Do we want to hear the ugly truth?

On Instagram, everything is okay.

Yes, talking about past mental health problems, eating disorders, sexual abuse or addiction- the bad times in your life,- is popular, common, highly encouraged and supported. But only if it’s in the past, which could mean three years ago, half a year ago or even a month ago, but it can never be yesterday, this morning or right now.Negative experience can only exist as some sort of addition to your personality, resolved trauma is just a personality trait to spice things up and boost your maturity and relatability.

Although people might be very active on their accounts during the bad times of their life, they will only reveal a couple of months later what they’ve been going through. Is it because it is easier to be open and honest about these “embarrassing” things once they’re over? Or are they not as open and honest as they pretend to be?Or is struggling not as cute and like-worthy as not-struggling-anymore? When we like and support the people who talk about negative experiences of the past, do we want support the people who struggle or the people who don’t? And what is the point then, of supporting people, who have dealt with these experiences well enough that they are able to talk about them with strangers on the internet?

Everyone wants to hear what the person who struggled with addiction two years ago has to say about it, but does anyone care about what the people struggling with it still, day to day, have to say? Do we want to hear the ugly truth, help someone who is down on their knees, or do we want to express our support to someone who, although they might have experienced the ugly truth, are not living it everyday anymore? Why is it that experiences are only valid once we have processed them and can talk about them without getting personal?

I am very happy that people have begun talking about what they’ve gone through, what they had to overcome to become the people they are today.

The only thing that I don’t understand is, do they not struggle anymore? Do they not have days when they can’t even get out of bed? When they look in the mirror and don’t see themselves? When they are scared, shaking, helpless and down? What about those days? And if they do, isn’t it a bit hypocritical to preach about their journey to recovery on Instagram, if that journey is still ongoing- and maybe it will be, forever.

Because some things we don’t deal with over the course of a month, half a year or even three years.