I’m not pretending to be happy for social media. Sometimes, there’s no way around it, you just have to wait for your life to play out.

Let’s say you’re in Europe on a birthday trip, and your boyfriend takes a stroll to La Sagrada de Familia and has an epiphany. Well, the epiphany is that he wants to break up with you on day 4 of 15 of your trip.

Are you going to stop taking pictures and not eat churros with chocolate sauce? No, you’re not. He doesn’t look at you or want to touch you but are you going to stop doing your makeup? No. You decide it’s a good time to finally shave your legs and keep it moving.

I don’t pretend to be happy for social media. I do however, sometimes pretend to be happy for myself. It’s called survival.

So here’s what I have to say to you who isn’t happy but you still want to post pictures that “seem” happy.

1. Do it. You are documenting your life and writing your story the best way you know how. It isn’t your responsibility to control how the reader interprets everything. If any of my friends thought a proposal was coming because we took smiling photos near the Eiffel Tower, I challenge them to be more discerning readers. There were omissions, metaphors, foreshadowing and dramatic irony all over my story if you chose to see it.

2. It’s still nice to have evidence for the life you lived. As long as you’re being honest with yourself, why not? Just remember, you are the artist. Frame your truth.

The photo above is from the day after we broke up; New Years Day. I was miserable. But I knew this would one day be a blessing I would look back on and thank God for. I didn’t know when or how long it would take but I knew. This photo is my thank you to God and it’s now my profile photo because it was my gift of starting over.

You’ll look back on some photos and see the sadness in your smile, too. You are not documenting a lie because you kept smiling even when it hurt. If anything, you are documenting a vulnerable, beautiful truth. This is life.

3. Somedays even when everything sucks, you will realize that you are still capable of being happy and that’s something to hold onto, tell about, post, insta-story or shout from the rooftops. It’s a magical super power that you can sometimes tap into and thank goodness for those days that give us the strength to keep going.

What do you think about posting on social media when you’re going through a tough time that hasn’t quite run its course?