Hello, sunshine!

I am back, yet again, with an update on my journey without social media. My last post, Ghosting my Socials: The Hard Part, was exactly one month ago today. I had not realized how long ago it was until today. I thought that today was the perfect time to post an update.

First, I’ll mention that I returned to Twitter and Instagram to follow and support the Black community to help their voices be heard. After showing love, I then followed accounts to further educate myself on the suffering of this community. I have learned so much from the love of my life, who is black, but I wanted to personally further educate myself on this subject. I have found it hard to find words to say about all of the cruelties and injustices that have gone on, because the Black community has been crying out the same words I would say for hundreds of years. So, I’ve been taking this time to keep listening and to initiate these very tough and uncomfortable conversations with other White people. My heart breaks for this community and I will continue to show love and support until the right measures have been taken to ensure results of these drastic changes that need to happen.

After showing love and researching, I again deleted my social media apps. I realized that I reached the point that I didn’t want them on my phone anymore. It was an amazing feeling! I realized that I didn’t miss the expectations I placed on myself while spending soooooo many hours browsing through my timeline. I realized how calm I have felt, how kind I have been towards myself, and how overall happy I’ve become being without that connection to socially acceptable facades.

Many things can be considered when handling this subject. For instance, who you follow can matter a lot more than you understand. I have followed a lot of body positivity accounts, poetry accounts, and educational Black Lives Matter (BLM) accounts. And I liked learning different things when looking at my timeline instead of comparing my body to swimsuit models. Knowing this, I could deep clean my accounts and seriously reconsider who I follow.

Another thing to consider, is the overall release of feeling you have to provide content or document every moment, cute outfit, or cool experience. Before, my need for virtual souvenirs interrupted the actual moment and being in the present. Now, when I feel cute, I don’t feel the need to take pictures of myself, which by the way would end up ruining my self image anyways. I can appreciate the woman in the mirror without feeling the need to show the world to receive compliments from people I don’t speak to. Its a very nice feeling.

You may think, oh she’s figured it out, she doesn’t have insecurities anymore, no. I wish I no longer had insecurities. In fact, the reason I’m still keeping my social media apps off of my phone, is because I know I’m not self-assured enough to ignore them. I know that it is more likely for me to fall back into the same patterns if I had them available. So, no, I don’t have it figured out. But I do know that right now, where I’m at, I like not having them. And eventually, I want to be self-assured enough that returning to social media won’t be as begrudging as it seems right now. I’m going to keep using this time to continue growing and learning to love myself.

It has been one incredible journey full of anxieties and vulnerability. I can honestly say, that I think my experiment worked. It is not definite, and it could be considered that the drive to change is a great factor for the success of this experiment. I am still driven to continue this experiment until I find an even more peaceful state of mind than I have at the present.

Thank you for following me through this journey. This will most likely be the last update on this subject for a while. Thank you, for reading through my experiences and I hope you find encouragement in these collection of posts.