I have always had a difficult time being content with myself as a person. I used to think this was a personal problem that others didn’t identify with. As I’ve gotten older, I realize everyone struggles with this idea. We live in a world of status updates and profile pictures; where showing the world “who you are” has never been easier. Within a few seconds, we can post deeply emotional sentiments along with explanations about politics and society that we previously would have only shared with our closest friends. It is incredible in so many ways, but in other ways, it can be very misleading. We see our friends post pictures of themselves during their best moments and post statuses explaining what they want us to know about themselves. It is often hard to remember that they are just like us and in between these pictures and status updates. Their lives involve all the same stresses and personal moments that we all share, but don’t necessarily post.

I recently had a very close friend pass away. He had struggled with drug addiction for many years and he had been doing better recently, but addiction can be deceiving. Despite his personal problems with drugs, he was the most charismatic person I had ever met in my life. He could walk into a room and everyone wanted to know him or be around him. His energy was so positive that he made you feel better about yourself. When he passed away, it was one of the hardest days of my life. Although I had imagined it happening so many times before, I never really realized just how much he meant to me. We were great friends for many years. Since he was a few years younger than me, I always fell into that “older brother” role. He always looked up to me, and I could honestly never understand why. I felt like he was a much more unique and incredible person. We had an amazing mutual respect for one another because we were always ourselves when we hung out. We never tried to impress each other, and we both knew all the personal things about each other that make us human.

Many of our mutual friends asked me, “How did he die?” Out of respect for his family, I told them that I wasn’t sure. These friends could not believe that he was dead, and couldn’t believe that anything was wrong in his life. He had a great social media following and he was such a positive person. It made me realize that all those incredibly personal things that he shared with me, he didn’t share with everyone else. They only knew the charismatic, positive person that he chose to project to everyone.

His death made me consider my own life and if I am ever genuinely “being myself” around other people. Do I just project my best qualities, and keep all my worst qualities to myself? I realized that I do project what I want others to see, but I am not sure that it is necessarily a bad thing. Part of being ourselves is living with all the insecurities and amazing situations we find ourselves in on a daily basis. Even though we have the ability to share every intimate detail with everyone on our friend's list, it is not a sign of weakness to want to show our best qualities.

Those incredibly personal moments should be reserved for close friends and family. That is what differentiates your online friends from your best friends. I found that I just needed to understand that everyone deals with the same things, and to not compare myself to what I see others projecting online or in person. We all want to be ourselves and we all want to be happy in the skin we are in. I think it starts with accepting our unique flaws and learning not to compare ourselves with other people. I am learning something new about myself every day and I believe that is part of the journey of accepting who I am. But what do I know? I’m still learning.