Friday, October 24, 2014

The Death of My Facebook Account


People keep asking me why I decided to delete my Facebook. Honestly, I thought my online disappearance would go unnoticed. I first started unfriending everyone while simultaneously saving photos onto a flash drive. But soon people (mostly other Peace Corps Volunteers) noticed and I got a ton of questions.

So what’s the deal? Let me tell you:

Facebook makes me miserable. I feel lonely when my friends are in Washington D.C. hanging out at a bar together. I feel left out when my entire family attends a family friend’s wedding without me. I feel a sense of longing when my boyfriend is photographed at a wedding (a wedding in which he had a +1 invite!). Lastly, I feel inadequate when other volunteers post their success stories.

Rather than sitting here in a bubble of self-loathing, I decided to do the healthy thing. I deactivated my Facebook. HAZAA! Deactivating your Facebook account means that you temporarily go away in the virtual world. You can disappear and reappear whenever you want. In order to get your virtual life back, you simply enter your password. Poof! You are back online with all of your photos, all of your friends, all of your statuses, and all of those “likes” we all seem to like.

Deactivating my Facebook made me feel liberated. Well, for the one day I actually did deactivate it, that is. The very next day, I found myself typing in my password, eager to get back online. I wanted to see what the world was up to while I was away for that brief period. I was like an addict. I just needed a fix. I needed to post something, like someone’s photo, stalk someone who I secretly envy. I simply could not cut my social media addition.

But the funny thing is, I didn’t post all that much. I mostly checked up on others. I compared my Peace Corps experience to my friend’s.  I saw how one volunteer got a dentist to send a box of supplies for her school. I saw care packages being sent. I saw people taking snap shots of them skyping their family. And the worst was when I saw other volunteers who got to visit home. Their access to cheese nearly threw me off a ship of sanity and into a green sea of envy.

I even looked at photos of people from my past. I loathed my former college classmates. They were pictured drinking in bars that had air conditioning. They were with friends, smiling, and posting comments that contained inside joke. I SOOOO wanted to be on the inside.

All of this Facebook envy wasn’t because I was unhappy with my life in Indonesia. In fact, I’m really happy here. But I can’t lie; it does get hard. It gets lonely and frustrating. I find myself needing a lot more alone-time than I normally would. I shut my bedroom door and then play loud music just so I can dance by myself. The culture can be overwhelming. My sleep gets disrupted from the morning call to prayer at 4:30am. It’s difficult to live far away from the familiar. I realized that Facebook was my out. It was like watching a reality TV show, except I knew all of the characters personally.

One post could literally ruin my day. I would mull over the amenities I didn’t have or become upset over friends I no longer kept in touch with. So, I deleted my Facebook. Deactivating it was clearly not working since I did not have the willpower to stay off. Plus, why have something if you never plan on using it? It took me over 2 months to fully delete every friend and every photo, but I did it. I deleted everything in order to make it difficult for me to come back. If I had no friends on Facebook, then what would be the point of being online, right?

I sometimes miss Facebook. I liked the chat function, but overall I’m happier. I no longer think of things that are thousands of miles away. I no longer envy people with whom I barely talk to. I no longer envy other Peace Corps Volunteers. I feel liberated. And I now fully understand the meaning of this very important phrase:

Out of sight, out of mind. 

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