On my 34th birthday, I archived every photo on my Instagram account. I took the app off my phone. It doesn’t miss me, it hasn’t called.

I changed the setting on every one of my Facebook photo albums to private. I untagged myself from every photo I’ve been tagged in since 2010. There are many it turns out, and they are not cute.

I left the Facebook app on my phone because I like free stuff and sometimes need to check the times of a birthday party or the art class pottery sale. I follow blogs.

I don’t share photos because sharing my life didn’t make my life better, it made it fake.

Now, I don’t have to get the perfect photo of having fun with my family . . . I just play with my kids in the water park. I get my hair wet. I have brunch without documenting it. I eat it.

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I can start liking myself instead of waiting for someone else to tap a little heart on my life.

I scrubbed my internet presence for my mental health—and it’s working.

I disappeared online because I wanted to re-appear in my own life. Like a glitchy hologram, the image of my life I portrayed online wasn’t tethered to my real self. 

Yes, we call it a highlights reel—we know the internet doesn’t tell the whole story. But how much is a highlight and how much is straight-up dishonesty when my marriage is crumbling, addiction and generational trauma are threatening to swallow my family, and I’m posting golden-hour photos on the beach? Merry Christmas! Nothing to see here!

If the top prize in competitive happiness is a thousand-ish acquaintances giving my life a thumbs up, the internet can keep it.

I’m not going to Britney Spears-style “cry, cry, cry in my lonely heart” while everyone thinks I’m so lucky.

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I don’t have time to be anything less than real.

There is too much work to be done in the world and in my family to waste my life constructing a story about how well I’m doing. 

I do want a good life. I work hard for a happy, healed, whole, family. Quietly.

I find more perfect moments when I stopped posing for them. The less I perform happiness, the more I feel it.

Try it.