I look so happy on Instagram

A few months ago, I started to write about how much I hate Facebook.  In my *cough, cough* old age (people roll their eyes at me when I say I feel old), I'm starting to develop a crotchety side and was all but holding Facebook responsible for everything wrong in our relationships and society. 

I wrote about how people only post the good things and used a very real example from my own life.  When I got engaged, I got 'likes' for weeks.  Every couple of days, I had a new, fun status to post.  Ring show off-ing, wedding planning, lovey dovey-ing, it just kept coming.  We had so many happy things to post and people encouraged us in our oozing happiness with their thumbs up.  It was sunshine and butterflies. 

Four months later, we had to carefully plan out how to take down our relationship status so that no one would open their newsfeed that day to see our dreaded news: Katelyn and Joseph are no longer 'In a Relationship'.  We had to tell people about our cancelled plans and our now non-existent relationship, but telling was different than posting, and we didn't want it posted. 

Facebook let us celebrate our engagement with trumpets and cymbals and light up notifications and one thousand thumbs ups, but there would be no likes found for this other occasion.  In fact, as what would have been our wedding date approached, some friends were following up on their travel plans as they wanted to attend the wedding I had talked about inviting them to but had never received invitations.  Our breakup was so social media silent that some of our friends didn't even know. 

Months after my transition into the single life, I had become rather well adjusted.  I was having an okay time with life and learning a lot about myself.  I felt good about where I was at. 

Until I logged onto Facebook. 

I would enjoy a Friday night full of West Wing binge-ing to the fullest until I saw pictures of my friends doing things without me that looked much more fun.  I loved living on my own but then a friend would post a status, #roommatelove.  I've been looking for a new job and, oh, look what luck my friends are having.  I was content being single, but please, can we take an engagement/wedding/babies break?  Please? 

My life was good enough for me until I held it up to the ruler that was my newsfeed and it fell devastatingly short. 

I thought it would only be fair if we posted the bad with the good and offered up honesty instead of lusting after likes.  I thought people were just BS-ing their way through social media.  And I thought people should be more considerate about all the happy things they post on Facebook - don't they know how much it hurts having that rubbed in my face? 

Tonight, though, something was different.  I looked at my Instagram profile and flipped through all the pictures I posted in the last couple of weeks.  I was oozing happiness again.

What happened?  When did I go from crotchety to cheerful?  Whose faces was I rubbing my happiness in?  Was I making people feel left out?  Was I adding to the ruler that they weren't measuring up to? 

But I didn't feel dishonest when I looked at my recent Instagram history.  I didn't feel like I was only posting the good and covering up the bad; I felt like a final piece of hurt in my heart finally healed and that the bad mattered less. 

I wasn't posting happy things to brag.  I was posting happy things because I was happy.  And maybe I was finding happiness in simpler things. 

Winning teams, funky mismatch earrings, students worshiping, holding a sleeping baby, treating myself to a cup of coffee and reading a good, highlight-worthy book, a super sunny day, finding a sign that makes me happy and giving it two real life thumbs up, making fun of Google asking me if I know my best friend.  I was happy, but it wasn't because I suddenly measured up.  The things happening in my life didn't suddenly grow to the happiness level my friends were reporting on Facebook.  

My friends weren't posting happy things to hurt me.  What hurt was that I was turning their happiness into a tool to measure my own.