Selfies

In an age of selfies, where we photograph ourselves at every opportunity in every situation, it is often more about the situation than us. We want to share the baby in our arms, our gramma's birthday, the animals at the zoo, whatever it is that moves us in the moment.

I sometimes laugh at my great niece who posts pictures of her baby about every hour, but I think I was so enamored with my babies I might have done the same thing had we had smart phones back then and better to be posting photos than ignoring that baby. I am a great photo enthusiast. I have over fifty big wide three inch albums filled with pictures of my children growing up.

But today I was looking at the selfie I have on my Facebook profile. I put it on the desktop background of my computer, just to see how I feel when it pops up every day.

I'm not sure I would recognize myself if I saw me walking across the room. Once, long ago, I saw myself in a mirror at a distance and wondered who that woman was who was dressed like me. I snapped this photo in my bathroom mirror and tried to look as natural as possible. No big happy smiles, no coyness, no false worrying, or any other sort of artifice, so I believe it is probably as much how I  look to most people who see me on an everyday basis, as any still photo can be.

I am surprisingly okay with it. In fact, I think I like it. I look healthy, bright eyed, pleasant and thoughtful. At my age, really any age, that is pretty good, but it is not how I tend to think of myself.

I am much harder to please from within. I think of myself as a collection of feelings and emotions, often anxious, or unsure. I often feel ugly and unkempt, incompetent and a square peg trying to fit into this earth's round holes. Bestest tells me I am not all these bad things and I believe him, but I feel as if I am putting one over on him -- even though I am not, at least consciously.

So . . . I am going to keep this photo on my screen and try to assimilate who she looks like with how I feel about myself.  I would really like to be her.