Why I broke up with Facebook

It's been about three weeks since I decided to take a mental health break from Facebook.

What lead up to it was... well, several things.

First, I was just grumpy in general. I'd find myself thinking, "That should be a private message, not a status update." Or other judgy stuff like that.

Second, this is a politically charged time, with the upcoming election and the months of caucasus and primaries, and people are super opinionated. Those opinions often come forth with (often unfair and one-dimensional) characterizations of people who hold differing opinions. It's so much heat and rhetoric and anger that I was already being exhausted by it. And, truthfully, my own fears about how the election season would play out were being fed into by stuff that was posted.

Third, the Orlando shooting seemed to bring out a LOT of anger. And I get it. There's plenty about which to be angry. I just wanted to be very sad and grieve, though. Instead, I saw rage spew from across my very wide spectrum of friends, both personally and from news or opinion items posted: Anti-Muslim sentiment; gun control advocates holding this up as an example that assault weapons should be banned (honestly, I'm kind of with them on this one); gun rights activists (I have a CHL and am certainly not anti-gun-ownership) calling out all of the same old arguments about saving unarmed people's asses and how criminals don't obey laws; people wondering why we're upset about gays dying but not veterans; LGBT allies saying that James Dobson is just the same as the murderer because of his "hate speech" (I do not agree with his take on homosexuality, but know enough about Dobson to know he probably doesn't hate anyone except child molesters, and thinking or even saying someone's sexual activity is wrong isn't tantamount to gunning down a bunch of gay people); and people posting articles showing Tweets and posts by allegedly Christian people saying that at least gunmen were killing "perverts" now instead of innocent people (fortunately, literally no one I know appears to think that). It was all just ugliness. I wanted to grieve and mourn for those people who lost their lives. Maybe, in a big picture way, it's important that we know why the gunman did what he did. But I guess I didn't care enough to want the whole thing regurgitated and discussed and angrily opined on for weeks upon weeks.

Fourth and final, after that sweet baby was in that awful accident at Disney and people were posting not just opinions about the parents' and the resort's blame, but a freaking joke meme... I lost it. I couldn't. I just had to stop because I could feel the poison in my blood.

You know what? I haven't missed it. I actually haven't. I have been called "The Facebook Queen" and have used and loved Facebook for over nine years. I guess I'm kind of over it. I'm over having every news story (we don't have a TV and I usually don't know what's going on) broken down and used to further someone's world view or to put down a group of people or to see my sweet friends calling other of my sweet friends (directly or indirectly) ignorant, hateful, or anything else.

I also have spent a lot of time over the years imagining how events in my life will play out over Facebook, or how they will be taken, or what the best way is to present and frame something. It's dumb. For me. I don't need to do that.

I also don't need to create "the illusion of intimacy" (Mr. Robot) that I had. I had a really neat core group of friends who interacted with me on Facebook, but we don't actually interact in daily life, and although that's still something, I am seeing more and more that I need people. Like I need someone I can call when I'm just stressed out of my mind, and outside of my family, I don't have that. So maybe I need to be more out and in the world and purposefully incubating face-to-face friendships.

That's the other thing: If I know you and I care about you, I want to hear YOUR take on things. Not the take of someone who thinks a lot like you but writes with a sharpened pen. Because people's posting "This" and a link has come to exhaust me. I've done it! I really have read and read and found something that resonates with me and shared it. But I see that this doesn't usually change anyone else's thinking, only garnering accolades from people who already agreed with me.

This reminds me of an article a friend posted recently called "The 'Other Side' Is Not Dumb." I highly recommend that you read it. Read it and maybe think of it before you click "share" on the next article or web comic or political meme and ask yourself why you're sharing. Try to understand other people's opinions and respect that someone who disagrees with you might not hate our country or your God or any of those things that are often bandied about in online arguments.

I'm still on social media. I'm on Instagram because I do love seeing pictures of people's kids and meals and vacations and their visual perspective on things. I also unfollowed one of my favorites this week, The Libertarian Homeschooler, because although she's typically political in many of her posts, I bristled against the bombarding of reactions from a certain news item and started getting that hot feeling at the back of my neck again. I don't want to do that. Not anymore.

I'm on Snapchat because it's frivolous and ridiculous and just stupid fun.

But now I'm on something else. I'm on a path to try to do the thing that has exhausted me for years, but which I need and have needed for some time: I'm going to find a place and build a tribe and we're going to actually live life together. I don't know what that looks like, or who will be involved, or how I'll get there. But I'm working on that.

I still want to hear from people, I do. But if you're like me and you say, as I have for years, "Well, I post stuff on Facebook, so if you're not on there..." then I guess that just means it's not worth it to you to keep in touch with me. And that's fine. This way, I know. And if we ever run into each other in the world, we will have a lot to catch up on, because I won't have any idea what's going on in your life. It'll be fun.