I spent the day with two of my friends from high school, Kara and Amber. The three of us live in different cities, but we make a point to get together and catch up several times a year. (We all love a good plan.) Our conversations always last a long time, but today I’m pretty sure we broke our personal record–we talked for nine hours. We laughed, we cried, it was better than Cats.

We started our reunion this afternoon at a coffee shop, but five hours later went to a restaurant called Mockingbird Kitchen. Appropriately, there were birds on everything, which immediately made me think of PUT A BIRD ON IT. If you don’t know, PUT A BIRD ON IT is a phrase made popular by the television show Portlandia. It has to do with the idea that you can take something unspectacular (like a simple tote bag) and dress it up and make it prettier than it actually is if you–well–PUT A BIRD ON IT.

I mean, just imagine how boring this coffee cup would be WITHOUT a bird on it:

For whatever reason, PUT A BIRD ON IT always makes me laugh. I like the way it rolls off my tongue. Plus, I have a dear friend who LOVES birds–like absolutely can not get enough of birds–and he’s always rearranging his decorations and knick knacks, so I love visiting his house and going on a bird hunt, seeing if I can spot a bird on a spring throw pillow, or maybe find a new statue of a fat bird he’s put on the back of his toilet. (Since this is my idea of fun, I should probably consider getting out more.)

Anyway, Kara and Amber and I spent a lot of time today talking about authenticity, this goal we all share to be open and honest and real and vulnerable, not only with each other, but also with the world. This goal, of course, is not an easy one. At least for me, I know that it comes in fits and starts. I’ve spent so much time feeling like I wasn’t complete, that a lot of my energy has gone into things like people pleasing and putting forth an acceptable social image, rather than simply being myself.

Whenever my therapist talks about Facebook, she always uses the word “presentation.” Like, it’s so easy to look at pictures of someone online and think that their life is perfect and that they have it all figured out. But the truth is, you’re only seeing what they want you to see, and as Paul Laurence Dunbar says, “We wear the mask that grins and lies.” That may sound a bit harsh, but I think it’s fair to say that few of us present a complete picture of ourselves to those around us, especially on social media. I know I don’t, at least until this blog started.

It’s not that I consider putting your best foot forward to be a bad thing. Most the time, I think what’s actually happening is that we take something we consider unspectacular and PUT A BIRD ON IT. We dress things up and make them look prettier than they actually are. But the problem is that we end up smiling when we’re actually falling apart. We say things like, “I’m fine,” when the truth sounds more like, “I’m fucking pissed.”

Close to ten years ago, I got obsessed with handwriting analysis, and I bought a lot of books on the subject. The theory is you can tell a lot about a person’s personality by studying their handwriting–how it slants, how big or small it is, how large the margins are. Well, one easy thing that anyone can do is look at a person’s signature and compare it to the rest of their writing. Ideally, they should look the same, but often they don’t. The explanation is that a person’s handwriting shows their true personality, but the signature shows the image they present to the world. The signature shows the mask they wear. The signature shows whether or not they’ve put a bird–on themselves.

When I first started therapy, I talked about how great it was. I mean, my therapist is hilarious, and we laughed a lot, and I saw immediate improvement in my life. “Everyone should go to therapy,” I said. Even now, I’m constantly saying, “My therapist says this,” or “My therapist says that.” Hell, I even have a blog about my therapist. But somewhere along the way, I started telling people, “I’m just kidding. Don’t go to therapy. It sucks.” What I mean by that is that productive therapy is difficult. It’s not easy to live an authentic life, to do things like be vulnerable, honor your emotions, set boundaries, and initiate confrontations. It’s much easier to PUT A BIRD ON IT.

All that being said, I think authenticity is worth all the hard work and being real is its own reward. There’s something beautiful, after all, about a simple tote bag that requires nothing but itself in order to be complete.