The problem is you, it’s always been you. Social media just exploits that, your inability to love the Other. The avatars are not real, only a mere representation of what’s real, and it’s easy to tolerate their presence, their absence. Easy to love, easy to hate; with a tap, a click, a comment. Reality requires so much more of you, and I know it hurts. It hurt me too, until I learned— falling, failing, flailing— how to tolerate. Exposure therapy is the term the professionals use and I’m still in recovery.
Third spaces
If you go to the gym, workout and leave without saying a word to a soul, for months now, that’s not a third space, that’s just a place with fitness equipments. If you miss people at the gym when it’s been a while since you have been there, you’re getting there. If you go to a café, drink your coffee amongst a sea of other bright Apple logos and leave, that’s not a third space. That’s your caffeine dealer’s spot with free wifi. “I miss them!” I say to her, we’re talking about our favourite tea house in the city where we have spent many Tuesdays and some weekends at open mics, birthday celebrations, and other events. Her and I run into each other at the open mic there after a decade too, after college: You never know what happens when you leave the house. It’s been a while since I have been there and its the owners I miss. I genuinely miss our silly banters and flirtation, and every time I walk in they seem delighted to see me; ask how I am, compliment my coat, go for a smoke with me— talk about nothing and everything. You wouldn’t believe what people endure, what lurks beneath, when they are all smiles serving you your coffee: “here you go, ma’am.” It’s not safe for me to go back to Turkey.
Of course, these things didn’t happen the first time I walked into what is now one of my most cherished third spaces in the city: We were strangers then. I was one of the many faces that came and went. They were one of the many faces I spewed my coffee order at, asking what dessert they would recommend, saying thank you politely when my order was ready. It didn’t even happen the third or fifth time, but by the second or third time, there was the budding of recognition, of familiar faces— it helps if you start with a compliment, “the tea was delicious!”, and you are still one of the many faces that come and go, but now you have paid a compliment and of course it’s easier to remember that way, and the tea is of course delicious. And your third time there, maybe it’s the fifth, they say hello like they remember you, and there is still a bit of awkwardness in the air, of not knowing enough of each other yet, but it’s obvious you’re not just another face spewing an order at another face anymore. There is a familiarity you sense and so you begin. At first it’s basic things, “do you own this place?” “How long have you been here?” “Do you live around here?”
And before you know it, you surprise yourself for missing not only your caffeine dealers and delicious deserts, but your third space and the people making it happen. “I genuinely miss them,” I repeat, more to myself than to her, and she laughs; she understands. Later today, we’re going to an open mic there and I absolutely cannot wait to see them, to bother them with my endless chatter, banter, and filtration; as I wait for my turn, as I place my order, when they bring my drink. I have a feeling they’d be happy to see me too, ask where the hell I have been. It’s funny because these things are impossible, I were told so, especially in a big city where the living is plenty but souls go to die, people never so much as look your way. They said I would need the internet to connect, to stay connected. And they are half right. Without the internet, without the masses to scroll through, I have nothing better to do with my Tuesday evening, not even the avatars, and so I go searching for people in reality.
time spent offline 
Leave a comment