Breaking up is shitty, everyone knows this. You know what's shittier? Having to talk about it. Back in the day I was able to have my heart broken and then spend the next couple of weeks curled up in a ball on my floor listening to The Cure and no one was the wiser. Then we entered this brand new age where we share every goddamn detail about ourselves with our "friends." I say this because let's be honest, no one is really friends with everyone they are friends with on Facebook. Some people you only met a couple of times, some people you knew at one point but haven't seen in years, some "people" are actually bands from Scandinavia. When you are posting that a certain song is your jam for the day or a picture of the chorizo burrito you are about to inhale this isn't that big of a deal. When you are just starting a relationship it's really not a big deal to want to flaunt that either. You're happy and infatuated and have all sorts of butterflies and other insects crawling around in your belly. More importantly you want the world to know that if you aren't calling them back it's probably because you are having mindblowing sex since that's what people in relationships do 24 hours a day, am I right?
Yet when your relationship ends you don't necessarily want that information to get out immediately. People are going to want to hear the story. People are going to want to comfort you. People are going to want to immediately talk shit about the other person in an act of solidarity*. If they are good people they are going to want to buy you a drink. Mutual friends are going to feel obligated to take sides, or worse, try really hard to act like they aren't taking sides when they really are. With each friend you are going to want to handle the unveiling of the situation a little bit differently and at different times. Some friends should know before others. It's a delicate frickin' thing.
Facebook has fucked up all of that. It begs you to get on your soap box and exclaim to the world, "HEY! I'M SINGLE NOW!" I liken the experience to when Egon has to turn off the power grid in Ghostbusters. Once that sucker is up I became inundated with people asking what happened and if I was all right. Which is great. I'm not trying to be ungrateful for having so many awesome and wonderful people who care about me, don't get me wrong. What I'm saying is that it fucking sucks to have to deal with all of it at once. It's mentally draining to talk about that shit. In my particular situation (I need to find somewhere new to live) it's especially draining to discuss because I honestly have no clue what my next step is. Therefore I get more anxious each time I am reminded of that. I feel that I can have about 1 conversation per day about the whole kerfuffle, yet there is no way to make my Facebook friends take a number and wait until their turn to talk to me about it.
If this was the only real issue I could let it go. But no. . . this is just the tip of the iceberg. What if my ex changes her status a day before I do? Now everyone thinks that I'm super pathetic for holding on to my broken dreams for an extra day. What if I change mine and the ex doesn't? Now I look like some sort of prick who was so chickenshit that I couldn't actually break up with the person; instead I just changed my relationship status and hoped that this would "fix the glitch". Luckily I was able to avoid both of these issues because we handled it like the launching of a nuclear missile, we made sure we both turned the key at the same time. Once we did it I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the shitstorm of feelings that I argued about before. Yet before I could do that Facebook dealt me a deathblow that I didn't see coming. The first thing on my timeline was the following:
"Mrs. Irrational Anger has changed their relationship status to single."
Really? This is what has to top my page right now? I'M PRETTY FUCKING POSITIVE I ALREADY KNEW THIS BIT OF INFORMATION! THANK YOU FOR POURING AN ENTIRE SHAKER OF SALT INTO THE WOUND MR. ZUCKERBERG! I sure hope that this information is still my top story in a few hours. Oh, goodie, it was. Thank you for letting me know that the demise of my relationship was more important than one of my friend's mom's posting a picture of a duck.
Technology continues to find new and innovative ways to make me feel like shit. Suddenly that bedroom floor and The Cure seems really appealing to me.
Technology continues to find new and innovative ways to make me feel like shit. Suddenly that bedroom floor and The Cure seems really appealing to me.
*Unless you have definitive proof that the person was cheated on this is incredibly stupid. You know why I'm sad? Because I was in love with that person and thought the world of them and it ended. An hour ago. I don't need to hear about how you thought they were catty or that they had a weird nose. All you are doing by trying to cheer me up by saying they aren't worth my time is making me pissed off at you.
Well, shit salad. Fb is a bitch.
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