Cartoon Thumbs and Hearts

I hit 1.2 million post reach over the weekend.

Forced me to ask the question “What is more batshit crazy than batshit crazy?”

Batshit crazy smothered in awesome sauce of course.

I was over the damn moon.

Problem with being up so high like that…the fall will kill ya.

Everybody knows, space junk burns up on re-entry.

I have been on Facebook since pretty much its inception. I migrated over from Myspace years ago. Brought a few photos and friends with me.

I was in my 30’s and semi-married at the time.

I will admit. I got addicted. I used this thing for evil half the time and not good. I was spurred on by the overly dramatic people I was hanging out with in real life. The lines between Facebookland and real life were blurry. At times they still are.

Yes I hit 1.2 million post reach, on my page.

1. Its a pseudonym, yes it’s me. But I’m wearing a mask.
2. None of it translates into anything tangible. I don’t get money for it or even a gold star. Just a screenshot so I remember this happened. Just another marker on this path I am on.
3. My content breaks down like this 75% postings from other pages, free love shares helping other page runners who are helping me. 15% memes I make myself using the words of others, usually dead poets or songwriters with movie quotes thrown in. 3% articles I find interesting, I use my page as a savings account for things I want to read later or for people who express my ideas better than I can. The other 7% is divided between my words in meme form or posting pieces I wrote myself. So of that 1.2 million, a small handful of views were my work.

Basically, that attention does not belong to me. I know this.

Someone called me a curator. I like that. I am responsible for displaying and caring for artifacts and art.
So much better than my prior label, “dirty laundry hanging fishwife”.

My page began as an album on here. Just called ‘untitled’. I was using quotes to communicate with someone I could not speak to directly. The page came when I decided to spare my friends the mucky walk through my feelings.

I would find these poems and lyrics and some of them would fit me so well, they actually constricted and choked me.

I have spent the last year building up an immunity.
I had to, it was killing me.

The one that used to tear at my heart and squeeze my throat was

“And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.”
― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars

I felt that way. Still feel that way to a degree. And there are others.
What has changed is that I have more faith in the Universe flowing along as it should. I am calm.

Calm is new to me. Being able to step back from social media (and everything really) and realize that it isn’t real was a huge step. For 7 years I abused it, made it my life. I would watch my relationship status go from married to nothing over and over on my ex’s whim. I had ghost accounts to spy and bump up my numbers on the games I was playing. It was all a game. A game played with sneaky selfies and thinly veiled double entendre statuses or blatant nastiness when the interloper became too much to bear. There was a war here, the 7 year war. I am so glad it is over. The landscape has healed.
The lesson I took away from all of that? If I have to log on to my computer to make sure I am still in a relationship, that is not a relationship I want to be in.

Nothing is ever really gained or lost here. It doesn’t exist. Anything that can be undone by someone reporting a nipple has no real value or staying power.

In 2009 I had a car accident, I was immobilized for 3 months, I had the most amazing cartoon farm in Farmville ever, and meanwhile my real farm was falling down around my ears. I hid in the land of Candy Crush when I could not stand to be in another relationship. Made it to level 674 before I saw what I was doing and uninstalled the app and the man (if you can call him that).

I still get sucked into the occasional fight on here, but as we all know, winning a fight on social media is like winning the Special Olympics.

I still get a little rush when a boy I like gives me a cartoon heart or thumbs up. But I know in my real beating heart of hearts, it doesn’t mean anything. It means a little more when said boy leaves words for all of my friends to see, but even then. I would rather hear them with my own ears. Being present is the real present.

This whole thing reminds me of Mister Rogers. He had his house and his cardigan and his shoes and his fish all tangible and real and normal. Then ‘ta da’ same house, he would disappear into a land of castles and puppets.

As far as the memes and poems go. The ones that strike me now are of these older women doing remarkable things. The 80 year old lifting weights, the 60 year old model. Humans helping humans and being kind.

My lovesickness has passed. The fever broke before it broke me. Yes, I still love of course I do. I am love. The other memes that speak to me and for me talk of selflessness, responsibility, loving unconditionally.

I just spent 959 words on here driving home the point that social media is not real.

Addendum.

There are people on here, mostly women, who I have never met in real life. But if they needed me, sent out and SOS on the internet ocean. I would be on a plane without hesitation. If they knocked on my door, they would find it already open, kettle boiling, me waiting with tea.

This is the bliss of it.

Speaking to my best friend from grade 2 once every few months, just rejoicing that the other exists. Rallying with swords a-blazing when someone gets hurt. Fundraising campaigns to help each other out. The ability to speak a kind word in real time. The comfort of being comforted when needed.

And ya, the cartoon heart from the boy I like when I get that selfie angle just right…

That is pretty fucking sweet too.