Here's Me Quietly Tip-Toeing Back To Social Media

What I learned from being a hot mess online.

Licensed from Adobe Stock

Four years ago, I posted a series of stories on my Instagram. I had just recovered from an anxiety attack, returned from urgent care, and was heavily medicated. I talked about my stress in a series of videos and while hundreds of my “friends” watched them, only three actually reached out.

The knowledge that people saw my pain and didn’t seem to care enough to reach out was worse than the actual cause of my anxiety.

A few weeks later, I did the same on Twitter and was immediately ashamed. I knew why I did it—I wanted to open my mouth and scream but it felt as if no sound came out. I didn’t want to die, but the hurt was so palpable and constant. Our bodies are designed to handle only so much pain. What happens with the overflow? Where does the pain go? Are we forced to contain it until we shudder and burst? A few kind friends followed up and I was grateful for their love and friendship. Two reported my posts to Twitter, and I received a form letter about “reaching out” and “getting help” as if people who have depression don’t already know these things. The irony was that I was reaching out, but apparently, my pain was too much for others to witness. That form letter was yet another piece of duct tape affixed to my mouth. Others unfollowed me and didn’t care at all.

I had built friendships based on me being the fixer, the connector. I always knew someone you could talk to, I always had the solution. I was forever penning introduction emails and meeting people for coffee. I would bear the hurt of others and was consistently the voice of calm. The woman neatly assembled and put in order.

It’s only when I began to break did I notice how tenuous the bonds of friendship were—how my being human was a dealbreaker. How some friends quietly tip-toed away from my mess while others were more brazen, slamming virtual doors in my face. I had never had so many followers yet I felt alone.

So, I shuttered all my accounts. Gone were the nearly 10,000 Twitter followers and all the Instagram accounts. Many were seized with panic—how would I remain connected? Wouldn’t I lose work? Didn’t I realize the cataclysmic mistake I was making? Surely, you’re not going to throw away all those followers so meticulously earned. I mean, Lana Del Ray is follows you, one friend said in text.

Maybe we should ask ourselves: When did we become lazy in our relationships? When did we start relying on platforms that own our information to do the work of conversation and connection? When did it become abnormal to not have a social media presence?

Although I’d largely built a career rooted in being online—I was one of the first to publish an online literary magazine before it became common. I blogged as early as 2002. I became an expert in social media and digital marketing and made oceans of money telling people how to build relationships with customers online.

I used bridge metaphors in PowerPoint decks and here I was, setting the bridges ablaze and watching them burn because I’d grown tired of measuring the depth of my connection with the world based on how I posted carefully curated and edited information about my life. People bemoan the fakeness of social media in pursuit of the real, but they don’t actually want real. More positivity in posts means higher follower counts; people want to follow those who don’t share much negativity, and that’s a fact.

Funny how we talk about the plastic nature of social media as if it were a thing removed from us. As if social media were an entity we didn’t actively shape and participate in. As if we aren’t the people perpetuating this false reality—regardless whether we’re conscious of it. We cultivate the reality we wish to see and tech companies with their complicated algorithms cater to those wants by endlessly feeding us the phony and only slightly real.

Because, really, we don’t want to watch mess online. We flee from those dressing their wounds and speaking their hurt. Look at how people mock Britney Spears, a woman clearly hurting and trying to heal and perhaps making the mistake of sharing her vulnerability with the world without realizing the world really doesn’t want to see it. They want her comeback tour, the performances from when she was 21 and puppeteered. When she was quietly tucked away and drugged up.

Better to leave the mess offline.

But what I learned in that time not being tethered to a device and desperate for that heart, like, and comment was how to live. How to set down my phone and enjoy the meal without fretting over the lighting and attractiveness of the dish. How to see the world with my eyes instead of a camera lens. How to cycle through emotions instead of the immediate desire to speak them publicly.

I learned how to be the woman I was before social media became front and center in our lives.

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In the year leading up to COVID, I sought to leave the comfort of a Los Angeles home to become itinerant, roaming the California mountains and the desert. Living in a town with fewer than 200 people and standing a few feet away from a coyote. Holing up in an icebox of a home in Palm Springs when temperatures soared above 116 degrees. Locked in a tiny room in Ojai while also dodging snakes during 17 mile hikes. I stood still under a blanket of stars in Joshua Tree like I’d never stood before. I was transfixed by the night sky and I spent hours feeling the chill of the high desert without feeling the need to document every moment of it.

However, I wanted to share a slice of it with a small group of friends. I created a new private Instagram that would be a slideshow of that year-long journey—the feasts savored and miles walked. The time when our tour group got lost in Joshua Tree Park at night and how we had to feel our way through the dark. And telling all the stories of people I met along the way.

But I also created boundaries. I would wait a day before posting a photo or story. And the stories shared wouldn’t veer into the deeply personal because I learned how painful and cruel it was to parade my wounds out for the world to see. While I still wrote honestly and plainly about my constant journey into the dark and my crawling and clawing for the light, writing requires an element of reflection and perspective. It demands that you pause. It doesn’t bear the immediacy of turning on your phone and sobbing in an Instagram story.

While we’re celebrated for the perpetual me, me, me on social media, the navel-gazing is far from embraced when we translate it into prose. What kind of art could one create if one wailed through 1,500 words? Trust me, I’ve tried it and immediately hit delete after one read-through.

There’s nobility in taking a beat, a breath. Our every moment not be so instantaneously plotted, programmed, and published. Instead, I considered how to create with more intention. I’m not always successful, I sometimes have a penchant for the dramatic, but I’m conscious about tempering myself.

Now, I ask myself: is this something you want to put your name on? Is this something that will endure? Is this something that will make you cringe when you’ve have time away from the moment? Is this something that will truly bind you to others or make you feel more alone when hit with a wave of their silences?

Being away from social media also made me realize I don’t need the peanut-crunching crowd’s approval. I don’t need the masses to tell me I’m smart, I’m a talented writer, I’m a decent person. I need to know these things for myself because no amount of fanfare and applause can replace the confidence you’ve built for yourself, in yourself. And once you have that grounding, negative comments are silly rather than wounding. Praise is wonderful and kind but it’s not a measure of your worth.

And sometimes, things are simply best left offline because there are parts of myself that are private and mine and when they’re shared they become less mine.

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A week ago, I found a dormant Instagram account. It was filled with old friends and peers I admired. It’s a small space, not the legions of followers from years past, but a sweet one. And I’ve enjoyed sharing updates on my cat and the goings-on without attachment. Because social media is a tool not a lifeline. It’s one means of connection and never a replacement for pulling a friend into your space and holding them there. It’s never a stand-in for seeing a friend on a screen and hearing them talk about their day and lift up their dog with pride because isn’t she so stinking cute?

Social media is not the same as the effort you make for the people who matter. And it’s not therapy or a repository of pain. It’s just a place, like any other place.

A place I sometimes like to visit and tell a story, share a photo, but it’s not, and never will be, a home.

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Notes:

• So, hey, if you want to see periodic updates on the movies I’m watching and photos of my cat in repose, feel free to follow me.

• I’m heading back to Los Angeles at the end of the month and I’m excited to go home. I miss the bananas bus system, overpriced sourdough bread at Whole Foods, and competent doctors. I also start physical therapy in October, but I do want to get surgery while I’m still “young,” before this knee fuckery gets worse.