A MIXED BLESSING
Facebook, 2015

February, 2015

I have to do it, they tell me. Publishing a novel is practically impossible without online presence. I’ve managed to stay off Facebook, fearful it will suck me in. But I shake off my solitary writer dust and step into the connected world.

With old friends from faraway, it’s like going to a party where we’re all grown up and still young. With local folks, I feel more connected when I see them. “How’s your uncle?” I ask. “The one with the blood disorder?” “So good of you to ask,” she says.

But I’m stunned when my ex-husband’s photo appears, Facebook asking if I want to friend him. The answer is No. No, too, when my enemy’s face, the guy who caused enough misery to earn him jail time, pops up like a mean joke. I get rid of his picture, but it haunts me.

I post me in my pajamas, doing my morning workout. At Cannon Beach, walking in the sand. Ed and I working on his drift boat. And people like them. They like my profile photo too, of Ed kissing my cheek. Little thumbs ups all over the place. They like me!

My friends post such cool stuff. Where else can I wake up to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and James Brown, a recipe for butternut squash soup and a tribute to Rosa Parks, my niece’s new baby and my writing pal’s announcement of her sequel. But I resent the pleas for “shares” for causes. “You’ve gotta get over all superstition and the belief a puppy will die if you don’t pass posts along,” my veteran Facebook friend tells me. I find this comforting.

I can no longer keep the culture wars at bay. People I knew back when have moved to the other side of the spectrum, and I read nasty rants about leaders I respect and glowing tributes to ones who scare and disgust me. I’m warmed by spiritual guidance and chilled by religious dogma. I decide not to fight, to “like” the things we share instead. It takes restraint.

July

“I hate Facebook,” Ed tells me as I sneak another look at my phone, though I promised not to check posts in the car. I smile and try to soothe him with one of our old therapist phrases. “Abandonment issues, right?” He doesn’t smile back. “You’re hooked,” he says.

I’m hooked. By the “Pings!” from my computer or phone, signaling a comment or a “like”. My rational brain knows Facebook’s variable ratio reinforcement schedule is designed to make me salivate like Pavlov’s dog. My reptilian brain knows only that the bait I threw out caused a fish to bite, an elusive fish that disappears but will bite again in a minute or an hour or tomorrow.

I’m hooked by my Southern upbringing, insisting I be polite, get back to people who contact me. I’m not sleeping well, and I wonder if it’s too much screen time.

I’m hooked on Throwback Thursday, photos of a teenage me with helmet hair or Ed at our wedding or the cat we loved and lost. I remember times I thought I’d forgotten.

I laugh so hard I cry at an old Carol Burnett routine. When nine people are shot in a church in Charleston, I cry for three days. They’re so close. It’s all so close. All the time.

December

Ed lurks on my Facebook page now. We crack up at Donald Trump jokes and listen to delicious music and argue about how I should respond to political rants.

I’m more informed than I’ve ever been. I may be a smidge less happy.

I’ve tried to check my posts only twice a day, for a half hour each time. That lasted one day. I so missed the Pings! I’ll try again.

I’ve posted links to my essays. People shared them and returned to my website. Isn’t this what I was after?

I wonder if my personal friendships are becoming “commitment-free”, meaning we don’t have to see each other in person because we see each other on—you know.

Posting Christmas photos on Facebook will be a blast, especially when our grandkids do photo bombs. Because of Facebook, I know what photo bombs are.

Because of Facebook, I know these things too:

The world is worse than I thought.
The world is better than I thought.

Grieving the worse and rejoicing in the better have opened my eyes and my heart. For this, I am grateful to Facebook.

Ping!

I think.

#