These days it seems like I cannot get away from social media. Between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the plethora of new sites being created every day, there is a new medium my life is displayed on. I can choose to make my profiles private or I can choose to proudly display my thoughts and emotions to the world, dealing with any backlash that it may bring my way.
What I never anticipated was just how difficult breaking up would be because of social media and technology.
You see the great thing (and the worst) is everyone in the world can see what you’re doing. The pictures you post, the sad lyrics you tweet, and the new friends you add on Facebook are all permanently showcased to your social followers. Those that are friends to your ex-significant other watch it all happen and sometimes report it all back to “(s)he-who-must-not-be-named.”
For the past month or so, I’ve discovered just how difficult it is to avoid my ex because of this realm of social media. First we un-friended one another, and I thought “good, great, no more dealing with seeing his face,” until he was tagged in his friends photos and I slowly had to delete everyone as they appeared on my newsfeed. My newsfeed had become the page 6 of his every move.
Then there was twitter. I protected my tweets and hoped that would be enough to get by. But, then I got the follower requests on random weeknights at 3 a.m.. His twitter feed was protected on days he felt like it, and other days it wasn’t, and I obsessively (in the beginning) went through it because I apparently enjoyed torturing myself.
Then my Instagram got used against me. Photos of flowers I got on Valentine’s Day and even selfies were shown to him. I guess because it wasn’t on private I deserved that but the phrase itself “deserved that” makes me angry. I guess we, as humans, are vain up to a certain point. When told to put it on private, I thought, “How will I gain more followers?” It’s all very twisted.
It came to a point one day where I felt my entire life had been put under a magnifying glass. I felt like I had to hide myself from the world so I could avoid the tension and text messages I wished would stop coming in.
So I began to block everyone. Everywhere. I blocked them on Instagram and Facebook. Numbers were hidden, and everything I could possibly think of, I did. I had to build invisible walls around myself in order to ensure my life was my own again.
I hated doing this, and I felt like I was giving in to it all, and it wasn’t fair to me. I wanted to state a message. This is my life and in the words of Beyoncé, “I’m a grown woman/ I can do whatever I want.” Yet, I wasn’t able to do that.
“Sometimes,” my mom told me once, “what’s fair and what’s better for you are two different things.” It was a catch-22 in my eyes. I could either blast my life on social media, the intent that it was created for, and endure the texts demanding why I had moved on with my life so easily, or I could hide it all and never hear another word – if only that were so simple. I went with doing what was right for me, because in the end it’s about me. Don’t ever be afraid to pick yourself over everyone else; sometimes it’s the best thing that you can do for yourself.
I think in a typical situation, it wouldn’t be this difficult. But these days, breaking up is hard to do when the presence of your ex is so permanent in the social media realm.