The new post-it – Facebook I love you, but you’re bringing me down

It’s an urban legend: we all have a friend of a friend that it’s happened to. Like the one about the girl with the pet snake that lay outstretched next to her not because it loved her, but was sizing her up to eat her. This urban legend, on the other hand, is less so of the snake variety and more of the douchebag kind. This one entails the end of a relationship via the removal of “in a relationship” with so-and-so to single with no sign of warning to the other person. Ouch – there it is the virtual Jack Berger post-it. If you’re unfamiliar with the post-it, you can Google it really quick.

The end of a relationship is never fun, so the fact that we live in a ridiculous reality where every part of our lives can be broadcasted all over the world doesn’t help at all. More often than not, after the end of a relationship the delicate post-break up dance begins. As much as I like the phone call cha-cha and the texting tango, my personal favourite always come in the form of the Facebook foxtrot.

I’m not quite sure when it happened, but deleting someone off your list of Facebook friends has suddenly become the ultimate insult. It seems more people would rather you spit in their face than delete them as a superficial Facebook friend. Every now and then I consider going on purges of people that I seriously never talk to and have actually walked past and not said hello to because I’m sure they don’t actually remember me. But then my ego kicks in and I like to keep my number of friends high so I feel like an important person. I know I’ve been deleted, and there has been a slight pang of knowing that someone went through their list and decided you were just that expendable, but then again I guess I'm just jealous they're less egotistical than I am.

I think I’ve only deleted three people off my list of friends, and they all pertained to the end of a relationship, so sit back and let me tell you some stories.

The first cut wasn’t the deepest, sorry Cat Stevens. It was a girl I was friends with in high school who became a little bit weirdly obsessed with me and my boyfriend at the time. Not in the Swimfan kind of way, but in the living vicariously through it kind of way. I decided I didn’t need that leech in my life (I’m sorry, was that too harsh?) so cut she was.

Cut number two is better (funnier). The aforementioned boyfriend and I broke up, and I swore I was doing okay and clicking on his profile only five or six times a day (to see absolutely no changes, as he was pretty much a social recluse) was part of the grieving process. Then one day I heard something about hickeys and the bar and I went on to delete him. Take that! What a “great” (note sarcasm) feminist moment it may have been except for the fact that I had to tuck my tail between my legs and re-add him soon after for work purposes. Remember: if you choose to dip your pen in the company ink, do not delete them off Facebook. Save yourself the indignation.

Cut three is when I realize just how stupid deleting a person off Facebook really is; also it reminds me how I only seem to do it when enraged. Don’t drink and Facebook and don’t rage and Facebook! Long (stupid) story short, when the text messages starting dwindling I chose to find out what was keeping this person so busy by clicking on his profile umpteen times. I guess I didn’t learn anything from the last deletion, oops. Later on I accidentally found out some stuff through an innocent third party that bruised my ego, got unreasonably angry and decide to hit the delete button. When I contacted him later on, he was all Judy-attitude-y about why I would get in touch with him if I was the one who deleted him off Facebook. See what I mean? Bruised egos, miscommunication, failed relationships – and all because of Facebook, this is the shit Greek tragedies were made of.

I’ve never been one to advertise my relationships on Facebook though. To me, it’s for insecure girls who need to prove they have a boyfriend. Can someone please tell me if it’s ever been a guy’s idea to put up a relationship status? Do please, I love to be proven wrong. It always seems to bite people I know in the face, so why bother?

One of my friends changed her status to “engaged” and it caused an uproar of congratulations from people she hadn’t spoken to in ages and the response was just so overwhelming (even if it was positive) she had to take it down. My roommate has a friend who didn’t take down her “engaged” status when her relationship ended until three months later because she wanted to deal with it herself first, and knew that as soon as she took it down the questions and pseudo concern would pour in. Somehow, never having been in the situation myself, I can’t understand how it is easier to keep your online self as “engaged” and see that everyday staring you in the face.

One day my friend noticed that our friend’s ex-boyfriend deleted the both of us off Facebook. We wondered what we’d personally done to him. It turns out that he deleted everyone he knew through her off of Facebook because he said it would be too hard to ever see photos of her posted with another guy. Oh brother. Don’t even get me started on what posting photos on Facebook does to a person, let alone relationships; let’s just say I probably shouldn’t run for public office.

In case you were wondering, my relationship status reads that I'm married to a woman. Marriage at this point in my life is a laughable concept. I also don't indicate that I'm interested in men, which if you must know, I am; but it's really none of Facebook's business anyway. Plus keeping it ambiguous is always so much more fun and I can't be bothered to take my Facebook sexuality too seriously.

Here are the lessons that I’m going to take out of this:

1. If you choose to dip your pen in the company ink, do not delete them off Facebook.
2. Don’t rage and Facebook
3. Relax kids, it’s only Facebook. (says the girl who just wrote an entire post on it)

Shades of grey or valuable life lessons from Tupac Shakur

A friend of mine has told me that he thinks I’m quite resistant to change, and I’m very sure that I vehemently disagree with him. His rationale stems from the fact that I resisted getting a cell phone for so long (until second year university, which was in 2005) that I don’t like change. Other friends think that I’m some kind of archaic relic who still uses a flip phone and still manages day-to-day function without an iPhone or Blackberry. But sometimes change sneaks up on you so gradually that you aren’t really sure how it all happened and when you became the person you are today.

Allow me paint you a picture: my Thursday night was spent dressing models for a fashion show at a white tie gala in support of the Toronto Public Library Foundation; Friday at Brant House being served bottles of Grey Goose; Saturday at a condo party in St. Lawrence Market with a hired piano man and free flowing champagne and Sunday at a John Mayer concert. And my holiday Monday is being spent in an independent café on West Queen West with my laptop and a mug of fair trade tea writing my blog. Oh, but of course it is. So what does it all mean? Am I implying that my life is far more glamourous than yours? Perhaps, but only you can make yourself feel that way. Would fifteen year old Sarah try to kick twenty-two year old Sarah’s ass? Probably, but that’s okay, other than by sheer will of teenage angst, I outweigh her by quite a bit.

When John Mayer sang “Bigger Than My Body” on Sunday night I turned to my dear friend next to me and said how when this song first come out (we finally agreed that it was around 2003 when we were both in grade 11) that I never imagined I’d be there in 2010 still singing along. And that’s just it, the beauty lies in the uncertainty of life and that’s why change is the only constant we can rely on in life.

Here’s something I’ve discovered in my short time in this consciousness and through a short stint as a pseudo scientist: making naïve claims about anything just makes you look like a dumbass. In a not so distant past where I thought what I knew at the time was all there was, came some interesting, but not overly rude, awakenings. My favourite thing that I learned (and the only thing I’ve retained) in university was why it is important be critical of everything. Never take anything you read at face value; not even this blog post.

I want to soak up and learn about not just both sides of a story, but every side. I’m trying to develop a 360 point of view where I want to see where everyone is coming from other than resigning to calling everyone else a douchebag and accepting that as the go-to answer for everything. So if you’re looking for someone to spinelessly agree with you and say that the world is out to get you, then move along because that’s not bullshit I subscribe to.

I’m still a person who is ready to defend my beliefs, whatever they may be. However I feel that what I do believe in now may not always be the most conventional or popular but is founded in a more slightly more evolved, independent thought process – my own. Uninformed (dare I call them ignorant) people oftentimes see things in black and white; I feel I can say that because I used to be just like that. But as I’ve travelled different parts of the world, left the safety net of schooling, been an observer as well as a participant in the world around me, these cumulative experiences have taught me that everything is its own shade of grey. And it’s actually a brilliant thing.

Reluctant as I might be to some things, it’s not just because I’m being an asshole, because I actually relish change. The last time I refused to do something out of stubborn “principle” was never watching Battlestar Galactica; by some small miracle I think I’m still living a full life. And in life, there are so many changes that are not within our control. But for the things that I can choose to change, I want to make the best educated choice for me, not just believe what everyone else says is the latest and greatest.

So have I changed? Evidently, yes, as we all have. Have I evolved into a vapid and vacuous punter? Maybe, depends who you ask. But at the end of the day, whether you hang out with male models, bankers who bankroll bottle service, birthday girls who throw a fabulous party or the person who loves you unconditionally at a concert, just be sure you do everything in your power to truly know who you are and take the time to enjoy being whoever that is, because that’s just the way it is and things will never be the same.