404 no more

Earlier this week, I had 404 friends on Facebook.

Most of them I knew from church and school and YL and high school and college and sorority days.  Some, I hadn't seen in years, save for the days right before they asked me to be their FB friends. Some, I'd never met or didn't remember, and couldn't figure out how we'd become friends, even on the FB.

So, I pulled up my friends list, and began whittling away at it. I had some parameters, and after a significant amount of time, I was down to 346.

How many do I have now?

None.

I deactivated my FB account. I checked the "It's temporary. I'll be back" box as my reason, and I probably will be back at some point, but not in the foreseeable future. (It took me three tries to spell that word.)

 
I have toyed with the idea of deactivating my FB account for a while now, and was dead-set on doing it just before Valentine's Day, though I was so busy I didn't actually have time to do it. But I did recently.

My cousins cannot fathom why anyone would ever get rid of their FB, even though they informed me at Christmas that FB is so last year and now the big deal is Instagram. But why would I delete my FB?

Because I can't stop complaining about it and I can't stop comparing myself to others.

I have some special friends that post gag-worthy, sappy sweet status updates, which I immediately text to my coworkers and then we mock discuss accordingly. I also have a few status-hijackers that drive...me...crazy. I was already annoyed with several people on my FB.

But the part that was really becoming unhealthy for me was the constant comparison that I found myself doing with other people's lives. It's bringing me down, and I'm already going through a fragile time right now and don't need the constant happy family lives being portrayed.

And the thing is- people aren't trying to live the "look at my perfect family/love/relationship/life" in their statuses, but that's how I'm choosing to read them, and that's where it's becoming unhealthy. So, I had to quit.

It's not easy. I'm realizing now how often in a day I would just casually browse FB in a line or when I had a few minutes. I'm also not up to date on people's lives as I was. But I'll live, just as I did in the days before the FB.

So, if we're friends on facebook, and aren't anymore: Don't worry. I didn't unfriend you.

I unfriended everyone.