Facebook is Porn

This is a thought that’s been circulating in my head for quite some time now but today it REALLY rang true for me. Let me see if I can explain this analogy to you.

Before I got married and had the opportunity to have a love life that was actually satisfying to both body AND soul, I didn’t see what the big deal was about porn. I didn’t personally care for it but I didn’t think it was such a big deal if other people did. Then I started to understand that the problem with porn is that it’s all a bunch lies. And for the people that watch porn all it really accomplishes is creating a skewed view of what real sex is really like. It makes men think that women are willing to bring farm animals and other “equipment” into the bedroom when we’re really not and it makes women think that there’s something wrong with them if they aren’t willing to do those things. Oh, and if you don’t have huge perfectly shaped boobs and a belly you can bounce a quarter off of then you don’t look right either.

As anyone who’s ever been in a loving, trusting sexual relationship knows: porn is a lie. Real sex is often messier and sometimes awkward and I’m still not even sure how anyone manages to mix in any other props when I have a hard enough time keeping all of my limbs where they’re supposed to be. And sometimes your body makes strange noises and your belly hangs down a *little* lower than you’d like, and…well…you know, sometimes sex just isn’t SEXY.

That’s Facebook. It’s porn for life. On Facebook everyone posts the Best of the Best about their lives. Everyone posts wonderful pictures of their kids playing happily together or at the park or they post things like “What a beautiful day that the Lord has made! Went to church, breakfast with the kids, a happy afternoon at home, and then we found a sack of money and rainbows started coming out of our a$$es.” Or you know, something to that effect.

My day today made me hate the porn that is Facebook. I felt very frustrated today. To be honest, I feel that way a lot of days. As I scroll through my Facebook Newsfeed (And why do they call it a “newsfeed” anyway?? Rarely do I find anything newsworthy in my scrolling.), I see pictures of my friends and their families and everyone looks so stinkin’ HAPPY. And I started to wonder “Why didn’t MY day go like that??”

I work full time in an office and ALL FREAKING WEEK I look forward to the weekend. I look forward to sleeping in and leisurely eating breakfast with Mike and Oli and then just doing what we *want* to do all weekend. And, inevitably, at some point, sometimes multiple points, in the weekend, I am counting down the hours until I can go back to work!!! Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. I feel like I can’t freaking win in this game.

This morning was one of the ones I counted down to all week. At around 7:30, I heard a scratching noise beside my bed. I groggily opened one eye to find The Boss Lady standing beside my bed, scratching the sheets. Weird, right? But that really wasn’t so bad. We got up and made some coffee and hot chocolate and watched Shrek, which, you know, I always enjoy because I’ve only seen it 4,589 times.

We made waffles and bacon with Mike and basically enjoyed our morning. Since the weather was going to be incredible today, I surfed the internet to see what might be going on in this ginormous city we live in and found that one of the local museums was having a Family Day until 2. A Family Day??? Boy, did that sound swell for our family! I mean, what family doesn’t enjoy a good ole’ fashioned Family Day?

Like a herd of turtles, we raced out of the house and into the car and drove 20 minutes to our destination. We got out of the car and this lady walks up and asks if we want her parking pass so we don’t have to pay for parking. Score! What an incredible day so far! We start walking to the museum and the weather was just gorgeous. The sun was shining, there was just enough breeze, and the temperature was perfect. We held our sweet girl’s hands as we walked.

When we got there, there was so much activity! There were booths with face painting and calligraphy and origami and kids playing everywhere. “Olivia, what would you like to do?” I excitedly asked. “I want to climb the stairs,” she answered matter-of-factly. And so, while Family Day activities ensued around us, we climbed the stairs. Up the stairs. Down the stairs. Up the stairs. Down the stairs. How is it I continue to show up at these things without a flask?

I got a break though because 2 year old bladders aren’t very big so she had to go potty pretty soon and off we headed to the one thing in this world that literally causes me recurring nightmares: A Public Restroom.

But my kid isn’t afraid of any public restroom, oh no! In fact, the way she acts, you’d think a public restroom was the most fun place on earth. After like 15 minutes of yelling “Stop touching things!” and swatting her hand away from the tampon trash can I finally get us out of there with only minor feelings of my skin crawling with germs. On a side note: anyone know where I can by a hazmat suit?

Anyway, eventually we moved on with the promise of going to the park. We walked around a sculpture garden where my sweet girl found—you guessed it: MORE STAIRS! Another promise of the park and now promises of ice cream and we were off again.

Arrival at the park started out a little better. This is a new park that opened in October (I think) and it is really very cool. It’s built above a highway and there’s tons of grass and tables and chairs and lots of room to move around. There’s a playground and it looks like they are even building an amphitheater. They even have these books/newspaper/game stands where you can grab a board game or a book and sit and play or read. I mean, this place is COOL. And the best part is all of these yummy food trucks sitting nearby waiting to make your day even better.  

So, Olivia gets excited about the fountains (yep, fountains too!) so we head over and take off her shoes and socks and roll up her pants legs and then she decides she doesn’t want to go in the fountains because there are too many kids there. So, we walk to the food trucks and we buy some cupcakes and we eat those and that was okay. But then she tells us she wants to go play. Off we go again and we just let her lead the way and she walks right up to where the construction crew is working on the amphitheater and demands to play there. “Where?” I ask. “There,” she demands, pointing up at the scaffolding. Um…no? Really? This HUGE INCREDIBLY COOL PARK AND MY KID WANTS TO PLAY ON THE SCAFFOLDING???

We convinced her to try the play area again and she’s good for all of 37 seconds until she decides she likes NOTHING there so we start to walk again but she doesn’t want to actually leave the play area so she starts to throw a fit. So we leave her there and just walk away and she follows us stomping her feet and making pissed off animal-with-its-foot-stuck-in-a-trap noises and finally Mike just throws her over his shoulder and we head back to the car.

Yay, Family Day.

We weren’t in the car 7 minutes when Olivia completely passed out. I was nearly in tears. WHY couldn’t WE have a family day? Why couldn’t we be one of the families that was playing and having fun in the beautiful sunshine? “WHY???” Mike and I spent most of the car ride discussing whether or not this was normal 2 year old behavior or whether Olivia was just one of those kids who’s on those Sweet Sixteen shows and their parents have spent all this money on an elaborate party and the kid is in the parking lot throwing a screaming hissy fit because they got a BMW instead of a Mercedes for their birthday. We wondered if our plans to take her to Disney World in the next couple of years should just be thrown out now to avoid a massive meltdown at an amusement park that costs like a gajillion dollars to get into.

Here’s the crazy thing though: ALL of Olivia’s school reports are FANTASTIC. I’m serious. The teachers are constantly telling us how great Oli is and how well behaved and one of her teachers even got really brave once and told me that she had literally never heard Olivia cry. WTH???? How is that even possible? What are we doing WRONG???

We were supposed to go meet some of Oli’s classmates for a play date later in the afternoon and we stopped back at the house before heading there. When we got home, Olivia woke up and immediately started crying and telling me how tired she was. I asked if she needed to go potty and she definitively told me no. Three minutes later, I was cleaning up a puddle of pee and getting a new pair of Minnie Mouse panties. UGH.

In my hopes that we might get a little break from The Afternoon That Turned To Crap, we opted to skip the play date. I put Olivia in her bed and told her to rest her eyes if she was so tired. She pulled her blankets up to her chin and rolled over. I breathed a sigh of relief, went into the living room, and sank into the couch. Not 5 minutes later, in she comes, crying AGAIN. So, I take her back to her room and decide to lay down with her hoping that will help.

But she laid there, wiggling around, asking me 10,000 questions about everything under the sun, taking her socks off and putting them on her hands as gloves. Eventually, Mike came in to check on us and he laid down too. But then she got up. So, it was just me and Mike in Oli’s bed, clinging to each other for dear life and The Boss Lady running around her room making a sound like a siren.

I pulled out my phone and opened up Facebook and then that just made things worse. Because there were all of my “friends” talking about their perfect day with their perfect kids and their perfect lives and there I was laying in a toddler’s bed while the toddler was running around the room with no pants or panties on and socks on her hands singing The Wheels on the Bus.

Mike and I just looked at each other and laughed. But not in a funny way. In the crazy way. Like how you just don’t know what else to do because you are exasperated. And as I watched Olivia turn herself around in circles until she fell on the floor saying “I’m busy (dizzy),” I wondered ‘Is 3:30 too early to open a bottle of wine?’

At one point, Mike said “This is why boarding schools used to be so popular.” I laughed hysterically. That man cracks me up sometimes.

Look, we love our kid. TONS. She is actually a lot of fun but (and I HATE adding that “but”) lately I feel like everything we do is a crap shoot with her. Every day is a roller coaster of laughter/crying/laughter/crying/laughter/crying and I am just kind of spent on the Bipolar-ness that is Toddlerhood. It’s so freaking exhausting. And I wonder if all of my Facebook friends feel that way too or if their lives really are as serene and perfectly played out as they present in photos. And I wondered if my posts ever made others feel that way too. But I don’t *think* so…I mean, most of my posts aren’t “It’s a beautiful day in our house!” Most of my posts are something like “Just wrestled Olivia’s panties on her for the 87^th time in the middle of church and then tried to convince her to stop yelling ‘I farted’ at lunch.”

I’m sure I have posted some of the “perfect” posts that I am so envious of. Us parents LOVE to showcase the good, after all. Even if the Win column is less populated than the Loss, we will hang on for that one day that goes just as planned.

And I really NEED one of those days right now! Just one freaking time I would love to have that *perfect* Family Day.

You know, I remember my mom just being at her wits’ end when we were kids and we were all going somewhere together and she just yelled “We ARE going to do this as a family and we ARE going to have fun, dammit!!!!” as two of my sisters and I sat in the back seat of the car fighting/complaining/whining/crying/whatever. I totally get that now.

I’m realizing though that the fantasy Family Day in my head is just a bunch of porn.

This evening, as Mike and Olivia got ready for their daddy-daughter date night, I had a *tiny* realization that I hope will stick with me the next time we attempt a Family Fun Day. I watched Oli grab her purse and talk excitedly about eating chicken nuggets and playing with her daddy. I watched her run around the house getting her baby ready for the date as well. I took a little solace in the fact that I would have at least an hour to myself tonight. And I realized that, in the same way that real sex is way better than porn, real parenthood is way better than the fantasy in my head.

Okay, yeah, I’d much rather have a day in the park without a single moment of whining. But then I’m not sure I’d have as much an appreciation for the times that we are at home, just being together. Not perfect, but together. Listening to Olivia sing ‘TinkleTinkle Little Tar’ or running around with just a t-shirt and nothing else  and acting like we are the ones who are strange or watching my sweet husband give The Boss Lady their “reservation” print out for their date to put in her purse.

And I don’t know that I’d have the same appreciation for the incredible man I am blessed to call my husband. A man who makes me laugh when I want to cry. A man who takes his daughter for a date. A man who brought me a glass of wine saying, “I poured myself some too. But I poured you more.” The fantasy Family Day in my head may not involve any whining. But the real Family Day involves a man who is currently zipping his daughter up in her Elmo hoodie and getting ready to spend an evening eating chicken nuggets and playing on a playground.  Oh, and giving me a *tiny* bit of time to myself. And just like real sex is better with a loving partner, real parenthood is WAY better with a partner I can trust, lean on, and who doesn’t mind if occasionally I don’t always have it together. A partner who doesn't scold me for having unrealistic expectations and who always helps me to see the beauty of the reality. We may not make this gig look “sexy” and we may have looked ridiculous being the ONLY family at the park carrying a kicking and screaming child out BUT we focus on the beauty that is our life and we even manage to laugh and have a little fun.  

The picture perfect Family Day