time spent offline

“Wherever you go, there you are,” he used to warn me. This was after he gave up the pleading and we both settled for defiance; somewhere between disdain and indifference. I was inconsolable. These walls, I would scream, come alive each morning and raise their voices at me to mock me, to ask how come I’m still here, and he would keep on talking as if I were muted: “You’re not listening to me, wherever you go…” After the fact, after defiance turned into indifference and there are things you simply cannot sustain on non-feeling, I would look back and realize I never so much as whispered— The screams were all in my head. And after the fact, much later, it bothered me endlessly to find out we were both right: Sometimes you gotta leave, and every time, you must face yourself.

I had to leave social media.

It was easy, at least back in 2013. Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat all asked, only once and very briefly, if I were sure. I said yes on impulse and with a click of a button they were all gone. By 2017, it was a bit harder; Twitter wanted to make sure I was really sure— really, really sure. And every time I said I wanted to leave, every time I threatened, Twitter would plead I stay and grant me a 30-day grace period to return. It worked, and worked, and worked until one day I found a trick of my own: A 7×7 grid to be crossed off each day for accomplishing a task. I only needed 30 days. I wrote No Twitter on top and crossed it off each morning I woke up victorious: 29…13…7…2… And just like that, I was off social media. By the end of the first year, I was sufficiently adapted to living without social media. One random day, it occurred to me I was no longer filtering every experience, feeling, moment I had with the thought of how do I best share this with the avatars? I stopped thinking about doing things just for the sake of showing the avatars that I, too, was living and living well. I began to forget the people that didn’t exist in my immediate reality and with that went away the self-comparison, the self-pity that comes from comparing my worst to their best. I also looked around and wondered where all the exceptionally, unbelievably hot people went; Even beautiful people are ordinarily beautiful in reality. I was grateful, then, I left social media.

“You know this forum, anyway I was reading about topic…” and she says to me nonchalantly, “You’re really into the forums.” It was as if she had reached through the screen and punched me square in the face: It only hurts when you know it’s true. You see by then I was supposed to be off social media, off the forums, offline: I even had a newsletter by a similar title to share my journey of (re)discovering the joys of the offline world. Yet, no matter my best intentions, my all-consuming desire to get offline, I often found myself scrolling the forums endlessly, relentlessly; desperate for another insightful, fun, interesting topic to pass the time. Truthfully, now I understand, my desperation was really to escape myself. What lurked beneath—  trapped underneath the debris of defiance, disdain, indifference— terrified me endlessly. And so by day I would write to you about turning my iPhone into a dumb phone, ask if you, too, should quit social media, and other radical digital detox ideas, and by night I would be scrolling the forums to numb the terror of having to face walls that could talk, that mocked and terrorized me every morning upon waking up. “You’re not listening to me, wherever you go…” Huh? I would look up numbly, trying to make out the words I could hear but I simply could not understand. I could barely recognize reality and the forums became my solace; my defiance against having to endure reality I had no desire living in. A cry for help: A silent scream.

When I finally made it home late in 2022— all bruised up, patched up— I was defiant. All those years taking up the punches have built up callouses thick as the scream lodged in my heart, and upon my return I felt strong enough to face it all without a single whimper, and without my most cherished numbing agent. I literally faced it: In therapy, my morning journals, endless calls to friends, the adults, the strangers—  until their kindness, the truth emerging in those quiet mornings spent pouring it all out on the empty pages, began to soften the edges. It helped the walls stopped talking; in fact, they cheered me on for my return home, and one day, without the internet to numb, repress, suppress, ignore the rage irrupted: I remained still, I wept. And I knew then, I understood, emotions just want to be felt and all the running away, pacifying, rectifying was suffocating me, drowning me. I had to leave, and that was the easy part; and I had to face myself, and that pulled me apart, sorted me out, and freed me right up. “Wherever you go, there you are,” I chuckle to myself as I write it down on the empty pages as a reminder; happy to be here, somewhere between earth and heaven.