In Short, I’m Lying to You

I wake up and scroll through Instagram, through an endless stream of beautiful pictures, places, people, food, fun, smiles, laughter, all captured in a tiny frame on my phone. I barely notice anymore who these pictures are from. Occasionally I double tap my approval on a picture. Do I even know this person? Does it matter? I open up my camera roll and I add my picture to the digital stack. I crank the saturation, add a vignette, up the warmth, gotta get those likes. It matters, doesn’t it? To finish it all off I type out a cheery phrase, detail where the photo was taken, some quippy remark that I’m certain nobody will ever read. Nobody ever does, that’s not the point. Gotta get those likes.

My photo says: adventure is so fun. It says: look at this effortless beauty. My phone says: travel is easy and carefree and I’m out there living my best life, just look at this photo, it’s proof. And you believe it. Don’t you?

Photo posted, I ease my body out of bed, my left knee is stiff and doesn’t straighten all the way, a holdover from two ACL surgeries during college that flares up after hours of walking. My feet pad onto the tile floor of the bathroom. The cool tiles feel soothing on the bottom of my swollen feet. Nobody tells you that when you walk all day your feet swell up and they’re hard to put into your cute flats for work on Monday. Nobody ever told me that after hiking through the wilderness for hours and hours on end that my skinny jeans would dig into my calves and ankles that are still puffy as many as three days after I’ve come home. Nobody tells you that. I won’t tell you that.

I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody how truly, remarkably, terrible adventure can be. How much chafe was endured just to get that fucking photo that get’s all those little likes. Because when you write it down like that, adventure doesn’t sound fun. And in many ways it isn’t fun. Pushing yourself outdoors, traveling cross country, seeing new things, climbing big hills, walking all the miles for all the hours until it’s dark and I climb into my little tent alone in the dark. It’s not fun. But it does bring me joy. It brings me more joy than almost anything in my life ever has.

But, nobody ever tells you that either.