cut all ties.
Deactivated my account.
Yes, it is true, and in doing so, I find that I have taken my life back.
I no longer debase myself a dozen (OK, that is conservative) times a day to see what is going on with people I don’t even know.
I no longer look for absolution from those I do.
I don’t look to see who has been checking in with me even as I am checking on them while they are checking on me.
It had become a bit like an out of control spy ring where everyone needed to know everything and I wanted to tell things but didn’t want anyone to know what I wanted to tell.
It was pathetic, really, the importance that I had begun to place on seeing who was where and why.
I can’t remember a specific time when I felt so entirely like my life was my own.
Freedom.
In spades.
I have no-one to impress, nobody to account to or, for that matter, to account for. When I have something to say, I write it in my journal.
My journal is so happy to have me back as a regular contributor that it has congratulated me.
Delusions of grandeur? Possibly.
Seriously, though, it has been a freeing experience to find that what I think, like, know and experience is my own to think, like, know and experience.
I don’t need anyone’s approval to think thoughts or hear music.
When I am manic, it is OK, when I am feeling low and depressed, it is OK.
I need no validation or congratulation or adulation or any other “ation” for any of my actions.
They are mine and mine alone and the need to have someone else understand them has passed.
I understand them and what anyone else may think or have to add has become irrelevant.
Glory.
And glory again.
The first couple of days felt awkward, but after a week, when I wasn’t missed, I realized that I had begun to think way too much of myself.
Many of the people on my “friends” list have my phone number and could call or text anytime they felt like it.
They haven’t.
Others on my “friends” list have my email address and could send me a message anytime they felt like it.
They haven’t.
It was important for me to realize how little importance, in the grand scheme of things, I really have.
I was beginning feel something that I have never, not in any space of time in my entire life, felt.
Conceited.
Egotistical.
Self-centered.
That is not who I was, who I am nor who I ever want to be.
It was freeing to realize that nobody really thinks about me on a daily basis.
That would be weird. Seriously weird, if people thought about me all the time.
I will admit that there are ones those that I think about much more often than is good for me, but I have cut those ties as well.
I am a solitary introvert. I always have been and pretending to be otherwise did not serve me well.
I know what I want, what I hope for and wish for and nobody, other than myself, need to be privy to such privileged information.
During my facebook run, I trusted some people I shouldn’t have, thought about ones I had no right to and was well on my way to becoming obsessed with being liked.
I don’t care about being liked.
That is old news, teenage stuff, high school drama.
I don’t care if people like me or not.
I like myself and that, in itself, is quite the accomplishment.
Will I go back to Facebook?
I honestly don’t know.
I feel so good not being a part of something that had the distinct capability to make me feel bad about myself that I doubt, quite seriously, that I will go back.
If I do go back, it won’t be in the same frame of mind that I left.
It will be a more confident, self-assured, know where I’m going because I’ve been where I’ve been mentality.
In the meantime, I’m reveling in realizing who I am, who I can trust, who I thought I could trust but can’t and what my purpose is.
It is an adventure that, although daunting at times, has proven to be the ultimate learning experience.
I am happy even when I’m not.
There is power in that realization. The knowledge that I am happy simply being myself without any extraneous notions.
I can be happy and cry at the same time.
I have set my Sagittarian spirit free.
Mind-boggling in ways I never imagined.
I. Am. Free.
And I find that I like it that way.
A Photographer's Heart 