Facebook is the worst

I am contemplating the concept of committing Facebook suicide.
Facebook is like that annoying friend in a break-up who keeps telling you that they saw your ex the other day and he's looking good, he's moving on with his life and no he didn't ask about you.
I know, I know Facebook is not a living, breathing entity but it sure is a bitch.
So the first two weeks of the break-up I didn't look at said ex's Facebook profile at all like the good little girl that I am. I would however see his Facebook movements on the side bar on the right hand side of my screen. The first week he wasn't online at all- gratifying to me for the reasoning that he was probably still distraught. But then I started to feel awful and sad because no matter what I still care about him and was worried that I'd hurt him more than I realised during the fight that ended things. Then the next week he was online, quite often in fact, so I started to stress that he was chatting to people and had emerged from the break-up unscathed and ready to take on the world. Then I kept obsessively checking his photos to see that he still had the photos of us on Facebook. Every morning I'd check and if the photos were found to still exist it meant that I could get on with my day. Then, one day I checked and the photos were not there. This had me crying at my co-workers desk, which cut out 2 hours from my morning and had my digital editor, who sits next to my work friend, and I exchanging death stares between sniffles because there wasn't enough content for the website. So then the fit of crying came home and to make matters worse I then logged onto Tinder to try and take my mind of my ex but then saw my ex on Tinder so the only thing I could do was collapse on the couch, drink half a bottle of Gin, watch 'Catfish' and pass out. Ok so in this case it was even another form of social media affecting my life on such a profound level. Then the final straw came when I creeped into his Facebook profile again hoping to see the same unchanging timeline that he had since before we broke up but instead saw some girl, a new Facebook friend posting some random private joke on his wall which he commented some other random private joke on and I felt left out, I felt sad and I felt like maybe I had let something good slip away. That quickly turned to anger, in that we had properly been broken up for like two weeks and here he was already dating someone new, how little did I mean? Was it all just a lie? Was he actually looking the whole time we were together and finally he had the opportunity to pursue all these options? I felt crushed, alone, lonely and abandoned. I missed him and felt guilty for the break-up like everything had been my fault. It was in that moment that I unfriended him on Facebook, I deleted his number and started moving on with my life. But it just takes one weak moment, a pmsey fit of emotion or just a seed to start the cycle again. I started to look at his profile again- I kept checking and seeing nothing because we are no longer friends on Facebook or in real life. I sent him a message on Facebook but he didn't reply. I even tried calling him on my birthday because for the first time in three years of knowing him, he didn't even email me a birthday message. But then I suppose why would he? It so hard dealing with the loss of a relationship and people make you believe that you're an anomaly if you can't have your ex on all your social media platforms like the rest of happy 20-something society. In my mother's day it really was just about no longer seeing the person, turning your head when you saw them in public, not taking their phone calls and asking people to stop talking to you about your ex. I think we over-complicate. Why can't it be the same? I feel this crushing pain when I think of never seeing him again, I feel like I'll break into little pieces and not exist if I no longer exist to him. His silence cuts me like a knife and I know its going to take awhile for me to feel like a person away from his validation of me as a person but I just keep telling myself that there was a Varushka that existed before him and there will be one that exists after. Moving on is just so hard and social media makes it all the harder.

Cut off the limb

My mom told me a story to help me get over my break-up. It went like this...
Before she met my father she was in a relationship with what she belived to be the perfect man caring, fun, attentive, handsome. Her friends told her he was cheating on her but she didn't believe it until they forced her to go to a matinee screening at the local cinema. She gradually realised that she was sitting behind her boyfriend who was sitting next to another girl. She had to sit put for an entire three hour Hindi movie while the man she thought she loved cuddled and kissed a girl that wasn't her.

So I asked her what she did. "I ignored him when I saw him in the street, I didn't take any of his calls and after a few weeks I stopped crying and three months later I met your father," she said.
So why is it that I find it so hard to cut ties?
I've emailed, smsed, called all to ask for closure. I mean we split up on a break but a break is always a break-up. If you need a break from the person you love it means that you don't really love them. I've been stressing out that I'm the bad guy, the one who caused all the strife, the unreasonable one. My ex made me believe that I emotionally broke him, made him feel like dirt and broke his heart beyond repair. The first blow came when I decided that I needed to start thinking about dating again. Checked out Tinder and saw him already on there. Then I see that he's flirting with a girl on Facebook and that really tipped me over the edge. All this time that I've been feeling guilty and feeling awful he moved on within less than a month. I guess three years didn't make that much of a lasting impression.

I was so upset. I was upset to the point that I cried like a baby in my car and a hobo looked at me like I was pathetic. And then I realised what was the point of feeling bad when I had caused my own sadness. I'm not as strong as those people who can maintain all the rules and regulations of Facebook. I can't be friends with him on Facebook  and not look at what's going on and what's the point of being friends on Facebook anyway, we're not friends in real life. And why should I have his number just to keep telling myself not to text and call him. Back in my mom's day the extent of losing a number was throwing the slip of paper over the balcony or tearing it into pieces. They didn't text then check every 2 minutes if the message had been read. So I deleted his number off my phone, I blocked him on whatsapp, I blocked him on google chat, which I never even used before. I thought I'd feel sad and maybe I still will but right now I feel relieved, I feel free that I never have to know where he is or what he's doing. He was my first love, I guess I can remember the good times and what I took away from the relationship but I can't remember him. His face, his voice, his smell they all need to fade into time like your grandmothers worn sofas which suggest the pattern of roses but you can't quite be sure or ever confirm that's what they were.