Day 3: 30-day #noFacebook challenge - Withdrawal symptoms

It's day 3 of my official #noFacebook challenge. And today is a challenge. Today I woke up with the creeping feeling that because I'm not present and active on Facebook everyone is going to forget me. And it's a hard feeling to shake, the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, the pinch and squeeze beneath my rib cage, the flutter of anxiety.

So the rest of this post is going to be a pep-talk to help me fight the painful feeling of withdrawal. Because it's a lie... and it's part of what I'm fighting against... the idea that Facebook is fulfilling any kind of need for connection with people. It doesn't actually foster community. It makes it easy not to have real connection with people.

Real connection is hard. It takes effort. Writing letters, making phone calls, actually meeting for coffee or dinner, it takes time and energy. It's why most people lose touch with all their high school buddies when they leave for college... because real life happens where you are, and the people who aren't there aren't part of it unless you take the time to make them part of it.

Facebook substitutes photos, links, and like buttons for real people... It seems easy to keep in touch with large amounts of people worldwide because you don't have to actually do anything to maintain "friendships". They just exist. And you can spend so much time obsessing over them, so much time scrolling through the news feed looking at what other people are saying and doing, that you can forget to be present, and neglect real life even as it's staring you in the face.

I'm going to have to sit with this feeling of withdrawal, because it's part of the process of healing from an addiction. And I'm going to have to trust the process, that the feeling will pass, that I can beat it and move on. And that the REAL people in my life will always be there.