This is a quick note of warm thanks and appreciation for you each and all. As you may know, After just three years of social media advocacy, I have three weeks until I have finished my Masters of Arts in Child Advocacy and Policy. It is a slow army crawl through Armageddon to the finish line and truly each line feels like a word battle won. Make a statement, find the reference. Interruption. Repeat. I can tell you that between the pandemic, 24 hour a day parenting, predators rising and falling, racial oppression, and ongoing unchecked elite deviance — I was no longer treading twitter water.
Several weeks to a month I deleted both my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. Why? There is only so many spaces and faces I can attend to with any sort of meaning and efficacy. I had been trying to hold on in the twitter sphere until my MA was done, but perhaps like some of you, I ended up feeling tired and angry all of the time. What is more — I was totally tired of being angry.
“To belittle, you have to be little.” — Gibran
It is draining to sustain that level of outrage and there is much to be outraged about. So I called a dear friend and asked that he change my account passcode and contact until 2021. He did and it is done.
My soul is mending, and deep within my chest, my heart is less broken. I am not as triggered, I experience less vicarious victimisation, and I am more present in my own life. Harm seems to haemorrhage daily on social media and I was missing the clotting mechanisms of beauty, sacredness, simplicity, and silence. Social media seems to rip open old wounds; ongoing abuse agitates essential emotional arteries; chaos coagulates courage in the veins of the victimized. On social media, the beautiful is unattainable and the brutality unbeatable. It’s too much, or at least it’s too much for me.
“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.” — Gibran
Empathy is simultaneously a super power and a liability and energy is such a finite and finicky thing. I go as one with a bucket of water to an inferno of ruin. My bucket is empty.
When I come back to the space that is social media, I will return with a fuller bucket and be even more frugal with my finiteness in the infinite face of atrocity. In the meantime, I can be reached by those who know me most.
Take care of you.
Why?
Because you are worth taking care of.
Peace,
LA
P.S: My new neighbour gave me this today (on my birthday). My family furnished my front porch so friends can pop by for coffee or wine, complete with comfy chairs, cushions, and Calla Lilies. I have never felt more known, understood and loved. That, my friends — is recovery.
