You open up Snapchat and see countless stories of people at parties you weren't invited to and nights out you wish you were at. You wonder what is that they do differently that put them in those situations and left you at home two and a half tubs into Ben and Jerry's cookie dough. On every goddamn story and post everyone seems so much happier and more glamorous than you. You look down and see that you are still wearing the same pyjamas that you got changed into yesterday morning, and think you are hopeless and unpopular/irrelevant. Consciously you tell yourself to stop looking and scrolling through but subconsciously something drives you to keep watching and seeing more and more stories of parties and people you thought you were close with, you start questioning your friendships and most importantly yourself.
Does this sound familiar? It does for me at least. The issue we have in society these days is the constant desire to advertise only the portrayal of ourselves we want everyone to see - but not who we really are. We create a stigma that it's not okay to feel not okay, it's not okay to not be at every party, it's not okay to not look/feel your best all the time. We are consistently flooded with pictures and stories of everyone in their ideal situations with hand-crafted and edited pictures looking their best. This isn't reality! Reality is that you may look or be like that once in a while but the majority of the time you are sat at home binging Black Mirror or Peep Show. We create this endless spiral in our minds of constant judgement that it's not allowed not to be perfect. But we are imperfect; it is okay not to be happy the whole time, good looking the whole time or socially interacting the whole time. Those people posting those stories and those pictures are just as anxious and insecure as you, they are just as much trying to create a facade of popularity and social comfort to mask the fact that they themselves believe they aren't popular. Thus an endless spiral occurs of everyone masking their feelings and insecurities by projecting a non-stop illusion of happiness on social media. Let yourself know that everyone is in the same situation as you and that is okay. Be happy, be free, be confident, everyone is in the exact same position as you.
Yours lovingly,
Jamie