In an interview with The Music Australia, Ruel explained that

Probably the most personal song on it is either Hard Sometimes or [the opener] Don’t Cry. Those are by far the most real songs – and all the stories that I tell in those songs are coming straight from me and all my life experiences.

In an interview with The Brisbane Times, Ruel talked about how the song details the intense pressure he’s been under since finding stardom. He went on to explain

“I had my first experience touring overseas and really missing home,” he explains of the lyric. “I was always the centre of attention onstage or doing meet and greets, but as soon as I got to my hotel room it was just [clicks fingers] nothing, and I’m all by myself with my thoughts. It’s definitely unhealthy, those extreme opposites.”

He says he’s prone to over-thinking, and those moments of sudden solitude can set his mind racing.

“If you’re alone with your thoughts for too long, bad things can happen. I start to think about something and make something out of nothing. And I just focus on one thing and think of all the terrible things that could happen from that.”

He’s been developing coping mechanisms, such as leaning on the company of his team a little more.

“Just asking, ‘Do you want to come over to my room and play some FIFA? You wanna do something?’ I just try to spend as little time completely in dead silence as possible.”

The song also demonstrates Ruel’s knowing self-awareness that his life is no longer that of your average teen. A few months ago he was near Kanye West as the rapper delivered his Sunday Service at Coachella; last November he was invited to play alongside Lauryn Hill and Post Malone at the Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival festival, which is curated by one of his idols, US hip-hop star Tyler, The Creator. The lyric “But life just seems to happen right before my eyes” sums up that idea that these abnormal events have become the everyday.

“It’s weird to think that it is normal, even though I know it isn’t,” he offers. “I’m definitely weirdly trying to get used to it.”

In an October 2019 interview with MTV, Ruel said:

On that song, yeah, I was feeling down. I was feeling like I was in the middle of tour and I was just missing my friends a little bit and I just wanted to capture that one, little, small feeling and make it into one big thing because that’s what I like to do so much. I like to take the very small and try making it into something that could be relatable to large amounts of people.