Written in RED

So not to toot my own horn or anything, but I used to be an it girl on instagram. Not THE it girl mind you (I’ve got confidence but I’m not entirely delusional), but I’m talking for what we knew it to be, waaaaay back. Remember when we’d take photos of our Starbucks coffee cup, slap a sepia filter on there AND THEN upload that foolishness straight to the feed! Back in these days when said photo would earn you around 11 likes and you’d be proud, I was getting around 400 likes for every selfie. Compared to my friends, I knew it was a lot but I also knew why I was getting such high numbers. I would take nothing but thirst traps. A curvy figure runs in my family and I loved the attention I would get from posting, fully clothed (mama didn’t raise no fool), but suggestive photos of my body shape that sometimes didn’t even include my face. 

“Even if the photos I was posting were revealing they never exposed who I was”

To be clear, I was in no way an ‘influencer’, nor did I want to be one but I did notice how my stats were higher than that of my friends and to be completely honest, the messages and heart eye emojis did make me feel a bit…not like other girls (insert throwing up emoji). Growing up in a predominantly *ahem* caucasian town, school ground crushes always resulted in me upset because I was never the type to be chosen. 

“So when I started coming into my own around my late teens, I felt like online, I could finally be ✨her ✨”

Flash forward around 10 years later, a lot of therapy, self discovery and plainly just growing up and growing out of old ideologies…and I’ve deleted all those old photos from my profile – and I mean a hard delete, these photos are not archived, they are gone. Which has resulted in a dip in followers as all the hungry men run away to get their needs met elsewhere – Not a loss in any way – but my engagement, likes, story views and all that jazz has dropped significantly and that’s what I’m struggling with.

There have been times where I’ve found myself wishing I didn’t get rid of those old photos. Wondering what life would have been like if I had continued down that route, and where I’d be now if I let hearts and dm’s consume me… Deep down I know I really don’t want that but I feel like its better than sitting with the discomfort of knowing if I post a photo I need to delete the app for two weeks as a way to not obsess about the looooow number of likes I receive. 

At least I can take comfort in the fact that life is so much better for me right now. I have a great career, healthy bank account, amazing friends and have been blessed to explore so many incredible parts of this world and it’s experiences that I can only thank God for his steer on my life. So why do I care so much about about showing people just how blessed and successful I am.

I know that it’s stupid to care about this, I’m angry at myself for allowing this to take up so much brain space. I also know that I have control over my environment and can simply delete the app. Matter of fact, I know quite a lot of things:

• I know that social media has become an overall toxic and unsafe place and everyone is fighting for their lives to look the most aesthetic.
• I know that the key objective of these app companies is to keep me doom scrolling until forever, making me think that Ineed to be skinnier, prettier, richer, less of this, more of that in order to be happy. 
• I know that I restrict, block, actively avoid the profiles from people that trigger me, and make me feel bad about myself for whatever reason that may be and so if I feel that way others must too
• I know that most of what I see online isn’t real anyway, which kind of renders the whole thing a mix between make believe and fantasy and definitely not something to hinge my self-worth or mental health on
• I know it’s silly to feel embarrassed that I don’t get as many likes as I used to. Times have changed. I’ve changed, it’s not like my paycheck relies on this anyway, so why on earth should I care.

“But simply knowing these things doesn’t necessarily make me feel any different”

However, spending the time to actually write out my feelings like this makes me realise that this is ALOT of emotions for INSTAGRAM.

Like girl COMEON! 

Objectively, it cannot be that serious but in a world where we say “pics or it didn’t happen” and “gots to do it for the gram” our own lives are validated by how many people we can make feel insecure by what we have.

Being someone who loves finding the answers to problems it’s hard to reckon with the fact that I don’t have one for how I’m feeling. I like instagram and have found some truly inspirational, funny, beautiful souls that I wouldn’t have found any other way. I don’t want to remove it from my life per se, just my brain space. 

Finding fulfilment in real-life experiences and learning how to validate myself is the most important thing and whilst this is something I’ll have to keep working through I know that I am enough just the way I am. Regardless of who likes or follows or watches me.

-RED