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Miss USA 2019 Cheslie Kryst's heartbreaking memoir reveals her struggle with depression before tragic death
Despite having a successful career, Cheslie Kryst always had an "unshakable feeling" that she "wasn't good enough" and that she "didn't belong" here.
Cheslie Kryst, who was crowned Miss USA 2019, died by suicide at the age of 30 on January 30, 2022. A recently published memoir that she penned before her death, By The Time You Read This: The Space Between Chelsie’s Smile And Mental Illness, reveals the pain she went through right before taking her own life.
The memoir co-written by Kryst's mother, April Simpkins, also highlights that the Miss USA crown was suffering from imposter syndrome and high-functioning depression.
According to People, Kryst wrote a note to her mother before her passing. In the note, she mentioned her final wish which was to publish the memoir she had been writing. In the published memoir, the mother also spoke about her experience of coping with the terrible loss of her daughter.
Despite having a successful career with a law degree and an MBA, Kryst always had an "unshakable feeling" that she "wasn't good enough" and that she "didn't belong" here.
Kryst faces trolling after winning Miss USA crown
She was unable to bear the pressure that accompanied fame and success, as per the memoir. The worst thing was the abuse she received shortly after taking home the 2019 Miss USA title.
"Just hours after my win, I had to delete vomit-face emojis that a few accounts had plastered all over the comments on my Instagram page. More than one person messaged me telling me to kill myself," Kryst wrote while reflecting on her Miss USA win.
She further stressed that the hostility she experienced on the social media platforms exacerbated her preexisting fears and sparked her imposter syndrome.
Highlighting her long-standing insecurities, Kryst said she started thinking that she did not deserve the 2019 Miss USA title and everyone around her “knew more than I did”.
On receiving media attention, Kryst said she always "felt like a failure", despite suppressing her anxious thoughts or feelings of inadequacy during her interviews.
“Winning Miss USA hadn’t made my imposter syndrome go away. Instead, I was waiting for people to realize I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing. I’d perfected how to deal with that feeling in competition or in small doses— I could compartmentalize anything in short bursts. I’d immediately focus my thoughts on positive statements of power, but that only lasted for so long,” another excerpt from the memoir reads.
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Kryst's last message to her mother
The memoir also described the terrifying moment when Kryst's mother found out that her daughter had killed herself. Before her death, she texted her mother, saying, "First, I’m sorry. By the time you get this, I won’t be alive anymore, and it makes me even more sad to write this because I know it will hurt you the most..."
The mother said that her brain couldn’t register the words on her cellphone's screen, adding that she kept reading the text again and again and “screamed from a place in my soul that I didn’t know existed.”
