My Instagram Freaks Me Out

Sometimes, when I look at my Instagram, I think this person isn't me. I mean, of course, she is me. Or at least, she has the same face as me, does the same things as me, eats the same food as me, has the same parents as me. It's just, she doesn't really seem like me. She seems more like the fun-house mirror reflection of me.

She's happier. She has more adventures--and the adventures she has she views as adventures and not as hassles. She's more observant. She finds something to laugh about everywhere she looks. Everything, to her, is interesting or beautiful or entertaining. She always has somebody to hang out with or something to create. She's always polished. Even when she's goofing off, she's at least posed enough to be somewhat poised.

She's all the best bits of me.

She's creative.

She's friendly.

She's adventurous. 

 She's funny.

She's close with her family.

 And the thing is, she's not not me. But she also isn't me. See, there's me, the real me, the one sitting makeupless in a darkroom, wearing a baggy t-shirt and a ridiculous flop of a braid, the one half-typing, half-playing Kim Kardashian Hollywood (which, by the way, is an image I would never let the internet see)... and then there's the Instagram version of me. I suppose all of my social media personas are diversions from my real identity... but Instagram (and I guess Facebook) are the furthest from the truth. On Twitter, I'll occassionally slip into mope-mode or honest frustrations. On Tumblr, I'll post my angst-ridden honest poetry. But on Instagram and Facebook, I think I subconsciously (or maybe sometimes consciously) tailor my posts to portray an image of myself that is a little more idealized.

I mean... an idealized version of 24-year-old-still-a-borderline-train-wreck-mess... but an idealized version nonetheless.

See, I, the real I, have been going through a hard time lately. A really hard time. A cried this morning during church hard time. (I did. We were singing this song which is essentially just Micah 6:8 "He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but do do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." And then I cried.) But do you know who hasn't been having a hard time lately? This girl:

She, rather than having a hard time, has been hanging out with her cat, trying fish for the first time in about a decade, and pretty much constantly drawing. She's been happy, whereas I've been struggling. And it's like... we do technically do all the same things. But she's absolved from the stress, the anxiety, the constant pressure of existence.

But I realized, too, that the version of myself I've created through instagram is just that, snippets of me. It's not really like I'm pretending to be someone else. It's just that I've cut away the bad bits and left the rest for my followers and facebook friends to see. I cropped away all the ugly, stressful, and difficult. I show just the pretty bits:

It's not that I think it's necessarily a bad thing. Maybe for a split second as I'm editing and presenting the version of myself I want you all to see, I genuinely embody that version of myself. The adventurous, creative, friendly, excited, interested version of myself. I also like to try and be some sort of entertainment source, and I think if I just embraced the bummer bug whenever it bit on my social media, I might just be spreading bad moods. 

But, I think what kind of freaked me out when I realized that this girl--the one on my Instagram--wasn't me was that at times like these, when I--the real I--am going through an incredibly difficult time, I--this other I--is the one who is connecting with my friends and family. Which means I--the real I--feel a little bit disconnected, like I'm slightly out of reach of support. And it's a predicament I've put myself in by fabricating this version of myself in the first place. 

I'm still going to do it, though. I like looking through my Instagram from time to time and feeling like I'm the girl in the pictures. The one who notices the light throughout the world and strives to make other people smile. I like her. I'd like to get to be her a little more often.