Bella Poarch reveals shocking photo before TikTok fame: “I felt hopeless”

Bella Poarch soared to the top of TikTok stardom in 2020, scoring the platform’s most-liked video due to her viral lipsyncing clip of Millie B’s “M to the B” — but life wasn’t always sunshine and roses before her rise to online fame.

While names like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae continue to dominate TikTok’s ongoing popularity contest, Bella Poarch became the platform’s poster girl in September 2020, after a short lipsyncing video of hers suddenly went viral.

Lipsyncing to grime artist Millie B’s diss track, “M to the B,” Poarch simultaneously became a TikTok icon and a source of internet ire over the popularity of her relatively simplistic video — and while she’s gained a whopping 50 million followers as a result, she isn’t shying away from her own internal struggles.

On December 27, Poarch shared a deeply personal post to her Instagram followers, which included a photo from her high school graduation. According to Poarch, the picture was taken while she was “50 pounds heavier and at my lowest.”

Poarch went on to explain that, on the day the photo was taken, she “decided to force myself to make changes and do big things with my life” and join the Navy.

• Read More: PewDiePie beats BTS to Most Handsome Face of 2020

“The Navy was the first time I ever felt like I really had a family,” she wrote. “It was the first time I ever felt love and support. Friends would wake me up for therapy appointments that I would always sleep through. Or they would push me to keep going when I would cry my eyes out trying to carry machine guns up the ship steps that weighed as much as me.”

“When I was no longer in the Navy, I felt alone and hopeless again,” she continued. “So thank you for showing up and being there for me. You don’t know how much it means to me to have you here. I want you to know that I’m right here for you the same way that you’ve been there for me.”

• Read More: Valkyrae trends on Twitter after Rust stream comes to abrupt end

This isn’t the first time Poarch has opened up about her struggles with mental health; earlier this month, the star also revealed that TikTok “saved her life,” thanking her fans for their support amid the internal “war” she continues to fight against depression.

Thus far, Poarch’s latest Instagram post has been met with overwhelming positivity from her fans and fellow influencers — a welcome response to being so vulnerable online.