The weather comes down upon us, releasing more and more in its build towards a wicked winter these next few days. Before the temperature could drop further and the winds rise faster, I took a quick stroll around, sifting through the powdery snow more than walking on it; it was pleasant, even with this slight cold I have (and unexplainable pain in my left foot). A shade, though, was threatening to form all that while, this bitter chill casting light upon my self and in the shadow revealing a dark aspect I have been stifling. Blow, freeze, bite, the winter wind is urged on, for the vicious forces of nature do not pain as much as the vicious forces of our hearts. And boy do I know those vicious forces.
I am leaving Facebook, for now, perhaps permanently--we'll see. It is become burdensome to keep myself from bitching, kvetching, and otherwise caterwauling on a platform that gives breath to some of the problems I would thereof complain: non-productivity, loneliness, and most bitterly, comparison. Seeing pictures of trips, reading about the latest successes--Hell, just yesterday two of my FB friends married and another celebrated his first anniversary, and I don't even have night cheese to work on--all of this and more has inbred such bitterness that I can't continue to let it fester, so I'm killing at least two birds with one stone with this profile deactivation: removing such immediate sources of comparison, and freeing myself to actually do things, or maybe stuff. When I first signed on, I was reluctant, mocking those for whom the Internet was more of a home than physical ones, and now I am become an object of my derision. But I got an account as I said, because social pressure (i.e., the cool kids were doing it); however, it seems all the cool kids these days are diversifying their (social media) accounts and Facebook is, like, so last Tuesday (tchya, as if). I'm not a cool kid, though, so I'll be selling my stock, to speak figuratively, and ridding myself of a bad...something (blew the metaphor!). (Actually, I'll be deleting my shortlived Twitter account as well, because I don't use it.) ...Investment! That's the word I was looking for--I think. Fording this stream-of-consciousness, when I started I limited myself to two or three FB visitations a day, checking notifications, scanning the News Feed, and then being done with it. Now it seems FB allows me two or three visitations a day with the physical world, excepting real obligations, and that has to stop. Knowing myself, I can't just limit myself partially: it must be cold turkey or bust.
What have I been restraining? The initial urges of envy upon seeing the latest engagement, the first signs of derision when reading about someone's dreams and goals, but most fully, bitterness and its incestuous relation regret. A few weeks ago I just sighed and said "I don't know anymore." Everything and nothing seems possible; each time a foothold is made, vexation after vexation is met, and I, for whom much used to come easily, would give up. But stronger yet is regret--and now a story:
A little boy, whose mind and heart breathed in knowledge for themselves and breathed it out for other like minds and hearts, discovered early on his delicate path through the shifting woods of life-- shifting, because in the wild, all around is scary when one is lost and meanders; when a way is found, though all does not become perfectly bright and clear, one can appreciate the dark beauty of the chaos of the trees and thickets. He knew that just as he loved learning, so too must others, and he would help them along. There was happiness for this boy to find this path so early, yet he carelessly ambled along it, taking for granted his abilities, his support, and his future. After all, despite some minor difficulties, it was all a clear and easy going. Into this naivety strolled the Well-Meaning Distraction and his accomplice the Convincing Counterpoint. Together, Distraction and Counterpoint filled the boy with other ambitions and other ideas, and their voices so resounded that the woods around seemed to second their every word, the echoes chiming in with affirmations of the boy's intelligence and likely greatness. For years these baubles were dangled like a carrot before a donkey, and as he aged the boy continued to believe he was on the same path, as the initial dream still remained in memory, until one day--or week, so inconspicuously it appeared--a faint siren call from behind joined the mix of chatter that Distraction and Counterpoint had continued with, and a kernel of confusion popped up. Then other voices from the wood would whiz past, against which the true meaning of the boy's two companions became clearer and clearer. Suddenly, the tonal mirror was complete and all he heard was his own voice--yet, so hollow and foreign it sounded that he didn't believe it was his. You, Reader, might think this to take the usual turn and that I will say "and yet it was," but that is not quite the truest picture, for in that doubt came through, with the help of Instinct, the boy's original Point, or at least his Point's sickly hand. For the truth is that it his voice saying these things, but while his mouth and vocal cords were moving in unison with those of Distraction and Counterpoint, the truest of his thought and feelings were trapped along Point; yet Point had heard that siren, heard the other voices, and stirred the confusion and shame which were necessary to shake open the boy. Seeing the threat to their work, all pretense from Distraction and Counterpoint was dropped and a bitter battle was fought around and within the boy, and for over a year there was much attrition. Yet Point, with focus ever on that siren call, kept gaining ground, until, when physical and inner natures both turned towards bleakness and cold, Point seized full control, and Distraction and Counterpoint began dissipating. With a freshness of sense long-since lost, the boy looked around--and was terrified. This was not the path he thought he was traveling; he had not been a boy for some time; and though his Point now revealed that the siren call was the voice of Original Vision, it could not help to discern from whence it came nor how to find it. Turning this way and that, all that was lost was returning to him, but he himself was lost, and he just didn't know anymore. Yet, with ear turned carefully to the siren, he began one step after another.
What shall I--[cough], I mean, our hero--do to get back to what he was meant to do, which is to teach? What further anguish must be endured? Find out next week when return to the exciting adventures of--and you get the picture, regret at losing what had once seemed so obvious. But I don't want to fill myself with regret anymore, nor distraction, so that dissipation of those two misleading characters must continue, and part of that, at the moment, is removing myself from Facebook. Granted, even as write this it all sounds so dramatic for such a trifle as a social media thingamajig, but we don't always get to pick our peculiar downsides.
If there's something I really won't miss, it's all the FB people who don't have even a modicum of self-control that I will allow myself to applaud myself for having. I mean, wow, I thought I had problems, but you're deluding yourself if you think your naked narcissistic aggression is somehow a sign of strength, confidence, intelligence, or beauty; most importantly, all of it is interesting only as a warning. (Of course, being narcissistic, you are already delusional.) There, I will allow myself one unrestrained comment, and I feel better.
This doesn't mean I'm removing myself to a hermitage, just focusing on the actual and physical realm instead of the digital one. I still want to see friends, speak to friends, even write to friends should that occasion arise. I am, however, in tandem with renouncing the social media world turning from the dating world. That's a whole kettle of stinking, unattractive, self-obsessed, emotionally squashed--sorry, my bitterness is showing--fish, but that has proven a destructive area for me and for now am not actively seeking it. Sure, should someday he'll come along, the man I love...and he'll be big and strong...and maybe that'll be tomorrow, and I hope to ever be open for that, but gone for now is the heartaching search.
