Connected

It’s crazy how much space social media occupies in your mind. Having deleted all of my social media accounts a week ago, it feels like the static is gone from the TV screen and I can finally see what’s playing. I haven’t been able to think this much and this vividly since I was a kid, and my inner voicebox croaks out words long unspoken.

I want to see a handful of people. Not the 900 or so people that followed me on Instagram, but the people that make up my insignificant little world. The people that make me smile just thinking about them. The people I miss when they’re not around. I often wonder if they think about me too, whether I occupy their universe or if I’m a passing comet that will eventually leave their orbit.

Without social media to make me feel connected to others, albeit in the form of microthoughts and easy conversations, I start to crave actual human connection. I want to risk sunburn by the beach with my friends, and wander around together and get hopelessly lost. I want back-and-forth banter like it’s Federer v Nadal. I want to yarn and ramble and muse about life over the phone. I want to laugh at a joke that my teammate just made after a training session; I want to be a part of that camaraderie.

I missed life. I missed not giving a shit about how people perceived me, even though I’d convinced myself that I didn’t care. Of course I did. Of course I still do, but I care less and for fewer people.

There are few people with whom I felt well and truly accepted. Understood, even. It was like we were looking up at clouds and seeing the same shapes in the silver linings. We perceived life with blind optimism in some ways, harsh realism in other ways, and with the occasional yet necessary absurdism. We had just the right amount of honey in our otherwise bitter coffees, so to speak. I suppose those are the people that actually matter in the end—the ones you know you can be vulnerable with. Because they got fucked over by life the same ways you did. They’re the ones you’ll stay loyal to in the end.