a capstone investigating mental health, overcoming adversity, and reaching self-fulfillment
Vision Statement
Vanity, a virtual novella, surrounds Mei’s trouble dealing with anxiety and low self-esteem as a performer, her interactions with May — a physical manifestation of her subconscious — and her journey toward making the first step to overcoming these mental obstacles. Through this website, my hope is to provide a meaningful story portraying the struggles of mental health, a topic not often explored in popular literature, educate people about mental illness, and provide helpful resources in case viewers or anyone else they know want to learn more or need help with mental struggles.
Vanity is an ongoing project, and chapter updates will continue to come during the coming weeks.
What inspired Vanity?
Inner critics aren’t something new. Everyone has that presence inside of them, always telling them to do better or to work harder. And inner critics aren’t always bad — they push us to be diligent and be the best versions of ourselves. However, for me personally, that inner critic will pick apart everything to the point where I can’t understand what I’m doing well, and I’m working in overdrive to make up for something. The question that inspired this novella isn’t so much a research question but rather something I frequently ask myself: “If I could do something to that critical voice in the back of my head, what would I do?” With that question in mind, the beginnings of a plot came forth.
I know not the only one who struggles with being overly critical of themselves, and I hope that, through reading this novella about a protagonist who can quite literally shatter that critical voice, readers will be able to take something away from her journey and apply the lessons she will learn in self-confidence to parts of their own life.
About the Author
My name is Gabrielle Lewis, and I'm a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park majoring in journalism and criminology & criminal justice. I've always had a passion for creative writing ever since I was 10 years old, and I wanted to use this project — my capstone for Design Cultures and Creativity, one of the programs in the Honors College — as an opportunity to create something focused solely on this passion while also addressing an topic I believe is relevant to plenty of people.