There’s this girl I follow on Instagram. I met her last year and she created an account where she talks about her mental health journey. She posts about her ups and downs and everything in between. Her posts are so personal and honest – which is something that throws me off guard and inspires me at the same time. Going through my Instagram feed, the only images I see is turquoise blue waters, perfect sunsets, and lots of smiling girls and boys with the “ideal” bodies, that of course, don’t have any tan lines. These quintessential lives are flaunted, seemingly effortlessly, that it makes it hard to distinguish that social media is not reality. It’s actually so far from reality that it seems unfair to me that it’s presented this way. The way that we show these perfectly timed/edited snaps of our lives and nothing else must be fucking with people’s brains about what life is, right?
I’m sure some of these people are genuinely happy majority of the time and some of them are living these amazing lives, travelling through Southeast Asia with unlimited funds, but surely they have some shitty days too. And not just a day where you miss a flight or hit all the red lights. I mean the days where you have an anxiety attack in a crowded street or you feel too depressed to get out of bed. If you look at the statistics, you can see so many people are dealing with mental illness, but for some reason people are still not talking about it.
I know some social media personalities say that they don’t want to be negative with their content or want to send positive messages. But in what way is presenting these perfect lives and making your audience believe that you’re completely worry-free, a positive message? Post photos without makeup on. Show your body without tuning it. Talk about the dark shit that goes on in your mind. That’s what your real life is so why can’t you present it that way? This obviously doesn’t have to do with everyone. Some people aren’t ready to talk about whatever demon that they’re dealing with, and there’s no shame in that. But if more people are honest about the lives they present and are open about their demons, surely that would help other deal with theirs.
The thing that frustrates me THE MOST is that I find myself being the same way. Although I most definitely don’t post photo-shopped bikini pics on the beach (l o l), I most definitely haven’t been open on social media. The only place I’ve really talked about my mental health is on this blog, which I still haven’t shared with anyone other than my family. I’m scared to give people access to that part of me – in real life and online. I guess I need to stop giving a shit what people think about me, because the thing is, I want to share these things so badly. I’ve just never really realized that maybe there’s a reason for my procrastination around these types of things, till now.
Maybe I’m ranting and maybe this doesn’t make sense but I guess I just feel a little fed up with how society is. People like to present their shiny sides but the second someone wants to show something deeper, people look the other way. I just hope that a change occurs within social media. Yet again, I find myself hoping for the world to change. And myself. I guess it’s like that quote: “be the change you want to see in the world”. Cheesy AF, but relevant.