An Imperfect Halloween

I was talking to a friend the other day on the phone who was telling me that she had not done family photos for a really long time because she did not like to be photographed. I told her that I did not understand why as I always thought she photographed well. I said, “Even the silly photos on Facebook, I think you always look good” to which she responded something like, “Well, of course! Those are the best of the best and highly screened before they are posted.” I laughed and said, “Well, isn’t that what everyone does?”

I totally get it and I’m equally guilty. I rarely post photos on social media, but when I do, the pictures I post are the ones that I would not feel ashamed of printing up and hanging in my home or office. And I think that’s okay…on social media. However, people (again, myself included – I am not perfect!) sometimes try to also live their real lives like this: letting the world only see the “picture perfect” parts of their lives. When we are not aware of doing this or when we do this more often than not, I believe it becomes dangerous for numerous reasons but mostly because 1) it is hard to consistently live a lie and can result in anxiety, depression, etc. and 2) we connect the most with people when they see our whole selves including the messy, not picture-perfect parts.

This past Tuesday was Halloween. I did not post the obligatory kid-in-costume photo or family-in-costume photo that night or even the day after (mostly just because I didn’t get around to it as a priority) but I sincerely love looking at the Halloween posts on social media - the kids in their animal costumes that make you want to eat them up, the families that pull off some amazingly creative matching costumes, the people that can manage to get their pets to keep their costumes on long enough for pictures AND a walk around the neighborhood, the couples that are apparently budding artists who carve pumpkins together for date night. I love it all.

Unfortunately, this was not us this year. LJ had a costume so that was a plus but poor Daphne (our dog) got neglected. I didn’t even remember to dig her costume out of storage and she didn’t even get a picture taken. Instead, she just barked ALL night at the trick or treaters. Not that she cared; I am just proving my point that this year I was far from those people who get their pets to keep costumes on AND walk around the neighborhood.

We were also far from that family that pulls off amazingly creative costume themes. Hell, I only managed to scrounge something together at 5pm the night of Halloween by digging out an old witch hat that I had from about 6 years ago when my sister Amy and I visited Salem. So I was a little festive but I was by no means in theme with LJ’s costume which was a dinosaur. Larry, stayed in his lounge clothes all night while he cooked (thank God!) and handed out candy.

We did manage to get pumpkins this year. Larry bought them back in September from our CSA. However, it is now November 3^rd and they still sit uncarved on our front steps. Whoops. Guess we didn’t get around to that! Even if we had gotten around to it, I’m guessing that any grade school kid could have probably done a better job AND it probably wouldn’t have been done over some romantic date night. Larry and I probably would have done it in a rush while LJ was napping or in a fog after LJ had gone to bed for the night.

Anyway, I really wish I could tell you all that we had a Halloween that rivaled what appears to happen in pictures in Home and Garden and on Pinterest. The perfectionist in me would love to be able to say that. BUT the human part of me knows that it is somewhat unrealistic and okay to be imperfect. In fact, it’s more than just okay to be imperfect, I’d argue it’s necessary to be imperfect in order to connect with others and build deeper relationships. So here you go, I am finally posting my obligatory Halloween photo (see above). And while I do have a better, more picture –perfect photo, I am choosing to post the imperfect one (LJ is giving me a look of disdain and I could critique myself to no end) to sort of parallel this blog post. I hope that you, too, are able to sometimes share your imperfect photos as well as your imperfect selves.

Note: I realize that blogging about an imperfect Halloween is far from sharing some of the larger, more shame producing imperfections that some of us deal with (addictions, relationship problems, health scares, etc). In a way, it’s like a “first world” imperfection. But hey, we have to start somewhere, right? Also, sharing those seemingly larger imperfections on the internet might not be the first place you choose to share your whole self. J