How I Survived a Year and a Half Without Facebook, Part 5: Disaster

In April of 2012, seven months after I quit Facebook, my fiance and I cancelled our wedding. We need not go into the details - this is about my relationship to a social networking site, not to my ex. Suffice to say that most of the arrangements had been made, and the wedding was scheduled to take place in less than a month. It was to be a relatively small event, and casual; about a hundred and thirty people had been invited (the old-fashioned way, by a card sent in the mail, thank you very much). The most urgent matter facing us once we’d decided to cancel was to make sure all these people got the memo before they’d made any irreversible preparations.

It was hard, but I didn't have to do it all on my own. I called my mom, and she sent out an email to everyone on the guest list whose email address she knew. My ex-fiance made a similar request of his own mother. Right up until the date of the wedding itself, I was still calling friends to make sure they’d personally been reminded not to show up.

When Jasen and I started dating, and we were both on Facebook, our change of status from “single” to “in a relationship" with one another started a flurry of comments. All our friends and “Facebook friends”, whether we wanted them to or not, could see and comment on our new romantic attachment. It was a little daunting, having everyone so suddenly and effortlessly know, with only a few keystrokes and a click of the “save changes” button. Jasen and I were both rather introverted, and having so much public attention on our personal relationship was awkward, although it was much more uncomfortable for him than for me. After all, his last relationship had begun and ended before he’d joined any sort of social network, whereas I’d never had a relationship that wasn’t televised over the internet.

I’d assumed that ending my relationship in private, without Facebook to spread the news faster than wildfire and faster than I could control, would make it easier - after all, nobody would know before I told them myself, and I could be spared the constant questions and curiosity of friends and “Facebook friends” alike. In retrospect, however, Facebook’s cold, impersonal, instantaneous “Oh, by they way, two years of love and commitment are now out the window” accompanied by a cute little broken-heart icon would have been preferable over the long slog of phone calls, emails, and awkward conversations needed to do what Facebook would have done in one quick, effortless status change. Even acquaintances who hadn't been invited to the wedding eventually had to find out, and because it wasn't broadcast all over the internet, the news had to come directly from one of us.

After many awkward, tedious conversations, I began to see the value of Facebook as an aid to the introverted and the socially challenged, capable of disseminating these crucial bits of news: who’s dating whom, who’s moving where, who’s got a job or is looking for one, who needs a drinking buddy for an impulsive night of celebration of commiseration - without the stress and difficulty of all that pesky “interpersonal interaction.”

Yeah, it was hard, but not impossible. I got through it relatively unscathed and only a little bit traumatized. The harder part came later.

A year ago, I was still recovering from the breakup and still unpacking from my move when more bad news struck like lightning right after getting a nice new outfit soaked in a rainstorm. I learned the news from my mom, but she had learned it from Facebook: my brother had been diagnosed with cancer.

Before I go on, let me reassure you that after six months of Chemo my brother is cancer-free and doing just fine.

But at the time of the diagnosis, our family was wracked with anxiety. And since my brother was posting updates about his condition and the results of various tests on Facebook, I felt more isolated and out-of-the-loop than ever before. I had to depend on my mother to convey any news to me after she had learned it on Facebook. For the first few weeks after the diagnosis, I seriously considered rejoining the site. Not receiving updates on his health was unacceptable to me, but so was the idea of  making him go out of the way to include me in his news-dissemination when he was already dealing with so much. I was wracked with a harrowing combination of guilt, worry, uncertainty, and doubt. Could I afford to keep my pride and my relative isolation in light of this development?

Fortunately, I was saved from this dilemma when someone (or perhaps several someones) convinced my brother to revive his old blog so that he could post updates about his diagnosis and treatment processes. Apparently there are a lot of cancer blogs out there, and a lot of reasons to keep one. If you're interested you can read my brother's blog here: http://bluesmasterelf.blogspot.com/

For the next several months, I checked this blog obsessively - perhaps as obsessively as some people check Facebook. I did not feel out of the loop, and in fact sometimes it seemed that I was getting news before other people did. Some more important pieces of news were still conveyed over the phone to my mom, who would then inform other members of the family. In some situations this system was much more prompt and efficient than computer-based media. In this way, our family stayed in touch throughout the treatment process.

After these events, I felt that I had experienced the absolute worst that life outside of Facebook could mean for me. Having weathered the ordeals without succumbing to the urge to rejoin the fold, I felt stronger than ever in my conviction that I had made the correct choice. And I can say with relative certainty that should you make this choice yourself, it will not be the wrong choice for you either.

There's more! To find out what happened next, go on to The Sixth and Final Part.