Deactivated

Lights, camera, action!

I’m not talking about a day on set. It’s a day too attached to social media.

The lights! The lights from notifications, the led light flashing, the glowing light from the screen that takes me to a place far from the real world. The camera! The camera that makes me more beautiful than I ever thought I could be; thank you to filters and angles. A picture must be posted daily or everyone will forget what I look like. The action! The constant action! What online action will occur today? Will I make my opinion heard? Will I troll a post? Who knows, the internet is at my fingertips.

Losing myself to an altered reality, becoming a character in a screen. I wasn’t a human, I was a bot. I would log on, load up, and upgrade myself. Who would I be today? Would I be the super cool, edgy, girl that takes “dark” photos? Would I be “that mom”, and brag about all the wonderful things I have done for my children today and how amazingly genius they are? Maybe today, I’ll be a philosopher and post all these somewhat intelligent statements that can’t be argued or proven. I can be whoever I want to, whenever I want to, as long as I’m online.

With the world at my fingertips and no-one knowing who I truly am, I can be perfect; my idea of perfection.

In order for me to find my real self, I had to disconnect. I could never find who I truly was if I was constantly changing my reality with the use of social media. One picture, one perfect picture, posted with the most perfect caption, the most captivating caption and all the troubles are gone as long as everyone online sees this one perfect moment and know that for one moment, I WAS PERFECT!

Then, the time came, where the internet flowed into my real life and I was no longer anyone. I was no-one. Just a shell, waiting for the warmth of my screen, the warmth that never existed. I needed to find my real life. I needed to find myself. I lost myself to the internet, to social media and I wasn’t even aware that I was gone. I was oblivious to the world that I was neglecting and that world was the real world; the world that NEEDED me.

Like a band-aid, I tore myself from the screen. I deleted accounts and I became unknown. I lost all internet history, all posts, all interactions, all “friends”. I focused on me, the real me and I found her. I’m a girl with bright red hair, that stands out in a crowd without likes and shares. I’m the girl that puts making memories before making posts. I can really help people because I’m not doing it for followers. I’m a real human being.

I can’t describe the change that has happened within me but I can tell everyone that I was addicted to the internet, I was addicted to social media. I lost myself, I neglected my health, my marriage was rocky and my children were suffering. Addiction can come in many different forms including online addictions. It took many years and almost a divorce for me to realize how deep I was and how far I had gone down the rabbit-hole. Sometimes, the lines of reality became blurred and I was playing a character in my real life. Pretending to be someone that I only pretend to be online.

I had to deactivate to find my real-life self. This is the character that I'm meant to be.