I have been reading so many articles lately about comparison. Honestly, being a ‘90s kid who has grown up watching the rules and etiquette of social media develop and unfurl into the bucket of joy model, it has been interesting to see how we choose to spread joy more often than not. We put our best foot forward. After reading all of these articles telling me I should put my pain up too, so that other people don’t think life is a bowl of cherries for me – I feel a little mutinous. Social Media has amped up every emotion and life event.
I have seen children be born and grow up from thousands of miles away – no literally – I have seen them be born. I don’t even really know the girl who was having the baby, but she has birth pictures, so I have been privy to her most intimate moments. I have seen people become engaged on film-like displays. I know the exact moment my friend from seventh grade was proposed to, what her ring looks like, and what workout she’s been doing to maintain the perfect arms. I also have not spoken to her in something like ten years.
On my page?
Everyone has seen the weird selfies taken on a computer camera from when I got engaged. People have traveled all of my romantic journeys from California and North Carolina. They have seen my blurbs about my mad love for my husband, how much I love my life, how pretty everything is around me… how easy it is to be me. They have seen me loving me and my life. I have seen them loving them and their life.
Even when I was going through the worst year of my life, people would come up to me and tell me how well I seemed to be handling everything. How smoothly I spoke. How true my faith shone. My grief was marked with “at least” and “thank goodness.” And when I went through the next worst year of my life – no one on social media, and few in real life, knew even a little of it.
I don’t really think I have to share my burdens with social media, though. I’ve been reading words after words after words telling me that I should be allowed to be open on the internet with my struggles. But I don’t think that’s really what it’s all about. People sometimes talk about how while marriages look perfect on social media, they aren’t really and you shouldn’t compare (for real, you shouldn’t compare). Then they get real blame-y with the people who are actually only showing their joy. Because no one should only look that happy.
But in my mind, my social media pages are remembrances for me. They are for me to look back on, to laugh or cry over. They are my personal history. They are not your ground to stomp on, they are not your talisman to use and decide who is doing better. Sometimes hard days do come through – but more often than not my bad days are just that, days. Days I don’t want to remember for the rest of my life. When I look back, I want to see the roses. It’s my memory, and I can skip the thorns if I want to. I felt them hard enough when they stabbed me the first time.
Most important to me is this: the people all over social media are not just my people. They are people I have come in contact with over the span of over ten years. Those people don’t deserve to know my pain. I don’t deserve to know theirs either. Your pain is sacred, not everyone has to – or should get to – hold it. Share of it what you want to -- I have shared some of the greatest losses of my life -- but don’t feel forced to in order to make others feel less compare-y about your life or secure in theirs. Your joy and your pain are just that – yours. They are yours to share or keep sacred.
