There’s something you need to know. The people you follow online are not everything they present themselves to be. Including me. We don’t have it together, and the more it seems like we do, the less likely it’s true.

I’ve met bloggers in real life who are nothing like the idealized hologram wrapped in pretty quotes & shiny pictures & inspirational passive-aggressive monologues. Yes, me included. We’re all carefully constructed custodians of our image. That’s the nature of social media.

Some of us are cranky jerks. Some are just surviving. Some do it for the likes. Some are still in middle school. Some do it because they can’t do anything else, and they’re telling others to do what they only dream of doing. Some make it all up. Some of us are all the above.

I wish online personalities were more honest about their emptiness & heartache. I don’t mean false authenticity; that’s easy to see through. I mean: I wish they‘d say how they feel instead of preaching the ideal. I wish they’d preach less & ugly cry more. By they, I mean me too.

But I get why they (we) don’t get real this way. People demand authenticity, but the second someone is vulnerable, they’re torn up, laughed off, dismissed. Most people can’t stomach vulnerability because it’s like looking in a mirror. So we stay carefully crafted.

I want to put away my soap-box. I want you to know my headlights barely work in this fog; I’m learning. I am wrong a lot. I am scared a lot. I want to be eye to eye, side by side, chair to chair. Not over or above. Just with. With you, for you. I hope you’re for me, too.

If you only knew that every online personality was just as weird & complicated as you, a lot of sweaty armpits & night time weeping: we’d be a lot less pressured to be polished, witty, articulate, and “well-adjusted.” We just know how to edit ourselves, when unedited is better.