You know how social media is everything, like, EVERYTHING and people often remark on the phenomena of Facebook Fakery, i.e how someone’s online life looks like it’s farts would smell of Chanel No5 but the reality is nothing short of a car crash? Well I’m not so sure that it started with Facebook. I blame the Waltons and let me explain why.

I’m pretty sure that 99% of people reading this grew up on a housing estate, private or council and had the usual neighbours, schoolmates and streets and streets of Mr Joe Average with his 2.4 kids and Volvo estate. When I was a kid I would look at these families and think that they were the absolute epitome of normality, mum was a kitchen demon, big brothers were idolised and dad was the quiet, wise fountain of all knowledge and his word was absolute truth. This ideology came from hours spent watching The Waltons or The Brady Bunch reruns and wishing that I could climb into the telly, morph into a freckled ginger (the Waltons) or a vaguely Aryan, towheaded blonde (the Brady’s) and live happily ever after, as far from my isolated hell as I could possibly be.

(Sidenote: I wanted to be a blond Brady yet the boys were dark (weird) and the twinge for the ginge has never really left me. Anyway, I digress…..)

I always believed that the goings-on in other peoples family was much more pleasant that mine, they were the Waltons, we were the Bundys. I was always certain that no one would understand what I was feeling because no one else would be going through what I was going through so I just retreated further and further into myself and would only be really comfortable (but desperately miserable) when I was alone. I would look at other kids with their families and feel genuine jealousy, they looked so happy and so carefree and I felt like I had the weight of the world bearing down on me.

It wasn’t until I was WAAAAAY older and had begun to open up to some of my friends that I realised that there WAS an element of fakery afoot. I discovered that families I absolutely coveted were every bit as dysfunctional as mine and they, like mine went to great lengths to put on an air of respectability and “normality” (I absolutely DETEST that word, what is normal anyway? Normal is beige, I want red.) One positive that did come out was that no one had any idea what was happening in my own home so my quest to keep a lid on things and not destroy my family was working.

Anyhoo I suppose what I am aiming for is that all those years that I felt alone, that everyone else grew up on Walton’s Mountain but me, that no one would believe a word if I was to tell, it was all wasted energy, wasted stress. I spent so long being made to feel like a worthless, useless mistake that I absolutely believed if I opened my mouth to anyone, told anyone I would make their perfect life less so because I would tarnish it the same way I had ruined my family’s.

I really wish I’d known back then that no one’s life was THAT perfect unless you were called John-Boy Walton, and for that I blame him entirely.