Lili Reinhart is getting candid about her personal struggles amid one of those “intolerable” days.
The Riverdale actress has been open about her mental health journey with fans. And in an Instagram Story on Sunday (May 16), she got real about her “exhausting battle” with depression for the past 11 years.
“Some days I feel really defeated by my depression. It’s an exhausting battle that I’ve been fighting for 11 years and some days, like today, it can feel intolerable,” she began.
“This is a reminder to my fellow warriors that it’s okay to have days where you don’t want to fight anymore,” she added.
After opening up about her own personal struggles, Lili offered some words of encouragement for fans who may also be struggling.
“You don’t need to justify your mental health to anyone,” she continued. “Prioritize yourself when needed, take time to rest. Surround yourself with good people and high vibrations.”
She went on to explain her philosophy: “But remember you are always worth fighting for. And tomorrow could be such a beautiful day.”
Lili has previously revealed that she’d been struggling with anxiety since she was 13.
“Every day, in my eighth-grade year, I would cry in the morning,” she opened up to author Sylvester McNutt III last July, adding, “I would pretend to be sick to my mom. I did not want to go to school. I did everything in my power to not go to school. I hated it. It caused me so much anxiety.”
In a September 2020 interview with Nylon, she also got candid about her struggles during quarantine amid her split from ex-boyfriend Cole Sprouse.
“At the beginning of this pandemic, I felt very lost. I felt very sad and hopeless, because of personal things that were happening in my life. Instead of distracting myself, f–king random people and doing drugs and drinking my problems away, I chose the harder route, which was to not distract myself,” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m not doing that. I’m going to go through the next however many months of s–t, pure s–t, awful, crying every day, but the necessary work.'”
“I’ve been through some s–t, the last year, a lot of loss,” she added. “I needed to learn self-love, basically. It’s a very hard thing to do. How the f–k do you love yourself?”
She also talked about feeling like a “prisoner” when they started filming Riverdale in Canada again.
“I genuinely feel like a prisoner, going back to work, because I cannot leave Canada,” she expressed. “That doesn’t feel good. You can’t go home for Thanksgiving, can’t visit your family. No one can come visit you unless they quarantine for two weeks. It just feels f–ked.”
However, being with her castmates again allowed her to form a stronger bond with co-stars Camila Mendes and Madeleine Petsch who, coincidentally, had gone through breakups around the same time. And they had each other to lean on during the pandemic.
“We all got out of relationships at the same time and then went through this pandemic together,” Camila reflected in an interview with Paper Magazine in April. “And now we’ve been bonded by how much change has happened. Me, Madelaine and Lili, specifically, we’ve never been closer than we have this season.”
