Gone Dark
Recently, and quite frankly very unexpectedly, I took all social media off of my phone. I’ve been dabbling with the idea of deleting my social media accounts for a couple years now, but that felt dramatic and pointless to me. Therefore, taking it off my phone felt very logical and simple because who looks at social media on an actual computer anymore? I’m not really sure what made me pull the trigger on a random Tuesday in April, but man oh man am I happy I did. I didn’t have this “come to jesus” moment about it or anything either - it was really simple thinking. The longer I scrolled through my feed - the longer I felt like crap afterwards. And not in a way of “man, I just wasted an hour endlessly scrolling” (although that would be the normal reaction), but more in the sense of feeling drained and just shitty about myself. It was endless highlight reels of people’s days when I was having a crap one. Or first time mom’s completely rocking it and looking flawless while I sat unbathed in my clothes that didn’t fit anymore with spit up from two days ago on them. And on top of all of that, I felt this need to contribute and tell people about my life constantly while I was on it - which just felt off to me. I can’t really explain it too well, so I won’t sit here and bore you with analogies, all I will say is that it was completely overwhelming and clouding me being able to find my “true” self in this new chapter in my life.
Simply taking it off my phone, lifted this weight off my shoulders that I honestly didn’t even know was there. It was like I could breathe for the first time - without trying to sound overdramatic or anything haha! But the thought that I could do anything, simply just for me, was oddly groundbreaking. It sounds sooo completely silly typing it out on here, trust me, I hear it too. But social media has this way of pulling you in, influencing you, and making you feel as though you have to contribute to the matrix. Without even noticing, you’re posting things for others - because honestly if it was for you, why would you even need to post it? For me, with each post I was losing sight of myself. I cornered myself into a position where I didn’t even know the difference between doing something because I truly wanted to or doing it because others were online. Everything felt curated to me, so much so that I got lost in the perception of myself vs who I really am.
In speaking with friends, most people actually think this way. They see social media for what it is and the curtain has been pulled. No one is blinded by the research that comes out correlating depression with the amount of time spent on social media. No one gasps when the reality of social media is brought forward when Influencers take their life or when celebs make an announcement to delete it all. And I think that’s because most people are able to see it for what it is and know that nothing is what it seems. They’re able to disconnect what they’re seeing and truly keep social media as a matrix to check in and out from. But for those of us that can’t quite find the right way to disconnect, it can all become very convoluted into our everyday lives. We understand, hear, see proof of it all being fake, yet sometimes that’s just not enough. It’s as though every time you log on you’re placing a tiny time bomb in the back of your subconscious and then as you continue to feed the bomb, the minutes turn into seconds and then BOOM.
I have always been a completely open book and love to write, but on my own terms. And for me, Instagram and Facebook didn’t feel like my own terms. It felt like I was being manipulated by a bad boyfriend to join the crowd and do what everyone else was doing even if it wasn’t truly for me. Which is the absolute easiest way to lose yourself, I’ve found. It won’t be forever that I stay dark, but for now - it feels really nice to actually notice the life around me. To take pictures just. for. me. And to just breathe!
