Things I'm afraid to tell you.

By now you've probably all seen the "Things I'm Afraid to Tell You" posts floating around the blogosphere. They began last week; I've seen iterations of them all over the place over the past few days and I can't tell you how much I love reading each one. They're beautiful, but even moreso, they're comforting.

I'm totally one of the people who -- after clicking through a Google Reader filled with gorgeous outfits and perfectly styled interiors -- wonders how others hold it all together so well (see more on this below). And I know that we choose to showcase the things that we want others to see on our blogs and various social media outlets: the pretty clothes, the blooming flowers, the adorable kittens and puppies, etc. I'm totally guilty of this myself; I've mentioned many times that my friend Kate likes to tell me I live in "the marshmallow." And usually I like surrounding myself with the pretty, because who doesn't want to look at at a gorgeous room or a cascade of flowers after a hard day in the real world? But sometimes it does make me feel inadequate, and that's why I was so glad to see these posts pop up.

That said, reading the posts and relating to them is quite different than sharing my own list of "afraids," and I hesitated to click the publish button this post for a long, long time. Still, in an effort to be authentic, I want to share.

Here are (some of!) the Things I'm Afraid to Tell You:

Three years ago, I lost a lot of weight and I'm constantly terrified I'll gain it all back. (And ironically, I've been pretty unstructured with my eating habits lately, and haven't seemed to be able to work up the motivation to get them and my exercise routine back into the place I like and where I feel best. It freaks me out a little and I'm trying to work on it.)

Even though I love Sarasota and my life here, I think about moving all the time. Really. All the time.

I'm trying hard to get my finances in order after making a mess of them a few years ago. It's not easy.

I'm really messy. Like, I constantly have to remind myself to clean up, there's generally cat hair everywhere, and I tend to wait until I run out of underwear to do my laundry. And while I'm super motivated to do things I'm passionate about, I can be preeeetttyyyy lazy about the things I'm not.

I can carry 10 bags of groceries up the stairs, cook a delicious meal, go to a movie by myself, take care of two cats and maintain an independent lifestyle, but until about six months ago I had trouble uncorking a wine bottle and I'm pretty hopeless at home-improvement projects. 

Sometimes I feel jealous of others' seemingly perfect lives. I am not the girl who is decked out in Kate Spade with blown-out hair that doesn't ever frizz and the perfect shade of J.Crew-red lipstick on my lips. My hair is often frizzy (and sometimes, let's be honest, wet when I leave the house in the morning), I forget to put on lipstick all the time, I never (OK, rarely) wear fingernail polish, and I sweat. I'm usually OK with it and don't really worry about it, but sometimes that kind of thing catches up with you, especially when you saturate yourself with the kinds of perfect posts I mentioned above.

I am judgmental about poor grammar and punctuation.

Eeeek! That was scary, but it felt cathartic to share. 

P.S. Related and intereseting reading: This Guardian article, about Facebook's link to socially aggressive narcissism, and the paragraph in this post by Jane in which she talks about the ways we sometimes deliberately structure our days when we live alone. Certainly food for thought.

Photo by nirrimi