Life Without Facebook

I left Facebook months ago.

I will never see or speak to most of those people again. I won't know if they had babies or grandbabies, if they got married or divorced, or even if they died.

Sometimes I'll swear I see someone's profile in a car driving down our street, or I'll feel a momentary certainty that the back of a head at the gas station belongs to someone I knew.  But, that's silly, of course.

No doubt it used to be this way, before social media. Most relationships have always been transient, to various extents.

Still, it's strange to leave so many people behind in a single swoop.

To some extent, I feel relief. I don't have to worry about saying the wrong thing or being too much. I don't find myself waking up at 3 am thinking, OMG, why the f*** did I share that? Delete, delete, delete. It's an unfortunate reality that I am less anxious when I avoid people.

But I also feel, not so much loneliness, but grief.  I actually feel rather great sadness, when I allow myself to think about it. But, I don't want to wallow in that.

The thing is, leaving was my choice. I suppose a rational person might say that I chose moral rigidity over relationships, and perhaps that's true. But, I was failing at relationships even before I cut that thread.  Between the death of my cat and the political betrayal I felt, my emotions were on fire, and I felt like I would burn anyone I got close to.

Maybe I burned people by leaving, too, or maybe I just burned bridges.

I will be okay. I still have my family. I still have my therapist. My circle is small, but it's made up of good people (and animals). Wherever others are, I hope they are okay, too.