Facebook is a good place to go if you want to see all the best highlights in your friends' lives. But, if you look through their profiles and believe each happy photo and amusing post isn't surrounded by several hours of boredom, misery, arguments, awkwardness, embarrassment, and desperation then you'll make yourself severely depressed believing you're the biggest loser you know.
At least that's what I tell myself.
If you're one of my Facebook friends and your life really is that awesome, then I hate you. Please post a picture of your perfect angel child vomiting on your face (I know you have one!!) so I can feel better about myself.
Even on this blog, the happy pictures and funny captions have a backstory.
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| We were freezing cold. Grace locked herself in our hotel bathroom. |
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| I paid $50 for a stupid wand and I feel like an idiot. |
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| The trip where I got a bad sunburn that ultimately led to me losing my arm. |
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| I don't drink very often. When I do, I tend to get colds, which may turn into pneumonia. |
The truth is, nobody wants to know about all the really bad stuff that happens. Just like when I say, "What's up" to some random dude at the gym, I don't
really want to know about his messy divorce or the details of his latest gall bladder surgery. If I filled Facebook, or my blogs, with constant gripes about my physical ailments, then people would rapidly tune me out. This is why I try to sprinkle the bad stuff with my poor attempts at humor to make the feeding tube explosions, constant drooling, and amputations a little more palatable for the casual reader.
Our most recent trip to southwest Washington to visit my dad is no exception. For every exciting, cool picture that makes us look like a jet setting, happy-go-lucky family, there is a morass of anger and frustration simmering below the surface.
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| I was constantly worried about the sun on my neck |
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| My widowed grandmother is living with my dad now. Looking great!! |
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| Kadin insisted on feeding me every time |
We have to show the bad stuff to somebody though. I was reminded of this before dinner one night at my dad's house. I was leaned over the kitchen sink hacking up gunk that was lodged in the back of my throat.
This is a nightly ritual for me. I do it in our kitchen or in the bathroom. Usually, the amount of crud reaches a critical mass shortly before or after dinner and I start to gag on it. There's no time to make it to the bathroom to do it privately, so I end up hunched over the kitchen sink coughing it up. This is what Betsy and Grace are subjected to every evening. Sometimes, I'm forced to do it in the bathroom out at restaurants, but I try to avoid that. Nobody wants to see that stuff.
So, I finish nearly puking up a lung in my dad's kitchen. My dad quietly says "Do you do that every night?"
"Yes," I answer, "every night."
Later on, Betsy asked if I could just do it in the bathroom next time. I said no way, because I think my family and close friends should have to see the bad stuff. I'm not a big complainer, so most people have no idea about all the little, everyday struggles with my health. If you're only subjected to my Facebook profile, then you may think I'm living the dream, and every hardship is just laughed off with a corny joke. The truth is, I
am living the dream. I have a great life, BUT there's a lot of shit that goes with it. There's no need for me to discuss every excruciating detail publicly. We all have our private battles with mental health, physical health, poverty, work, family, you name it. No need to talk about it with everyone we know (TMI).
However, at the same time, we have to vent to someone. I need the support of my family and close friends and to get that support, they have to understand the full extent of my health problems. I think this applies to everyone. With Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/etc., sometimes it's just difficult for us to get used to separating the public social media profile from our private lives.
But anyway, we had a wonderful trip to Washington!
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| I can count that kid's ribs! |
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| Brave explorers journeying around the farm |
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| Searching for crawdads with grandpa |
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| Didn't really catch enough to make a meal |
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| That stump is actually a slug. That's how big they get. |
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| Brought enough Real Food Blends for lunch every day! |
Bottomline, if I ever hack up a bunch of nasty looking stuff in front of you, then you should feel honored that I consider you a close enough friend to puke in your presence. That's how I show my love.
If you really loved me, you'd clean it up too. You're welcome.
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