Content warning: talk of bullying and suicide

It’s a book that hosts pictures of only what people want to show you about their daily lives: going to the beach with friends, winning a soccer match. As much as one may hope to fool you, it’s hardly representative of day-to-day life, of both its hardships and moments so beautiful they cannot be captured in a photograph. What is it?

It’s Facebook. It's the yearbook.

Before now, I’ve never really thought about how the social media platform Facebook and the school yearbook are eerily similar. Both seem to be a strange, tacit popularity contest… and really, how is “popularity” decided anyway? It’s rarely talked about but always there, hanging over everyone’s heads. We all submit to the iron fist of popularity in some way or another; even rebellious types seek affirmation from their rebellious friends that they are rebellious enough.

I know, I know: I’m here calling out Facebook while sharing this very article on it. Even my articles, as candid as they may be, are closely edited and designed for my target Facebook audience. I’ll gladly own up to it. The fact of the matter is Facebook (and most other forms of social media) are fake representations of one’s life. Facebook causes me insecurity and anxiety, as I sometimes buy into the notion that everyone’s having a blast in life 24/7 (when I know they really aren’t).

The fakeness of my high school yearbook got me riled up: understandably, as I really hated high school. Of course, the yearbook was completely unrepresentative of everything I disliked about school. It only showed popular kids having a great time. I already knew I would barely be in it, being the bespectacled depressed weirdo that I am. I was thus very tempted to use, “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve” from Lord of the Rings as my senior page quote; my parents wisely advised against it. I instead decided to use a more subtle expression of my unhappiness with school: “But our lives will only ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty”, from Shane Koyczan’s poem, “To This Day” (a narrative about bullying). I just wanted to express a little honesty, is all; give the yearbook an ounce of biting truth, exposing the bullying and the suicidal nights that came with my experience.

Yes, the Chakras: I was going through a hippie phase at the time (highly unaware of cultural appropriation). I blame being from Portland, Oregon.

Ignorance can certainly be bliss, but fakeness can be killer. I’ve always wondered what the point was: if one wants to paint a portrait of their day-to-day life or show the world their experience in high school, why would you only include everything that is great? I’m not calling you all a flock of sheep or anything of the sort: I do it too.

What exactly is my point, here? I don’t really have a point or a thesis. It’s not something that really needs to be addressed: I don’t expect you to post on Facebook about your bad food-induced explosive diarrhea or send in pictures of your ex-boyfriend’s smashed car windows to the yearbook.

It’s just a reminder. This cake is a lie, my friends. Don’t get down on yourself when you’re crying your eyes out and flipping through great experience after great experience in whatever book you happen to be looking at. Everyone has those days and those moments that no one wishes to talk about, and that’s okay.

“The books” make it seem like some people’s lives are just a Hawaiian cruise. In reality, life is a balancing act; complete with ups and downs. It will only ever always continue to be a balancing act: that, hopefully, will have less to do with pain and more to do with beauty.