Just over a week ago, I decided to take a break from social media. I’ve often had a difficult time with Facebook in particular, mostly because I compare myself to others way too often, and sometimes I just get jealous. Not even envious, but that nasty feeling you get when you become enraged because someone was hanging out with someone else yet didn’t invite you. Or a friend that you thought shared everything with you, was off on a vacation that you had no idea was happening. Shit like that really shouldn’t matter, but it did matter. So instead of unfriending people or blocking them or all of that bullshit, I just shut it all down.

When I told some colleagues at a meeting recently that I was taking a break from social media, nearly the entire room oohed and aahed and many said “Good for you!” or “I wish I could do that.” One colleague told me she left Facebook 8 months ago and never looked back, but can’t shake Instagram yet.

We’re kind of fucked up, aren’t we?

I’ve always loved sharing photos on FB and Insta, pics of my kid, my cats, and myself after a run. Having a supportive community can be tremendously helpful, and to be honest, I’m damn proud of my running. I’m still not losing the weight I want to, but my legs are getting stronger and I’m getting faster. Something I didn’t think I could get at 50 years old. (And maybe it’s my last hurrah, but I’ll take it while I have it.)

But in the past few weeks, I felt like my brain was too full. I constantly felt overstimulated. I didn’t want to know about anyone else’s lives anymore. I wanted to concentrate on the people I actually see or talk with every day. I wanted to be more present in MY life, and leave some others behind.

My son’s mental health has seemed fragile this past month and my husband has quit his job and is about to start a new one. I’ve been upset at the management of the Trevor Project and at my one year anniversary last week, I put in for a leave of absence. Work has been good, but very challenging these past two weeks. A lot of life has been happening and I just needed the world to quiet down.

I recently finished reading the novel, “We All Want Impossible Things” by Catherine Newman. It’s about two best friends, Ash and Edi, in the middle of their lives, but Edi is dying from ovarian cancer. Edi ends up staying at a hospice near Ash, and the book is about their love and friendship and how fucked up Ash feels. It’s beautiful and hilarious and infuriating. And so damn real.

I laughed out loud through many parts of the book (and sobbed at the end), but there’s one part in particular I want to tell you about. Ash, the woman telling the story, shared a memory about a visit she had with her parents. They went to a fancy seafood restaurant where they ate clams and lobster and looked out at the sea. The sky was a perfect blue, and in the window they were looking out of, stood a seagull, choking on a starfish. It would gag and barf and 3 of the starfish’s legs were sticking out of its mouth, just a few inches from their table. Ash’s mother commented with all seriousness, “This is lovely,” and Ash laughed. “Absolute perfection with a gagging seagull in the middle of it sometimes feels like my entire life.” (p. 125)

When I read that paragraph, I started to chuckle. Then I put the book down and laughed…and laughed….and laughed. I wasn’t laughing in the kind of way where you can’t breathe, but it was this prolonged, deeply felt joy and recognition kind of laughter. Just this past year I’ve been able to see some of that perfection and can look past the choking seagull. Both are always there, and some days I can only stare at that damn seagull and can’t see anything else. My grief for my lost family or even for the way of life we’ve lost as a result of my husband’s health can be overwhelming some days, and it takes everything I have to not put that seagull out of its misery. But other days? It’s blue sky for miles.

I’m hoping that I’ll have the fortitude to get back on social media and greatly minimize the folks I keep in touch with. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just keep using the AMAZING amount of time I have now to read and write and enjoy my little life. Either way, I’ll still be here.

Take care of yourself, friends.

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”–Audre Lord