Social Media is a Lie

Hey there. Me again. Here to bitch about another fucking lupus flare up. My God is this bitch annoying AF lately. Nothing seems to make her happy. And it is just so frustrating.

I can go for months and be totally fine, with almost no signs of lupus at all. Then, it comes out of nowhere and puts me on bedrest for a week. And lately, I can’t seem to identify what’s causing it. I’m so freaking annoyed.

Having an autoimmune disease is seriously so goddamn annoying I want to scream from the top of my lungs. What makes it worse, is that no one can see it. No can see your pain, so it’s very easy to ignore it, not believe it, or simply disregard it. So, often times, you are left alone to struggle and that makes it all even worse.

But no one can help. There’s nothing anyone can do for it usually. Again, it’s just a real bitch of a disease.

I normally spend a lot of time alone so I was caught off guard when I ran into a client of mine one day after I finally decided to emerge out my cave of a bedroom. She took one look and me and literally her jaw dropped. All she said was, “Are you okay?” with a look of total concern.

You see, even though I was out amongst the living, I was still in the middle of an active flare-up. My face was covered in fiery red rashes, my joints were swollen, and I was limping. She hugged me out of kindness and then giggled because she just saw a picture of me on Facebook and said I “did not look like this”! (meaning on Facebook, I looked amazing, but here in real life I looked terrible and felt even worse)

I laughed back at her and reminded here that social media is a lie.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a HUGE fan of certain parts of social media. I am obsessed with reels. Instagram has helped me grow my business. And Facebook allows me to stay in contact with so many amazing people in my life. I love those parts of it.

But I’m sure we can all agree that there are also parts of it that can paint a pretty picture, while we all know that’s not really what’s going on. Because social media makes it quite easy to assume that because people aren’t posting bad times that they must not be going through any.

The truth is, if I posted about how often my health issues bother me, I would almost never shut up about it. Lupus is a completely debilitating disease and I don’t think anyone truly knows how badly it affects me. Social media provides an outlet to post fun, happy pictures just to make yourself feel better. It’s sometimes easier to post those happy, PERFECT pictures instead of posting the truth.

For example, this last flare up I had just completely knocked me on my ass for over 2 weeks. I’ve been in the hospital, back on meds, on bedrest, and covered in rashes. I hate when this happens. Everything in my life suffers because of it. I have to close my business. I can’t play with my son. I can barely move. It’s completely debilitating. It’s also terrifying. How am I supposed to pay my bills if I can’t work? How is this fair to my son? GOD DAMN IT!!!!!!

You see, that’s not fun to post about. People don’t like to hear about that stuff, so we hardly ever talk about it. Also, there’s always the fear inside of someone saying something like you are just whining and complaining and that things could be worse. I don’t know why I have that fear but I do so it makes me not want to talk about it as much and try to keep it to myself.

During my days of bed rest, I find myself scrolling through all the social media platforms. And I LOVE getting to see all my friends’ happy posts and my boss babes out here just killing it in life. I love seeing that.

But, often times I find myself comparing my life to theirs. I see everybody’s happy facebook posts with their perfect families, happy marriages, healthy bodies and thriving lives!! Just living it up everyday!!

Ope….here’s comes that ugly green monster of jealousy. Damn it. I hate that guy.

It’s hard not to feel jealous though, if I’m being honest. And I know jealousy is not a feeling from God, so it really bothers when I feel jealous. But, this last flare-up….I was jealous.

Social media was just slapping me in the face of everyone out here so happy and truly living their healthy lifestyles, and I just cried and cried for hours.

Here I was; home alone, just got out of the hospital, my skin was on fire, my limp was back, my face was cracked and bleeding, and every inch of my body was in pain whenever I moved. It sucked, and you bet your sweet ass I was having a pity party. A bad one, too!! I even watched super sad movies and watched videos of my mama. So, yeah……..it was not a good time.

On top of my spiral of self-destruct, I began to rabbit-hole social media and started comparing myself to everyone on there.

You know…just to add insult to injury. Just for fun.

Thankfully, I have done a tremendous amount of work in therapy so I can usually recognize these patterns of negative self-talk and stop them. Sometimes I get further down the rabbit-hole than I’d like to, but I always manage to find my way out. Eventually.

Anyways, thankfully I realized that I was on a bad mental path and had to get out my journal for some self reflection. I had to remind myself that I usually only put happy shit on Facebook. I’m not posting my sad-sack-a-shit nights.

So, as logic would suggest, everybody else is probably doing the same thing. Everyone else is probably just posting the happy, fun, wonderful memories, too!! Because they are going to want to be reminded of THOSE memories a year from now, and many more years to come. No one is going to want to be reminded of their terrible nights. So, no one likes to document (post on social media) that stuff.

Once I wrote that down to myself the coolest, most peaceful reminder; social media is a lie!

But, a good lie. Social media is the life that people want. And the reality is, that in order to get that life you want, you have to go through the shit. You have to. You have to go through the pity-parties, the lonely nights, the trenches.

I’m posting this blog as a reminder! Especially to anyone struggling with mental health at the moment!! Don’t let the happy, perfect life posts on social media fool you. Everyone is dealing with their own version of shit. They’re just not posting about it. Just like me and you.

So, if you are reading this, and you’re currently sitting in your own pile of whatever shit you’re in, hang in there. Don’t torment yourself (like I did) by comparing your life to what you see on Facebook. It’s a lie. A good lie! But still, those Facebook posts never tell the full story!!

For example, after a recent post I made someone private messaged me a very kind compliment. She mentioned my smile and how she wished she was as pretty as me.

And those comments always break my heart, but bring me back to my whole point; social media is a lie. It makes you compare yourself to something that you don’t know the full story to!

For example, my recent post where I look cute and all dolled up was the picture this lady was referring to that she complimented me on. And while I genuinely appreciated her comment, I also knew that she had absolutely know idea how bad I looked a few days or how rough the previous 15 days had been. All she saw was me with my big smile, and then began comparing herself to that.

Something I’ve done 1000 times.

Which then made me think back to when I was on bedrest and spiral scrolling; all of those people that I was feeling jealous of and comparing myself to all probably have their own versions of shit going on, too. They, like me, just don’t post about it all the time.

What a wonderful reminder. I know I’ve said it repeatedly, but still, what a good reminder; social media is a lie, and that’s ok! Remember that the next time you find yourself comparing your life to someone else’s based off of an instagram reel. Because you have no idea what it actually took for everything to come together for that picture to finally get taken.

Happy Trails,

Em