The Honeymoon: A Debrief

I would like to make a social proof.

I think social media has made it really easy for us to fib about our lives.  It seems as if there is a secret code you must follow while using social media, which is:  "Ye must only share the good parts of your life."  And because we all follow this secret code, we get to thinking that everyone else's life really does only have good parts.  Allow me to share a valuable piece of information with you:

Everyone's life has sucky parts.

Hard to believe right?  Well, it's true.  Even when things look freaking AMAZING and you are so painfully jealous of someone in particular, believe it or not, they more likely than not have problems of their own to deal with.  They have sucky parts too.  And they could be even more sucky than yours.  They are probably just following the secret code of social media really well.

So allow me to prove all of this to you:

Three days after getting married, my sweet new husband and I set off for a two month honeymoon in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.  After 24 hours of travelling, this is how we felt:

Finally, we arrived in the Galapagos Islands.

We spent two weeks on the Islands.  Instead of staying at a hotel, we decided to rent a villa instead!  So we had an entire house all to ourselves.

And our house even had a rooftop terrace!

I loved reading up there in the hammock.  This was the view from the terrace:

Our favorite place to go swimming was only a 10 minute walk.  It was called Las Grietas.  It was a great place to go cliff jumping!

We loved to go exploring on the beautiful Tortuga Bay.

We also saw lots of cool wildlife.  Like seals.

And blue-footed boobies.

Jon really liked the boobies.

We also saw giant turtles.

Jon liked to pose for funny pictures.

I preferred to take pictures like this.

Jon's favorite part of the trip was shopping.

All in all, we loved the Galapagos Islands.

Then we went to mainland Ecuador and visited Jon's family.  We spent lots of time with Juan's Grandparents.

They took us to see neat things like his Grandpa's farm where he grew sugar cane.

And the mountains where his horses roamed.

Jon got to go repelling.

And we saw lots of cool waterfalls.

We also ate neat food!

We're so grateful we got to travel.

And that Jon got to spend time with his family.

Ecuador was fantastic.

Alrighty.  That was me following the secret code of social media.  Didn't my honeymoon look amazing?  I hope you're jealous.

Now to break some rules.  I'm going to tell the truth.  

My honeymoon is hands down one of the hardest trials I've been through to this day.

Literally, every single day of this trip you just glimpsed into was a battle to be happy.  I had to battle my mind, Jon had to battle how crazy I was going, and we had to battle to keep our love for one another afloat.  What we thought would be two months of newly wedded bliss actually turned out to be one and a half months of psychological warfare.  Because we came home early.  That's how hard things got.

It's so easy to smile for pictures and to share the good parts of your life.  But telling the truth, that's a little more difficult.  And I still can't figure out why.  Because I'm finding that once you share your burdens and troubles with others, that's when you will receive strength through their service and kind words.  That's when dealing with your problems becomes easiest.

I think it's because we associate admitting we have problems and that our life isn't perfect with weakness.  I know I did until recently.  

Since deciding to be bold and sharing my trials with Depression on my blog, I've been the grateful and unexpected recipient of so many kind words, it's unbelievable.  I've had a handful of women, ranging from closet blog followers to good friends, reach out with the sage advice that I go off birth control, if I'm on it.  (I'm not on birth control... I'm just naturally crazy, haha)  I've had friendly well wishes and had friends, and even acquaintances, share their own trials with me.  

I'm beginning to think that the greatest weakness a person could have is the inability to admit they have weaknesses.  I feel so much stronger and happier since admitting to myself and the world that I have weaknesses.

Honestly, I think I could be on to something here.  If you want to feel strong, admit that you are weak.