I recently heard that Facebook can boast one billion active users. Well, I am no longer one of them. I deactivated my account over three months ago.
Perhaps like many of you, I had used the site since 2007. I loved it for sharing photos, tracking friends who lived all over the country and beyond, and sharing life in Santiago, especially since Ryan doesn’t Facebook. But when I became pregnant with Lorenzo, I hesitated to post about it for a couple of reasons.
One, I wasn’t sure how much of my child’s life I wanted to put online. Let me emphasize that I in no way judge others and in fact relish all those baby pics I get to see because social media makes it so easy. I’ve easily posted a hundred photos of our pup Ruby on Instagram; I fully get the impulse to share cuteness with the world. Still, it felt like a parenting decision, and I wanted to take a little time to think about it if my online profile was going to have a new member.
 |
| Party of One. |
Two, what if something went horribly wrong? How do you possibly announce online to your “hundreds” of friends and then un-announce? So I waited until the second trimester was more than well underway and I felt a real sense of confidence because every prenatal exam had thus far shown us a thriving baby boy. This waiting confused some folks, and it got to the point where it was harder to manage others’ postings about my pregnancy than to just go ahead and do so myself. It’s a strange world we live in that subjects such personal news to so many so quickly.
Three weeks after I announced, everything did go horribly wrong and I had to think about how I would possibly un-announce. I realized I couldn’t. How could I let a status update sum up this tragedy? How could I deal with the onslaught of commentary? (Privacy settings and notifications often just re-file that onslaught elsewhere.) How could I participate and “like” anything in this world ever again? I hated the fact that I was even worried about it, but shock makes you think about curious things. I once fell down a flight of stairs and the first thing I said to the person who ran over to help was that I had his same phone. Our mind goes to places ahead of us, and sometimes those places don’t even make sense when we catch up.
I fell down the stairs in 2006, before status updates were such a prevalent part of life. These days, it seems when something good or bad happens, a lot of us take to sharing with the world the easiest way possible—by heading online and, as the one-billion-strong might suggest, directly to Facebook. Some people get a lot of support from such a visible platform when needed. It can be a form of social media as well as meaningful social change. I imagine, like it did on Twitter, it can rapidly engage disparate views when a certain vice presidential debate is on fire. Personally, I just couldn’t share, not there, not about this. For awhile, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to write about it at all, even given all the space and characters in the world. But within a month, I did, posting here on this blog the beginning of the story. And I haven’t stopped since.
So, why can I blog and be on Instagram and Twitter, you might be wondering? Well, there is infinite space on a blog. It’s home turf. It’s one conversation more or less in my control. I didn’t really start using Instagram until after, and life these days is very much about the before and the after. I’m still on Twitter because it isn’t personal in the way Facebook is. No photos of my pregnant person live there. There are mostly articles to read and share, and that has felt manageable. But I can’t go back to Facebook. If I ever do, I won’t delete the pregnancy photos and the joyful comments from friends because this experience can’t and shouldn’t be deleted. My son existed and I will never deny that existence. The point is that I don’t want to go back. I am not the person whose life was documented there for the preceding five years. She is gone, too, even if I am still here.
So, I stepped away from the rest of the billion and felt almost instantly better for it. As I person, I think I’m a bit better for it, too, because if I’m honest I’d gotten in the habit of checking a little too often. I was a little too aware of it. Being so far away, I relied on it a little too much to feel closer. Maybe some of you know what I mean. Now, if someone wants to know how I’m doing or if I want to wish someone a happy birthday, it takes a little more effort than a quick profile post. It means a personal email or a Skype date. If someone wants to know about our journey, but isn’t comfortable talking to me, I know there is this blog to follow along with, which helps both of us.
I hope no one takes any of this personally. If you love Facebook, I get it. Please go right on loving it. I’m just trying to show how isolating it can be even with one billion others there with you. Sometimes, I suppose you have to deactivate in order to really re-connect.
One comment