Social Media Persona
This is a glimpse of my social media persona, and I honestly can say that in the beginning, I tried. I wanted this persona to be a girl who is balancing life, friends, school, the military, her mental health, and physical health. For a long time, I did just that, I posted workouts, I posted collages of me doing my favorite hobbies (riding motorcycles, reading, etc.), going to school, and working out. I realized while making these that it is extremely hard to have this balance, and I might need to show the bad side of things. In the same breath, making the videos made me not only feel better about how I was doing balancing it, but also the progress I was making. During the past couple of months, I found out I have Stage IV Chondromalacia in my left knee, and I was born with a bone deformity in both of my knees. I in simple terms am missing a lot of cartilage in my left knee due to this bone deformity, and I have issues in my right knee as well. The “common” knee pain I had as an active woman and athlete was not so common. This cause me to stop posting for quite a long time while I started trying to deal with my new normal, I did a lot of physical therapy and I also talked to my mental therapist as well, you can imagine how it messed with me mentally to be told I can no longer do certain things like running, box jumps, stair master, anything more than a 90 degree bend. My social media persona was coming to an end, until I realized it didn’t have to. I recently started to pivot a little bit online. I still work out and post, but now they’re a little more centered around doing it with Chondromalacia. I started doing more calisthenics and started adapting my weights and workout split to better fit my new body’s needs. I will eventually transition more into overcoming living with chondromalacia as grade IV. There is not much they can do for me, so it is a lifetime type of thing until im ready for a knee replacement. The small community I have built with my persona on Instagram has been so amazing and supportive! I get a lot of workout questions, supportive comments, dm’s, and even some sharing my posts with their own followers. I am very grateful to have built my persona into what it is now, but i cant wait to see where it goes with my new pivot.
Thank you for reading!
Bri