Reality vs. a Carefully Crafted Façade - 10/6/2022

A couple of days ago, in an attempt to verbalize how I was feeling, I turned to my husband and said, "I feel as though I'm standing in the midst of a myriad of broken mirror pieces."  To which he replied, "What does that mean?"

I sat with those feelings for a couple days.  And then, yesterday, the words came.  And so, I made the post "The Shattered Mirror of Me - by Autumn Boyet-Stinton" here on my blog.  

In honesty, I forgot that my blog "auto-publishes" to my FB feed, (I think I was successful in changing that option) so, I was initially confused to have friends reach out to me privately to see if I was "ok."  Once I figured out what they were responding to, I was moved by their concern.  However, what struck me most and what prevented me from taking the post down (because I didn't want to cause concern) was that everyone I spoke to, said that my words, however personal, resonated with them.  

..."My expression of my very personal feelings, resonated with others in a personal manner"...

That gave me reason to pause and think.   

Life is hard and messy and there are dark times for everyone. No one is exempt from pain, suffering and all the trauma that life throws at us.

To compound the issue, social media clouds the issue. These platforms give us a place to share our lives in a different kind of public arena than ever before.  

But...here is where things get convoluted.  Unfortunately, social media platforms allow for the creation of a reality that is misleading. None of us post ugly pictures, dirty kitchens, fights, misunderstandings, etc.. And that unrealistic portrayal of life has gone even further than simply leaving out the challenges.  There are now filters that go further in altering reality.  

I can't help but see a lurking danger in these intentional misleadings.  When you stop and think about it, you realize that, in the world we live in, reality is being altered and many times, lost completely.  As a result, expectations are skewed. The bar is raised to a level that no one can realistically compete with, nor achieve. These highly manipulated digital worlds are just smoke and mirrors - curtains that are, in reality, hiding our humanity - the very thing that makes us relate to and love each other.

I can't help but stop for a moment and think of, and reflect on, a dear friend who is battling cancer.  Her struggle is physical and emotional.  Her trials are unfeigned.  Her corporeal scars are vivid and her mental traumas are vexing.  Understandably, many who find themselves in a similar circumstance, cower away from sharing - they shrink from the harsh light of their experience and resist exposing themselves to the scrutiny of eyes that peer out through the false tint of rose-colored filters - filters that don't honestly represent reality.  And sadly, those same false filters - the ones that were made to make us "look better" and conform to an ideal, actually do more harm because they muddle reality and create a supposition that we are not enough as we are, that our scars and imperfections - the very things that make us unique and enhance our character - are reason to believe that we are not enough as we are. 

Yet, my friend is bravely facing not just the treatment and the changes and the pain, but she is finding her way to a greater understanding of herself - the light AND the dark - because we are all equal parts of both.  Life is both light and dark and sometimes the dark consumes the light.  But the darkness does not exist without the light.  

Think about that for a minute.  I had to really sit with that thought and explore what it means to me.  I can only assume that it is different for each of us.  But I believe that it is within our individual understanding of light and dark that we can find truths about ourselves.   

So, what I'm trying to say is this: My blog was a means for me to express some angst in my own world. And while it may seem dark, it was a means for me to express challenging emotions and feelings that were plaguing me. It came from a place of vulnerability...and to be honest, it was a bit embarrassing to realize that vulnerability was accidentally very public, and as I mentioned before, I did consider taking the FB link down.

But...I'm not going to remove it. It was real. Real needs to be more accepted in our lives.  We need to stop expecting (for ourselves and others) what doesn't exist. We need to realize that we all have dark moments.  We all have lows.  We all have ugly.  We all struggle.  We are all human.  These realizations need to be the expectation.  We need to reconnect with our own human imperfection and accept that in ourselves and each other.  We need to make it ok to be without filters, without enhancers, without unrealistic expectation.  

And so my hope is that in leaving my post up (as cringe-worthy as it might be) it might allow someone who may feel alone or "less than" to see that reality beyond the carefully crafted façade of social media and what we allow others to see  - REALITY in all its tragic, challenging, messy glory - is where we can relate to and love each other in our humanity.