This Post is Redacted: Authenticity, the Holidays, and the Problems of Shiny Instagram Life

Sometimes I struggle with what to put in this blog post. How honest should I be? What should I include? What should I censor? Everyone knows that any writer’s life is more than happy pictures and thoughtful meditations.

I want to avoid giving anyone more bad news, even if it’s just about me. You know if you read my blog regularly I have some health issues, including an immune deficiency that makes me particularly vulnerable to pneumonias and other upper respiratory infections. A day or so ago I was in the hospital struggling to breathe, with a high fever and an upper respiratory infection that activated my asthma, a migraine that almost made me pass out, a cough so violent I actually vomited a few times, unable to get a breath, and hurt some ribs. A couple of days ago I couldn’t talk, or walk across a room, without collapsing into a coughing fit. Scary stuff, and yet, part of me did not want to write about it – don’t want to put my vulnerabilities out there, or give anyone bad news during a time that has enough bad news. Plus, we all have fair-weather-only friends – and even family – people who only want to be on your side when you’re winning, who only want to hear your good news – and there’s a fear that admitting our weaknesses makes us look weak, makes our problems more real.

Besides the illness, I’ve been feeling discouraged, isolated, unmotivated. Like all writers, sometimes I lose hope and momentum. I can’t get out as much when I’m sick, and the lack of social interaction can make me feel worse, as I’m sort of a social girl. And no doubt the weather (windstorms, mudslides, downed trees, massive amounts of rain) isn’t cheering anyone here in the Seattle area up.

In my Newsfeed, I’ve been trying to avoid reading any news about another shooting, terrorism, details of another good guy gone bad. Instead I read about a white Bengal tiger cub frozen to death in Crimea, the rising levels of Cesium-137 off the shores of Oregon and California, the news the seagulls are smarter than we think. It’s the holidays. I look for any shred of news that’s even slightly cheerful: astronaut cats, for instance, or robot arms to support you while you read. Margaret Atwood’s writing a comic book about a cat-bird-man. (http://electricliterature.com/margaret-atwood-is-writing-a-superhero-comic-book/)

What do we redact from our lives in our Facebook posts and Twitter feeds, Instagrammed moments of perfect cupcakes and outfits? Does that hurt our world, drain our authenticity? Does blocking bad news from your feed prevent it from happening? If I don’t tell you I’ve been sick and discouraged, does it make it disappear?

As the daughter of a scientist who did government consulting on Superfund sites, I am used to being around “Redacted” documents. When I was doing research for what became The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, I found a lot of the environmental reports for the Oak Ridge area were heavily Redacted. This didn’t mean there wasn’t radioactive contamination – it just meant no one wanted to talk about it. Or know about it. Or think about it.

There’s a danger to keeping secrets, to pretending to be invulnerable. No one can – or should – be “rah-rah” all the time. And I think it’s okay to admit that. During the holidays there is even more pressure than usual for us to present a cheerful picture, even if we’re not actually cheerful (which I believe is one of the lessons of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, that most spiritual of holiday shows.) But here, let me say that it’s okay not to be perfect, and not to pretend everything is okay when it isn’t. Struggling is part of the normal human condition. There’s a pressure for people with chronic illness, especially, to reassure others and present a “happy face” (http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1209-baer-sickness-upbeat-notes-20151209-story.html) and that’s not necessarily true, or healthy. Admitting our problems, our vulnerabilities, our pain, our struggles – that’s part of being fully human. And sharing those things lets in a crack of light, perhaps – opens a conversation, reassures someone else they’re not alone. The friends and family who love and support you, in the cliché terms, – in sickness and in health, in good times and bad – the ones you are able to be most authentic with – are the ones you should keep close.

Our job as writers – despite the pressures of increasingly shallow and shiny social media – is not to present a perfect façade, but to crack ourselves open a bit – to let both the light and the dark co-exist together. That seems to ring especially true near the coldest and darkest day of the year, also one of the world’s most celebrated holidays. Festivals of light, renewals of hope, narratives of rebirth and redemption – these are all the more necessary because we live in an imperfect and broken world, in mortal bodies.