Perfectly Imperfect Life
This is not my house and as many Pinterest photos as I pin and beautiful Instagram accounts I follow of how to decorate like this or dress like ‘her’ or cook like them, the reality is that I probably won’t ever be ‘that’ person. I can’t measure up, that’s how I see it in my eyes (some days). I can’t afford to, or I don’t have the creativeness or whatever (real or imagined) excuse I have that day, it won’t ever be me. I’m forty six years old and have an imperfectly beautiful life that I love and still struggle with this realization.
So my question to the masses is…What happens to the self-esteem and thoughts and feelings of someone who isn’t in a good place? Or of our teens (and early 20’s kids) trying so hard to find themselves. This ‘perfect’ image of what we should look like, dress like, drive, live in, etc is mostly unattainable for all but a precious few and I can promise that the glimpses we see frozen in time on these overly priced little screens we stare at all day are not the real reel, they are not the whole story. They are but a staged, filtered, cropped image that we as a society want people to believe because at some point someone decided every single thing about our lives should be documented and shared with the world. Not just our out of town family and friends as it should be but the whole damn world, and what’s worse we as a society fell for it. We sit and stare at stories and scroll through photos and save and pin and share and dream and make fun of and feel inferior to or sometimes not but we’re comparing our reality to a fictional life.
I’m guilty of this. I dream and get frustrated and covet and I want more than I have when y’all…what I have is perfectly enough! I want to stop dreaming of what I wish it all looked like and start loving the reality of what it really does. (Cow poop, dog hair, chicken feathers and all.) I want our daughters (and sons) to stop striving for the unattainable ‘perfection’ they’re inundated with on the daily and instead look in their mirrors and accept the beautiful reality that is THEM!
Social media isn’t to blame for the frustrating lack of self-esteem and self-centeredness that I feel our society has become but it certainly doesn’t help. We shouldn’t stop dreaming or striving to have the things we want but we can’t forget to be thankful for what we already have.
This isn’t what my house looks like and probably never will but in approximately 32 more hours I’ll have everyone I love most in the world under one roof. It will be a short span of time of #qualityfamilytimedadgumnit where there will be people talking over each other, not enough sleep, decorating the tree, too many people sharing a bathroom again, making sure all the grandparents get time and that they all get to visit their cows (the real reason I think they come home). It will be fast and crazy and messy and overly stimulated (yes momma’s of littles, adult children get overly stimulated as well). It will be perfectly imperfect in my non magazine worthy house filled with five Kempkens all under one roof. So when y’all see the photos that I overly share all over social media of us laughing and posing and think how great we are just remember someone probably said a cuss word and got fussed at by Ma, and someone else probably was over all the togetherness and someone else wanted to just go see their cows already and y’all…that’s the real reel!