Does Anyone REALLY Have It Together?

The year is 2018. People around you are getting married, having babies, starting businesses, and you just ate pasta with butter for dinner for the third night in a row. Life is confusing.

No, but I’m serious, does anyone actually have it all together? Like, really?

I’m scrolling through my Instagram feed, and three girls I was friends with in school are getting hitched. Like, committing. To one dude. For the rest of their lives.

Some are announcing engagements. Some are about ready to pop with babies. Some are launching really rad business plans, collaborations, graduating and starting some really cool careers. Some are traveling to the places you’ve always wanted to go.

And I’m drinking coffee for breakfast because I only had enough money to either have coffee or food and, logic, I chose coffee.

Why am I leveling myself with these people?

Because I know, from afar, there’d be people who look at me and go, hell yeah, she really has it together. They scroll through the photos and words I curate personally and think they have an insight to what is really going on in my life.

They don’t see the tears I cry because life feels a tad too stressful right now, nor do they experience the true essence of my presence, or the laughter in my happiness. They don’t see that I don’t feel like I’ve made it. They don’t see the hard work that goes into the words they can so easily read. I don’t know if this is because I know I have so much further I want to go; or do you never actually have that I made it moment?

It is somewhat of a joke that we all so easily scrutinize ourselves based on what we see in our Instagram feed. Scrolling through your favorite designer’s incredibly aesthetically pleasing feed, wondering why your work just doesn’t look like that; the model who has the “perfect” body, wondering why your body just doesn’t look like that; or, even, your old friend from school who has fast-forwarded their life compared to you, and you’re wondering why your life just doesn’t look like that.

Yet we understand that even our own social media feeds don’t truly and honestly represent our lives; even the most open-book people have some things they keep hidden in their heart. We’re human. It’s what we do. And it is always so easy to forget that the reason we struggle so much is because we are comparing our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.

It just begs the question. Do any of us really, ever have our shit together? Or are we just assuming, pretending and allowing others to think things for you are just that little bit better.