Halsey, who first opened up about her diagnoses in June, began.
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“I just felt really f–king ugly the whole time I was sick. I could not look at myself. I didn’t look in a mirror, unless I was putting a contact lens in my eye, for months,” they explained. “I was just unrecognizable. I didn’t like looking at myself. It was horrific, and it would spin me out.”
The Grammy nominee shared some details about their health struggles in their recently released singles, “The End” and the Britney Spears-inspired track, “Lucky.”
In the former, they sing, “Every couple of years now, a doctor says I’m sick / Pulls out a brand-new bag of tricks and then they lay it on me / And at first, it was my brain, then a skeleton in pain.”
In the latter, they add, “I shaved my head four times because I wanted to / And then I did it one more time ’cause I got sick.”
The musician, 29, went on to tell the outlet that during that time, she found a newfound passion, miniature doll-housing, which has helped her amid some of those darker times.
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“Sitting there and playing with these beautiful tiny [doll houses] was so much nicer” than facing reality, she shared, adding that it was one of their first true hobbies that “no one was going to try and monetize … or exploit.”
“It was something I could do inside, and it was something I could do that was creative, and it was something quiet that I could do when my son was asleep,” she added of Ender, 3, whom they share with screenwriter Alev Aydin.
Since the songwriter “couldn’t go out,” “couldn’t drink,” “couldn’t be in a social environment” and “was home a lot,” it became the perfect activity.
“It was also great for me because I had a really hard time with my motor function. My fine motor skills were not great,” she revealed. “When I was sick, I couldn’t even open an envelope, or peel a sticker off a thing; [miniature doll-housing] required me to be focused and meticulous with my fine motor action, which I really wanted to retain.”
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Halsey, who previously admitted that they nearly lost their life to their diseases, said that while the pastime served as a release, she also got a bit “obsessed” with doll-housing.
“I started building furniture from scratch, and then making my own wallpaper,” they confessed.
She continued, “I guess it’s actually kind of dark when you think about it, because I was making these tiny parallel worlds, because I really didn’t want to be on my own, which is so heady. I definitely think that was a part of it.”
