Untangling schwannomas

I have said repeatedly that I am breaking up with Facebook.  I'm going dark.  It's not you, it's me.  I even got a column published about this in The Princess Anne Independent News.  (Note, the article isn't there yet.)  But, the day I thought I had deactivated everything, I didn't.  Unbeknownst to me, I had a dangling chad keeping it from closing.  Ironically, that was a page I created for this blog so I could publish it there separate from my personal page.  Turns out, you can't have a website page without a personal page.  Ay caramba.  But, I delete that and then I deactivate!  As I'm deactivating, I notice that it says I can keep Messenger.  Cool, the people I talk to over Messenger (I'm looking at you Jersey Jert) will be happy to be able to stay in touch.  So, this morning I re-install Messenger and, again, unbeknownst to me, this actually re-activates my Facebook.  Again.  I read the fine print which says that people will still see you have a page and can contact you.  Well, I can't ghost Facebook if it still thinks I'm lurking around.

Breaking up with Facebook may actually be harder than divorcing my first husband.  And I had to do that through a little known law called divorce by publication.

Let me digress a moment...  You know I have a tumor condition that caused my hearing loss.  (There are old posts about it here and here.)  The tumors are called schwannomas and they are sticky and wrap themselves around nerves.  That's Facebook.  It's wrapped around every aspect of my life.

I knew that it was heavily entangled and I knew I was heavily entrenched.  But even I have failed to realize just how much.  During the days that I have been off, I have wanted to log in and see what's going on.  To share one-off thoughts I've had.  To share and react to news stories I had read.  To see the latest event invites.  To see baby photos.  Puppy photos.  Kitten photos.  Any more Biden memes left?

Have you ever broken up with someone and mooned over old photos and emails?  Yeah, uh, me neither.  But I hear that's what some people do and this is how it feels.  Only with 450 of my closest friends.  I broke up with 450 people.

Maybe that's why it's taking so long.  Maybe that's why it's so tangled.

I'm not sure how long I'm going to keep this up.  But it's kind of a fun experiment in self-torture.

hugs for now,
Heather