What You See IS NOT Always What You Get

Today I was abruptly woken by itchy ankles. My initial thought was "dang you razor burn" but upon further examination of the itchy area I realized it was something else... FLEA BITES (insert angry face, insert disgusted face, insert devastated face). Some of you may be thinking "Alexandra you have a cat, just get her flea prevention/treatment and all will be fine" and to those who are thinking this, thank you but it is not my cat that has fleas (yet) it is the apartment we live in!

This same exact thing happened last year, only 3 months after we moved into the apartment. The fleas were relentless but we managed to tame them after not one but two extermination attempts by professionals and one of our own. I was utterly disgusted that we had fleas and absolutely livid that they were in our apartment by no fault of our own seeing as we didn't even have our cat yet.

This year we do have a pet, little Vivienne, whom is an indoor cat. She DID NOT bring in these fleas!  Not to mention the fact that since we had the fleas last year I have been actively preventing them with natural products and extreme amounts of vacuuming. My apartment is clean gosh darn it, why oh why has this happened to us again?!!!

Okay my rant about these fleas is semi over... This post is actually about the parts of my life I let people see and the parts that I don't. For example the flea issue. For whatever reason everything within me was saying "Suffer in silence, don't tell anyone about this because it will make you look bad. People will think you don't take care of your cat or home". Here's the thing, maybe thats true, people may think that but why should I care? Why do I hide the parts of my life that aren't the most glamorous or perfect? The answer is PRIDE. It has nothing to do with feeling embarrassed but rather has everything to do with creating a "persona" or "facade" that is still me, but only the very best of me.

I cannot tell you the number of times I have posted Instagram pictures taken at angles so you can't see the pile of dirty dishes in my sink. Or the number of times I have made my husband retake a picture so you can't see my double chin. I have zillions of little tricks to make things look more "perfect" than they are but those trick will never change what actually is. Even if you can't see my double chin in a picture people it's still there! I can also currently take a picture of my apartment and hashtag it #cleanapartment because it looks spotless but guess what, it is still infested with fleas regardless of how clean it looks.

My point is a picture these days is sometimes not worth the typical thousand words, sometimes its only half the story. Instagram and Facebook make it easy to hide the things deemed not so perfect and make for an easy platform to build a glorious facade. I'm not by any means saying its bad to put good things on social media but I am saying that at least for me the issue is the need to hide things so that the good looks even more pristine.

Soooooo in conclusion sometimes I am fake, sometimes I post things (literally and figuratively) using tilt shift to blur out the "imperfectness" surrounding the "perfectness". Truth is I want things to look better than they are. What you see may be a reflection of me, but it is not always the clearest most complete reflection. There is no good reason to do this and not only is it unhealthy for me, it can be hurtful to others. No one's life is perfect and there is no need to make it seem as though mine is. So next time you see me post a picture I probably just threw all my clean laundry into the closet unfolded, unhung so it's not "messying up" my very necessary cat picture. Or if I post a picture of myself, assume it's the best I looked all week because I most likely just showered and won't for another 4 days... maybe 5 (yikes, I know).