I'm struggling with social media in a major way. I haven't posted on instagram in a month. I never really got my twitter off the ground. And I basically go on facebook once a year around my birthday because for some reason, people still care enough to wish me a happy one. I haven't even been on my facebook page to promote my blog since I started writing again last month. And let's be honest, while not quite social media, I ignored this blog itself for years. It kind of hung around in the background of my life, this thing I was supposed to care about, knew I needed, and took a stab at every once in a while, but couldn't bring myself to utilize regularly.
About the blog, I kinda figured out my hangup. I didn't like my truth. It was ugly living it; the last thing I wanted to do was own it. Publicly. My life was a hot mess. It was easier to melt in on myself than volunteer my way into a position of vulnerability by spewing my crap all over the internet. After all, in the past my words had been used against me. Occasionally I would catch up with an old friend and they'd inform me they still read my blog. I'd look at them in horror and ask why before telling them to stop. These people didn't even have an illness. Why would they want to read my incessant ranting about mine?
I guess the isolation and loneliness became too much to take. Eventually I decided to own my truth, in all its pathetic ugliness, and just start writing again. Like I did in the beginning: to me, for me. With no agenda or design on self-promotion. No pictures to create context or blurbs posted on facebook to draw in hits. I haven't even told my family. No, I just started writing what's inside. Slowly but surely, everything that's been stewing is starting to come out. It's an intense process, my attempt to trust again. To get to know myself and be honest about who I am. To confess my flaws and deficiencies to anyone with a WiFi connection. But the improvements I've experienced over the course of the past month are undeniable, so perhaps there's something to this whole "own your truth" business after all.
But the rest of it, the tweeting and liking and following and tagging, oh goodness it all seems so pointless. I know I'm supposed to want to engage with the world as it happens around me, on these specific platforms. All the kids are doing it. Why should I be allowed to not care that a person I went to high school with, and haven't seen since, went to Greece for six weeks? At the very least, failing to congratulate my aunt on her granddaughter's engagement makes me a pretty apathetic person. And don't even get me started on the political and social meltdown my country is enmeshed in. I should be shouting my two cents from the rooftops. Yet I sit silent, strangely absent, unpolarized by the actions of others because I'm so frustrated by the lack of my own.
Perhaps one day I'll find my enthusiasm or confidence or desire to reconnect with people. To share my experiences or what makes me happy or what pisses me off. But right now I feel like a stranger to myself. I hibernated like a bear for three years. I was hurt and recoiled into a tight little ball of protection and lost a significant amount of myself in the process. I guess I won't find a purpose in my social media, again, until I get to know who I am. Again.
Thanks for joining,
Leah
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