Black and white photos….They’ve been an obsession of mine since I was 19 years old. I knew a troubled girl who was living in the basement of a bakery and the people she rented her tiny makeshift home from had beautiful wedding photos in black and white adorning the walls upstairs. Photos of the wife running along the beach in her simple wedding gown, and her husband holding her close after they took their vows. Seeing these began this love affair with photography…both taking photos and loving them for all that they are. I’ve seen photographers who go into the dreariest of places, snap a picture of a house falling down or a homeless man sitting on a bench in the park and once turned to those many shades of gray become perfection. You can look past the sadness and see the beauty and simplicity because it looks artistic in the traditional filtered style. I love them so much because of their juxtaposition to real life. They make the ugly beautiful, the dreary seem lighter, and those things you may ignore seem glaringly important and necessary. I think many people live their lives in black and white. It’s very easy to present something beautiful….a lovely dress, a pretty day, a happy relationship, a perfect child, a warm home. Take away the filter and see what’s behind the image, present something real and that becomes truth. It’s the hardest thing in the world to show your true self. Fear holds us all back from that. The fear of being judged, of letting others see your ugly parts, things that are imperfect about each and every one of us, the human parts.
A dirty kitchen sink has become my norm. Most people who knew me before I had a baby (knew me well, that is) knew that I was extremely anal retentive when it came to things being in their proper place, cleaning house, organization, etc. I LIVED for a clean house, carpet lines, fresh laundry, and candles burning. I would NEVER have allowed a sink full of dirty dishes. Now that I am working full-time and my job has become more demanding, I have a 2 hour commute round trip every day between work, daycare, and home and I get roughly an hour of time a night with my daughter by the time we get home to play, eat dinner, and do her bedtime routine dirty dishes have become my norm. They look much more artsy and a whole lot less daunting photographed in black and white. I have met and continue to meet many people because having a child forces social interaction whether you want it or not and often I am told that I seem to have it all together. To those who don’t know me well, but follow my Instagram or Facebook social media accounts they assume that I’m workout obsessed, selfie addicted, self-indulgent, maybe even privileged to some degree and that my life is “perfect”. Here’s the black and white of my life. I do have a loving husband, a beautiful child, and an otherwise happy life. My house is messy, the sink is almost always rotationally full of dirty dishes that need to go in the dishwasher and a dishwasher that needs to be consistently emptied, there is often a laundry basket sitting for a week (or more depending) full of clean, folded laundry that needs to be put away. I sit down at 8:30 at night and want to immediately fall asleep, but I don’t so that I can have a little bit of time to see my husband and discuss our days and reconnect because we have very little time together. I get up 4-5 days a week at 4:30 a.m. and lately 5:00 a.m. to get a workout in, but not because I am trying to be a fitness guru, because I can’t stand feeling like a lazy POS, I don’t want heart disease, and my clothes stopped fitting because I was working a desk job and eating everything in sight and I’m vain. (I am perfectly ok with admitting it-not to an extreme, but I am).
I don’t have my act together at all. Most of my mornings are spent running around my house like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get Sadie and I out the door so that I can get to work on-time (and by that I mean 3-5 minutes early or late depending on what day it is and what tantrums were thrown that morning). I have other things happening in my life that make it not so sunshiny as well. I lost 3 people I loved dearly all within a matter of months from one another most recently. I have some dear to me that are suffering at the moment and there is very little I can do except be there for them and it kills me. I have stress, I have HORRIBLE anxiety that I’m trying to learn to cope with so that I don’t wind up medicated at some point which is the other reason I work out. I have my struggles. I choose though, to keep them private because there are some things that the entire world doesn’t need to know. I believe in holding things that matter close to your heart and protecting them.
I heard recently from friends of mine that they stopped following my IG account where I post my workout accountability because I made them feel bad about themselves. That truly hurt my heart. Not because they stopped following my account, I only ever created it to help hold myself accountable to actually do my workouts. But, it hurt me because I am apparently projecting an image of perfection or striving for it that I am, in reality not actually living. I don’t ever want to seem like an arrogant asshole. It’s not who I am. What the seemingly insignificant comments did was force me to look at myself and also those around me and ask myself what I wanted to show. So, I want to show these….the dirty dishes. I want to show the reality that is ALL of us. No one is perfect. We like to present perfect because it looks pretty in Black and White. But take away the filter and you have a sink full of 2 day old funk that needs to be washed, a couple that works hard to show kindness and compassion every day because marriage takes devotion and work. A woman who is trying to do better for herself and her family, but mostly you see what’s underneath the façade that everything is peachy all the time. Let me save you the suspense…no one is perfect. Nothing is as it’s presented to be on social media or the 20 second conversations you have with people in passing. Everyone has their burden to bear, their trials and tribulations and everyone struggles. My hope in posting this is that people begin to look beyond the surface of those they admire or hate and see that we are all human, we all screw up, we are all perfectly imperfect and we should all allow that imperfection to shine!
lifeinterruptedweb 