decisions, decisions

so i'm contemplating leaving facebook behind forever.

i just dont know why it is that i keep going back...is it boredom?  curiousity?  an inner desire to be a voyeur and facebook scratches that itch?

it's probably "yes" to all counts.

i have to admit that when i first joined i thought "what is the point?" but at the time, i had only a couple of friends and my understanding of the site was limited.  but then i discovered the email link to "find friends" and i was off and running.  and then search?  holy crap, i found people!  from elementary!  from old jobs!  cousins!  friends of friends!  it all seemed so exciting and i was caught up in it.  it's fun to look at other peoples' albums, their thoughts, their friend lists...

and that's where the voyeurism begins...you start looking for people you dated and what they're doing.  case in point was my ex bf dean.  we dated in university at the end of my 3rd year and throughout the fourth and onto calgary.  once we moved in together the relationship exploded or imploded and i was out of there in six months without looking back, i might add.

dean was not a stunner, but at the time he filled a gap in my life.  suddenly i wasnt lonely or bored anymore because i had someone who entertained me and could make me laugh.  dean was smart and his intelligence was a big hand up in all those god damned english courses i took.  (aside: i STILL dream that i've got a huge paper due in 2 days and i havent started it...and seriously, i've been out of university since 1994.  i wake up in a SWEAT after this dream.)  dean would proof read my papers and pick out the mistakes and i got better grades thanks to him.  i also stopped going to the pub all the time, which i think did save my grades too.  go figure.

but what dean really didnt have was much tact.  or grace.  or humility.  he had been picked on all his life because he was nerdly and as a result, dean developed a defensive core and was quite hostile about things, but mostly?  he was known for being brutally honest.  brutally honest to the point of lacking any grace while telling you that you sucked.  what was worse, he found it amusing that we called him "brutally honest dean".  i also hated that he would try to be funny and be the FIRST person laughing at his jokes.  oh and his jokes?  they'd be at someone else's expense...always.  fucker.

where dean was honest about telling YOU how much you sucked, he also was a sneak.  you could see it in his eyes.  he'd sneak around and through things, which drove me nuts.  even at the dinner table it was a constant battle to eat a proper meal because it felt like a competition for food and had me feeling that fight or flight anxiety that i might not get properly fed because he was always eating the last of everything.

my whole point is that he and i parted ways in 1995, which was probably 1yr in the making anyway.  after a few months of radio silence, we finally talked.  i dont even know what started that, but i remember we went out for dinner one night just to hang out.  we had lapses in our friendship and i think those gaps were bridged after a few years, most likely after a night of drinking i probably drunk dialled him.  who knows.  and then he moved to edmonton, just kinda where i felt like we could be friends.  i even went to visit him there once and we hung out.

then i moved here and in one email to me he asked how med hat was and whether i was "making everyone around you miserable as usual".  there it was again: fucking brutally honest dean.  i got pissed and never returned his emails.  fuck him. 

facebook came along, which allowed me to peer into his life without telling him i was looking.  so now he's married to an average looking person with 2 kids now.  hey, i wish him happiness, but most of all i wish his wife happiness because she'll need it.  he's whiny, immature, petulant, and frankly, a big pain in the ass who is emotionally needy and cries (yes) at the drop of a hat.  who needs that shit?  but it's fun as all hell to look and he has NO IDEA i'm looking.

but then other shit starts there where you end up feeling hurt over shit that meant nothing to you 2 yrs ago.  someone ditches you on facebook?  well, as much as i want to laugh @ how stupid it is, it still hurts.  and it's conflicting because you wonder what you did or didnt do and you spend time agonizing over it; time you wont get back, which leaves you angry that you wasted any time thinking about it.

then there are the friends that you really dont like or care about, but you have them on your friend list "just because".  and you agonize about getting rid of them because you really dont give a shit when they post stupid shit like "little fred peed on the potty today".  i'm sorry, but that is so fucking uninteresting, i want to puke. 

of course because i live in small town central, if you ditch someone on facebook, chances are you will surely run into them at your local wal-mart and have an anxiety provoking 2 seconds (which really feels like an eternity) of whether you should acknowledge them or if you should turn on your heel and go in the opposite direction?  or worse yet, you wonder if you deleting them has them pissed at you, and then you worry if they'll be hostile or unforgiving. 

so it all starts out as a harmless social network, but then very quickly evolves to more awkward social innuendo and new learned experiences of how to handle the most trivial of things.

i had left fb in october because i had deleted friends who then sent me the email of "did you leave fb?" and because i couldnt lie and say "yes, i left", i just deleted my profile.  again, fb causes rifts in your social life.

and i think the concept of fb is intriguing.  afterall, it IS cool to see what your best friend from grade 1 is now up to, or to spy on that fake bitch you hated in highschool, but honestly?  it just turns into a web of problems.  problems that i find incredibly exhausting to face or solve.

so for now, i'm still there...but who knows how much longer.

ps, there will be more on this, i swear....