The Postcard Game

I just spent the past two hours sitting in the sun, writing postcards to my friends, family and familiar little world back home. I picked out the prettiest pictures, the best sunsets and the oldest buildings. I got out my good pen, the one I use for taking notes in class, blew the ants off of my lap and got started.

And I lied. Because that's what postcards do.

I love getting postcards in the mail. I love seeing where my friends have been, reading their words living vicariously through their precious moments. I hang them above my bed and I'm instantly there. But I know that a postcard is like a Polaroid: it's one second in time. It's edited and concise and has no return address. Because you can't write back to a postcard - you can't go back to that moment in time, but you try to make it as beautiful as possible so that someone, somewhere, can hold it close to their heart and read happiness between the lines.

No one wants to put a bad day in the mail. No one writes a postcard full of worries or fears. We have long, angsty letters for that - the kind where the receiver can sense, by the weight of the envelope and the sender's hurried handwriting, that this is not just a letter, it's an afternoon, a white flag, arms opened wide, desperate for a familiar embrace. We don't put that kind of thing on a postcard.

So my postcards are fragments. Not lies, just half-truths. I include the good: the sunsets, the old buildings, the slippery cobblestones after a freak thunderstorm.

But I leave some things out, too. I don't write to my friends about the blisters, the anxiety, the occasional bouts of loneliness. If I'm putting it into writing, I want it to be good.

Everyone plays the postcard game. On Facebook, on Instagram, in the mail - we all want to appear happy and fulfilled. And maybe we are. Or maybe we're not. But that doesn't really matter - what matters is that we choose the parts of ourselves that we put out into the world. Today I chose my best handwriting, tiny hearts in the margin, and words like "unbelievable" and "true."

And I told the truth. In that moment, on this hot and sticky, never-ending Sunday afternoon, I was happy. I had sand between my toes and the sun on my face. I wrote about challenges and adventures and signed them all "love from Prague" because in the end, that's the truest thing of all: I am here. I am here and what matters most isn't that I smiled despite my sun-burnt cheeks, that I eat lunch alone sometimes or that I always sleep through the alarm in the mornings.

What matters most is what every postcards says but what is rarely written: I am here. I am here and I wish you were too.

Love from Prague.