It was my birthday.

We went to an observatory that day.

I was so excited.

Now, I’m not so sure.

I’m off to the side right now, meanwhile my mother has forced my father to take pictures of her by the view to post on social media.

Maybe I was overreacting.

Surely, I must’ve been.

But I was so tired.

I’ll never be able to compete with her one true love, herself. And how she looked on Facebook and Instagram. Oh, and she usually posted pictures of me too without my consent.

I always found it so fake.

I’d scroll through her camera roll and see some photos of me smiling and think to myself, ‘None of that was ever real.’ If I looked so happy there, why don’t I feel happy looking at it?

“The point of pictures was to capture memories,” she’d say. What was the point of looking at fabricated memories, warping the truth just enough so we look good.

Just enough so we were still a perfect family.

I think today is making more feel even less wanted than before.

I wondered what the other people around me though, just a random kid standing alone. I doubted they took notice, they either already heading inside, talking, or taking pictures too.

Have you ever heard of “Dollhouse” by Melanie Martinez? I love Melanie Martinez. My life is kind of like that song, in the sense we hide our flaws.

I just wished it was different for one single day. Not that we revealed our flaws of course.

But just that our lives could be as perfect as they seemed on digital format, maybe some photoshop.

And a whole lot of retake photos.