The Hardest Break-Up Ever, and It's Not Even With a Person

Reckoning with my real life.

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Nineteen days ago I quit social media for good.

Thirteen days ago I quit all streaming services, including YouTube.

I want to tell you that it’s all been easy and wonderful. Actually, I was tempted to tell you this. I wanted to write a post about how much better I feel, packed with revelations. Maybe that would have been the post I’m writing had I stuck only to quitting social media and not instead gone whole hog, quitting everything altogether. I’ve quit social media before, so that didn’t feel like enough for me.

A Reading From Homer // Lawrence Alma-Tadema

I knew from prior experience how easy it is to occupy social media’s absence with other forms of media, which is why I decided to make things more challenging. It’s like an experiment (is what I told myself).

You see, social media wasn’t necessarily a vice anymore. I wasn’t reliant on it for much at all, and I didn’t engage with it often. But streaming services? Television? I have been addicted to those mediums for decades. Truly addicted. I was raised on TV and had long ago become reliant on those mediums for relaxation, self-soothing, and a sense of community.

The experiment has been illuminating, to say the least. But I’ll say more.

Everything had been going relatively well until this last Wednesday night, when I was collecting media to show my students in class. I’m subbing for a literature class and was charged with teaching Beloved by Toni Morrison, one of my favorite books. There’s a video of Toni Morrison in conversation with Charlie Rose on YouTube where she deftly addresses a question often posed to her about race which I bookmarked for class, but to the right of the screen were all these other videos chosen by the You Tube algorithm. Before I knew it, I was watching another video. Then another. After about 30 minutes I realized I was back in watching mode, dissociated and disengaged. Reader, I assure you, I was not watching anything of substance.

I forced myself to close my laptop and went on with my evening.

Then, last night, when I was running on very little sleep and had too much work to do, an intense craving for my media ritual overwhelmed me. This is embarrassing to admit, but when I’m totally depleted I’ll take my laptop to bed with me, grab a huge bowl of chips or any other food of choice, recline in bed and watch show after show (after show after show).

This ritual, like a conduit, connects me to my child self, who spent most of their time alone, eating and watching television. I was a latchkey kid, yes, but sometimes my mom would be gone for days at a time. That time alone was scary to me, and I didn’t have the inner resources to fill it with anything useful, so I dissociated. I imagined myself into the lives of TV characters, escaping my own loneliness and sadness.

The craving last night was incredibly hard to resist, and I almost succumbed. Instead, I took a bath, listened to podcasts, and then read a book in bed. I tuned into my exhaustion (for three nights I’d only gotten around 5 hours of sleep) and around 8pm I tucked the book away and promptly fell asleep. When my alarm woke me at 5:30am as usual I checked my watch, curious to see how I’d slept.