Happy Photos On Facebook Don't Mean A Happy Life
But people don't necessarily want to see the truth.
Dundanim / Shutterstock Facebook is not real. People do not want to see the messy, depressing truth.
People want the cute, the joyous, the positive, the filtered version of our reality. Sometimes I am okay with conforming to this norm.
Other days, like today, I just cannot stomach it.
How do you fake it?
How do you smile as you drown?
Levels the playing fields of your emotions.
Relieves the physical symptoms of panic.
The overwhelming feelings cause you to do silly things like forgetting how to breathe or crying over absolutely nothing.
Things you usually cannot even control.
Photography helps.
Scrapbooking my days into a digital lie of the perfect life.
It feels to be good at something, to take pride in the things you are capable of creating on your good days.
Capturing the unseen beauty of disaster.
Writing helps.
On days when you find strength in your truth, despite the pain.
You write to give meaning to the knots in your stomach, the tears in your eyes.
You are desperate to find answers or at least ask the damn questions.
But deep down, you already know.
Are you high right now?
You lie to me,
and I believe you.
You have been clean
too long for this to be
happening right now.
Maybe part of me wants to
foolishly play along,
because it is easier than facing what’s really going on.
You stay up all night.
Fiddling with your guitar,
I want to ignore you but can’t.
I want to pretend
like this isn’t real;
you make it impossible.
Are you high right now?
No way, you say.
How could I possibly be thinking such things?
But you start making these inaudible, indescribable sounds that take me back to a dark place.
A place where your addiction and lies controlled my life.
Noises that might seem normal to everybody else triggers a wave of memories for me.
Lonely days spent isolated, overwhelmed with despair and rage.
Are you high right now?
We both know you are high, so I stop asking questions you refuse to answer.
I toss your belongings outside and ask you to leave. Thinking maybe, just maybe, you would instead apologize and try to make things better.
Though, I’m pretty sure neither of us know how to do that.
Instead, you disappear into the night, chasing after demons I cannot fix.
I lock the door behind you and cry myself to sleep.
Emily Lingenfelser is a 20-something mom who writes and captures moments to make sense of this messy world. She runs the website, Emily is Fearless.