5:57 pm
…and it still feels good-ish. In short, I feel freer, mentally, like there is just less noise; but, I am finding myself sort of feeling like–poof!–some of my friends have just disappeared from my life. Of course, they haven’t just disappeared–they just rely heavily on social media to relate to me. It’s weird. (Nothing is rational about this process, about why we feel the way we feel on social media–if anything, it’s a form of talking to ourselves, a monologue, not representative of a dialogue with another person, which, in my opinion, is the definition of a relationship.)
Sure, I feel a bit out of it when it comes to current events. However, all I have to do is put in a little bit more time to intentionally go to news sites—especially those that cover the local news, for instance the government’s updates on the COVID-19 situation. And, the idea of being intentional about this appeals to me: instead of just consuming this, that, and the other that pops up in my Facebook feed, I’m choosing to see all the stories at one publication’s website, choosing to read all the headlines and then, choosing to read the entirety of some of these stories.
I know I’m not missing much in that regard since I’ve got a world of news right at my fingertips. As for my groups, eh, those will be there; the important ones, I’ll be able to catch up on. For my grad school groups, I can catch up quickly on those, since new posts don’t appear that often and the content remains evergreen, relevant for quite a while. For this perimenopause/menopause group that I follow–um, I think I have enough information to tell me, there isn’t really a fix, let alone a quick one, so…I can let it go for a while. For this one, a hiking group, people post super-cool pics all the time, but, I’ve done a lot of the hikes that folks are posting about, and, what do you know, I can go back to my own photo library and re-live these hikes by looking at some of my own, awesome pictures!
What I haven’t been able to shake yet is this feeling of resentment toward some of my friends. Maybe just disappointment. It’s true, we are in a pandemic and everyone seems to be hunkering down. I know that some of my in-real-life (IRL) friends spend a LOT of energy living via their Facebook pages; I also know that, in the past, whenever a friend of mine deactivated or deleted his or her account, I felt personally affronted–it was like, really, you’re just ghosting on me and everyone else like that? I wonder if the friends who have gone silent the past week, are they feeling like I’ve been “ignoring” them, or have ghosted them? No texts, no messages, no calls–I can’t help but feel slighted, but the benefit of not having that noise in my life right now simply outweighs all the rest. Distance will help, I know; hopefully, whatever real or virtual tiff will have dissipated by the time we interact again, on the ‘book or IRL.
Mainly, I have felt bored, but also this sweet sense of quiet–a feeling of peace, focus, less noise in my head. Very little of others’ lives and feelings are bumping around in my brain, taking up my time and energy–and that is glorious, really. A relief.
It’s a bit tedious being in my own head and world all the time, especially under lockdown, but, going off Facebook and other social sites has been instructive as to how much I rely on virtual, almost-pseudo-connection to feel connected.
So, onward. Time to finally read a book–haha.
Drunky Drunk Girl 