Maskbook

The other day, I was talking on the phone with a friend I hadn’t spoken to for a while and she said, you are always so positive on Facebook. She meant it as a compliment, because she was telling me about another of her friends is  negative on Facebook and she finds it demoralizing. I told her that my Facebook persona is not an accurate reflection of my life. I share the positive things because I realize that people don’t go on Facebook to hear other people complain.

But that is only part of it. The other part is that I don’t want to show people the negative parts of my life because, well, don’t we all want to appear better than we are to others? Don’t we all want to put on a good show? Don’t we all want to look like we have it all together?

Over the past month, three of my friends told me about terrible problems they are enduring. To look at their Facebook pages, you’d never know their lives weren’t perfect. All happily married, apparently.  All with successful and impressive careers. All with beautiful, smart kids.

And all living with pain I can only imagine.

These three friends’ problems are all different.  They are male and female, different ages, living in different regions of the country.  But they are alike in that they keep their struggles private.

I did the same at the end of my marriage. I never mentioned my divorce to most of my friends, and certainly not on Facebook. After the divorce was final, I didn’t change my relationship status, just quietly deleted it. Because I didn’t change my name back, a lot of people didn’t know for months that I’d gotten divorced.

Maskbook.  That is what Facebook is. You read about your friends’ exotic vacations and gourmet meals and the cute things their kids do. You think their lives are wonderful. Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t.

I don’t write this to hint that there’s some great tragedy in my life. I have problems, but they’re not the stuff of Greek tragedy.  I write it because I don’t want you to feel like everyone else has it together and you’re the only one doesn’t.

They don’t. We don’t. I don’t.