In my daily life, there’s relatively little chance that I’m going to run into any of the exes just walking down the street, but sometimes I wonder…

It’ll be on a day where I’m extra fat and have a giant zit and I haven’t washed my hair in a week, no doubt. I’ll probably be feeling down because my career isn’t where I want it to be and I had the same fight with my husband this morning for the 3,715th time.

And I’ll look at all the ways his life has turned out better than mine, because that’s what you do, right?

I’ll see how pretty Joe’s wife is (and how awful I look in comparison). I’ll be jealous that Luke plays in a way-too-cool-for-a-bunch-of-30-year-olds band and he’s the star of it all. I’ll wonder if I’d stayed with Shane, would I be more like him now, all virtuous and scholarly? I’ll think Matt’s twins are the most adorable girls I’ll never have.

Any of those things would probably be enough to make me self-conscious and a little down about where I’ve gotten to in my life.

But, then, meeting an ex on the street is a little like seeing someone’s Facebook version of their life, isn’t it? They post pictures of their kids when they’re being cute, not when they’re throwing a tantrum. They talk about their awesome band, not the little sports car they just had to sell because they’re divorced now and have to have their own mini-van for every other week when they get to have the kids. They don’t say they got fired from their last job for looking at porn on their work computer.

It’s a tiny snapshot of the way things are.

And maybe they can see that I’m fat and haven’t washed my hair lately, but they can’t see that I’ve grown into the independent woman I wanted to be in high school, except this time it’s not just play-acting. They can’t see that I have a sweet, smart husband who laughs at my jokes (even the stupid ones) and is proud of my work. They don’t know how many heartaches I’ve gone through and lived to tell the tale.

If they did, then maybe they’d look at my life and feel that twinge of nervous jealousy that I know I’d feel if I met them on the street.