So far today more than 70 people have said Happy Birthday to me. Mostly on Facebook. I'm 43 today. I hate 43. It's an ugly number, a prime (I don't hate primes on principle, 2 is quite nice) but this is an asymmetrical pointy blobby yucky coloured number.
This morning I woke up crying from a bad realistic nightmare about being unlikeable and it's been hard to shake the sad feeling. I'm not sure about my likeability, I know I was difficult as a teen and I know I was astray in my 20s. I don't think I did friendship very well in any of those times.
Then when I hooked up with the Little Guy's father he didn't like me having relationships outside of ours, so I gradually had none. Three friends from my youth still see me and love me in real life. Tens of people I was in friendship circles with have either added me or acepted my adds on Facebook and lately I am torn between hating that and liking it.
So this dream...I went out for a meal with a girl I was friendly with at school - same groups and all that. And at the end of our time together, she told me that although I'd changed, I still wasn't really likeable and she didn't want to be friends. I started crying in my dream and woke up sobbing in bed. The Big Guy was in the shower and my little-not-so-little darling Guy heard my sobbing, my gut-wrenching cries and came to comfort me. He climbed onto my bed and cuddled me and then when I didn't calm at once he went to get his step-father who dried off and came in. The two of them lay either side of me cuddling me while I sobbed and snuffled and tried to calm down. They reminded me it was just a dream and not real. After a while I stopped crying and they said Happy Birthday to me. Which brought forth more sobs.
I'm torn with Facebook. I have friends now, people I connect with both on and off FB, but there's a stack of people who live in my city, who I used to be close to but who I think would really prefer never to interact with me in the flesh - even if they 'like' my posts or photos, or make encouraging comments or congratulatory ones or even commiserating ones. Are they friends? I don't have hundreds of people friended to me in there, but this group of old school friends does me in.
Should I unfriend them? It feels like a Thing. A Big Thing, to do that.
I could send a message perhaps?
"I know we're FB 'friends' but I don't get any sense you'd ever like to have more to do with me than that, so why are we bothering to be acquaintances who share lives. I'm unfriending you, not because I don't like you but because I'm not sure you actually like me. If you decide you'd like me in your life you can add me back."
But that also feels like a Thing. An attention seeking thing?
I really don't know what to do but I do know I'm disturbed by the 'friend' level FB affords.
1017th Friday Blog Roundup
1 day ago
First of all, I share your "enthusiasm" about growing old. I really don't feel my age - 37! It's a secret, so do not reveal my age to anyone.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, FB is an interesting paradox. I have two different accounts. One is a "anyone can be here" kind of account, and I needed to create it because at professional level, I do not need to use social media for communicating stuff and sharing and discussing myriad stuff. And on that account, there are people who I have not crossed paths with in a decade or more, and some of them are such that I never really want to meet. My second FB account is filled with people who are purposely there. It is not inclusive, and there has to be a criteria to be in it. I have found that my sharing is different in both the accounts. Maybe you too can separate your account. Take your personal things elsewhere, and leave the common ones elsewhere?
"I do need to use social media for communicating stuff and sharing" rather than "I do not need to use social media for communicating stuff and sharing". Sheesh!
ReplyDeleteHappy late Birthday twin. I spent mine in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I also think I may be on HRT soon. Ahhh the joy. ~N
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