Everyone is happy online, I'm suspicious

I am talking about the ordinary, everyday kind of unhappy. The kind where you wake up late, discover there is no tea, your phone is at 8 per cent, someone has sent you a "quick reminder" at 8:03 in the morning, and you immediately wonder whether abandoning society to raise goats in the countryside is still a realistic career option.

I cannot find these people online. Everyone is happy. Well, I have nothing against happiness.

Eat your cake, fall in love, get your promotion, go on holiday, buy yourself flowers. I fully support it. But this much happiness?

Something is wrong. I open Instagram, and apparently the entire population has collectively achieved inner peace. Where did I go wrong?

Somebody's bio literally says "healed, hydrated, and unbothered. " Unbothered by what? You post four times a day.

You are extremely bothered. You are the founding father/mother of bothered. I scroll for eleven seconds more and see three engagement announcements, two pregnancy reveals, one "we bought a house" post, and someone's gender reveal party.

Meanwhile, I am celebrating the fact that I changed my bedsheets after only three weeks. Where is my standing ovation? Where is my statue?

Where is the street named after me? And then

I follow people who seem to wake up every morning in a state of spiritual achievement. There is always sunlight coming through enormous windows, a cup of coffee placed at exactly the right angle, a perfectly clean table, and somebody sitting there looking peacefully into the distance.

I don't even look peacefully into the distance when I am being photographed. I look confused, like a man being asked, mid-robbery, to describe the suspect. And also

why is everyone's house so clean? Online, everyone lives inside a furniture catalogue. There is not one sock to be found on the ground.

Suspicious. Not one dirty dish in the sink. Not one crumb on the counter.

Then there are the people who have "found themselves. " Every few weeks, somebody announces a new era. "My healing era.

" "My soft era. " "My peaceful era. " "My self-love era.

" "My new chapter era. "Next month it'll be "my villain era," the month after "my delulu era," and eventually, inevitably, "my going back to therapy because none of the other eras worked era. "Then there are the morning people.

I don't trust people who wake up at 5 am and are happy about it. At 5 am, they are exercising. At 5:15, they are meditating.

At 5:30, they are journaling. At 6, they are reading. At 6:30, they have apparently forgiven everyone who ever hurt them.

At 7, they are making a protein smoothie. At 7:15, they have already changed their lives. I wake up at 7:15 and need several minutes to remember what day it is.

Correction: I need several minutes to remember WHO I am, WHERE I am, and whether I actually have legs or if that's just a rumour.7:15. Alarm goes off. I don't move.

I can't move. I'm not a person yet. I'm a rock.

I'm a fossil. I'm something they'd dig up and put in a museum with a little sign that says "early 2000s, species unknown, probably tired. " Eventually I sit up.

And everything cracks. My back. My neck.

Something in my knee does a sound I don't have a word for. I'm in my twenties making noises my grandfather made. I don't want a smoothie.

I want silence. And preferably nobody. But social media has made everybody suspiciously productive too.

I would like to see one person write: "Today I lost my temper over something extremely stupid, and I regret nothing. "Now that is authentic.