Cover Photo: Your Life is a Priceless Treasure – Stop Broadcasting It Like a Cheap Soap by Susan Scruggs
 

Your Life is a Priceless Treasure – Stop Broadcasting It Like a Cheap Soap

Instagram seems to have become a continuation of our lives. People from all over the world seem to post their identities into this network. Right now it seems that this social network started to dictate everyone the ways they should exist and most of them blindly follow the trends. People should study how to value their lives, stop showing it to public and become more independent from the opinion of the society.

I started my career of an Instagram blogger at the very start of its creation. It was the time when I still had my work of a part time writer at Madestones company. Every person seemed to get crazy over the opportunity to share the personal images with each other. You could count me as one of such obsessed guys. Many people told me that I was pretty and looked fine at the photos. That is why I started posting myself in various places. The number of daily posts reached about 40 photos.

It went to the gym and I took a photo of myself in a sport suit. While I had breakfast I made a photo of me and my food. Photos in the streets, photos in the bathroom, and half naked photos – Instagram became my second life. It was really hard to disconnect from the web as I was constantly interested to read the comments and check how much likes I got on this or that photo.

I remember this awesome feeling very well: to see the likes of followers. I bathed in the people’s admiration and adored reading positive commentaries. I didn’t care about negative ones as there were very few of them and I considered them totally worthless. 

When you are loved and adored by everyone you consider all of such people the friends of yours and the recognition of subscribers is like a drug that grants energy to most of us. I received proposals to advertise some things for money and, of course, I couldn’t refuse as it brought me a decent monthly sum of money.

My addiction couldn’t last forever but I didn’t understand it. One morning I woke up because of the hissing sound in the battery. The first idea was to call the master to deal with it. After calling him I was asked to wait for an hour or so. I considered it an excellent opportunity for an Insta shot. In a box with tools I found a wrench key and decided to take a photo as if I am a professional plumber who is fixing the radiator. This was my big mistake. Within a few seconds I felt a burning pain that was engulfing my face and couldn’t do anything but shouting from a terrible pain. I remember the blankness and the quietude that came afterwards.

Only the next week I came back to my senses and was told that half of my face was burned down with a boiling water almost to flesh. I was under strong anesthetic medicaments and that explained the numbness of the side of the face. The doctors said that it was a wonder that I survived and even preserved my sight as it could have ended up with a total blindness. 

All the saddest happened afterwards. At first people pitied me, but very soon the interest to my persona slowly extinguished. No more followers, likes, money offers, etc. I became a freak…

I understood that instagrammers accept only posers who pretend and like showing off. I was such type of a person. It took me a lot of time to accept the new self and I finally understood that one needs to preserve personal secrecy and don’t try to be like others and follow their footsteps.

Currently I’m working with various women and trying to teach them accept themselves in the way they are. I’m fighting to win people from the Instagram and bring them back to a real life not the one that is concentrated around photographing and likes.   

Susan J. Scruggs is a former Instagram star who changed her life and became a motivational coach for women with complexes.