Hi! It’s been a long time since I’ve been here. The time when I left doesn’t mean that I was dead, although I strongly and consciously believe that one part of me inside me wish I would have been.

Not spreading suicidal message but life is hard, as everybody knows. There are some jobs to quit, some hobbies to quit and some people to quit. The trickiest point is as if I was in a house, being a guest of someone else, and not feeling so sure whether I should leave when I am standing just right next to the door and the person who first invited me in was nowhere to be seen in this house. Nor did he tell me earlier about where he was planning to go. I was stuck in the conundrum: should I just leave, or shouldn’t I? Is the owner of the house expecting me to stay? If I am leaving, should I leave a note or something — like a post-it ? To tell him I’m leaving.

Maybe I should just leave and close the door —

quietly.

However, deep down at some points in a corner of my heart, I am always waiting for the person to ask me to stay. It’s just that it is remained nothing more than my imagination. Not my reality.

Should I tell him something like this?

It’s actually quite interesting to discover that I truly rely on others too much while I am still holding the illusion to myself and keep it to myself that I am a very independent woman who can live on my own step by counting on myself instead of anybody else — to be exact, on any men.

I always expose too much. I always keep talking for too long about too much information of what kind of person I am as if I was obliged to explain to everyone in the world because this was my responsibility since I was born. And if there was anyone who didn’t understand me in time, I should have been punished by imprisonment. I have no idea where this habit comes from : is it from my traumatic childhood but which is not so traumatized because I was not actually abused by any means. I was just quite ignored the whole time over there and whenever I wanted to do anything or buy anything, ‘No’ was always the answer, which, usually came from my mom.

Could I blame it on the internet? My childhood was accompanied by ICQ, a virtual space where I could expose myself in verbal form or imagery to the outside world to anybody who could talk to me by typing text which popped up on the screen on the very moment you put it through the keyboard. Fast. Instantly. Here. It is my thought. There is my day. That is my photo. Technology has been endlessly evolving but one thing that hasn’t been changed is our loneliness, our solitude in our mind and our need to be understood, which, sadly, is not coming with our awareness of realising that we need to understand others and protect ourselves too.

Lack of such knowledge has always peeled too much skin of ours in front of strangers metaphorically. When social media sank in back when Facebook first inherited and expanded the legacy of My Space and MSN, this phenomenon has been going out of control, like the plants with branches spreading all over the balcony outside the pot.

No one knows where those branches are heading to eventually.

After the peak of Facebook, here comes Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and now, what? Thread. FOMO is becoming more and more familiar to everyone, or it should be, at least. Everyone here means everybody who uses social media by posting something overthere regularly. Inside business, outside business, we have relied and we are relying too much on it. The more posts we keep putting out there, the greater the fear of missing out. What’s regarded as something that is potentially missed out here is not just our missing others’ posts and updates, but also about missing a shot to get ourselves undressed in front of the public. To me, it’s like there’s a circle drawn on the floor in the middle of Time Square and people are lining up to rush into that circle, which is the centre of attention, take off all the clothes, yell, scream, roar and churn out all that’s in our mind. Words by words. Lines by lines. Isn’t it a bit too quirky and uncomfortable to see and hear?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. I can’t speak for others but at least it’s the way I see the whole trend. Therefore, recently, I’m practising getting away from all of these for as much long time as possible during the day. Whenever I want to take up my phone and swipe my finger to the icon of the app and do whatever I usually do with the social media app, I just stop. Won’t even start to open the app in the first place.

From postponing to one minute, to five minutes, to ten minutes, to 15 minutes. Step by step, I’m not going to be able to get off this hook sooner or later but at least I am getting closer and closer to the destination where I no longer need to bet my life on the unavoidable impulse which has been becoming more like a city-dweller instinct to hold on to the function and to post something about myself instantly as if there is a bomb beside me and if I don’t do it, it, which has magically linked to my heart, will explode at once, with my blood all over the place.

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What do you think about getting off your addiction (eg. social media, alcohol, drug, sex, etc.) and explaining too much of ourselves on social networking platforms? Let me know your thoughts! Awaiting for your email to :

shirleyleung1508@gmail.com

Thanks for reading.

P.S.* Putting this up in audio version on Spotify very soon. Stay tuned!