Category: thoughts

At my mother’s house, I came across some old photos, of me, my brothers, mum, dad and many other family members.

As I flicked through them, it brought back so many memories. Good ones, sad ones, fun ones and cringe ones and plenty in between.

It occurred to me though, as I looked at some of the old ones of me, and some of the most recent ones, that my smile was not reflective of how I was actually feeling at the time that the snap was taken.

In the world of social media which we now live in, we often give out about people living in a virtual reality, only posting positive photos, lifestyles etc. I am one of those people.

I post my life on social media…… well, in the main, the perception of my positive life. I mainly post my photos because I once had my camera stolen with 5 weeks worth of holiday snaps on it, of my children and I. I was heartbroken, so from then on, I upload to facebook, to preserve the moment!

The thing is, we are all probably guilty of living or portraying a virtual reality ,pre and post social media.

In the collage of me above, at different ages and stages of my life, my smile seems almost the same giving the impression that I am happy, yet my reality of when some of the pictures were taken, couldn’t be further from the truth.

There was loss, significant loss in some of the photo’s, a miscarriage, a marital separation and the most recent being taken 11 days after my mother died.

Every day we go about our business, we smile and we say we are ‘doing fine’. For the most part I know I can pretend that I am fine for my ‘outside face’ but that is because it is important to have a break from it, from the sadness, the pain, hurt, grief or whatever it is that makes us ‘not fine’. We need distraction…well I do. That is how I cope.

I allow all my feelings to live in me, sometimes they consume me, they niggle at me, and I push them back and sometimes I let them break free. I do not or try not to let them define me, because each day, they are different, more intense, less intense, more manageable, more tolerable, less tolerable etc and as the days, weeks and months pass, we learn to live with our pain, our loss, our hurt and our wounds.

It is important to feel all the emotions, just as it is important to try to escape them, be distracted from them, and talk about them, even when we think we can’t, and when we can’t talk, we need to find a place, a person a friend, who we can trust enough, love enough, that we can sit in our silence or our turbulence and they will allow us to just sit…. and sit with us.

So, yes every picture really does tell a story, but it is really only the subject person, in the picture, that knows the whole story….. the rest is just a virtual reality.

“One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels”

Gustave Flaubert