On Loneliness: My Brief Return to Social Media

 As I write this, I have to say, I am struggling with loneliness in a way that I haven't since... I can't even remember. 

I am someone who is comfortably alone, by nature. Give me my husband, my children, and I am happy and fulfilled. I've been on a social media blackout for almost three years. By virtue of knowing that planting a manuscript is going to inevitably yield itself to a social media presence, I've put tentative feelers out, as the entity that I am under my penname. 

It only took a few weeks on Twitter to make me feel as if my spirit has been poisoned. 

There is somewhat of a mystery about myself that I've never solved. Fortunately, knowing what I know now about the peculiarities in the ways that I am wired, there's a context...this mystery of mine isn't at all uncommon for those on the spectrum. But making and maintaining friendships has never been something I've been able to consistently accomplish. I may start strong, make a connection, begin to form a relationship, but at some point, it is inevitable... I am going to run out of energy. I am going to withdraw. I am going to hide, leave, exit, vanish. It is just what happens.

I only have space in my relationship circle for one best friend at a time... and for me, now, that's my husband. My daughters are like little natural extensions of myself. Otherwise? It just isn't there. No matter how hard I try to make it be there, it is impossible.

So my little experiment with Twitter. And its subsequent soul-sickness. What can I say? It was just so much noise. Clamor. A din. Thousands of people hollering into the abysmal void made up of all the other thousands of people hollering. Attention, attention! Pay attention to me! Validate me! Endorse me! Co-sign my delusions! A million different forms this took, but it was all the same thing, over and over and over. Some kind of game. Some kind of vicious cycle where the more you get, the more you want. 

It gave me nightmares. Nightmares of being trapped in a tiny room with these thousands of people in physical bodies, all shouting up and out and at one another until I felt I had gone deaf. Nightmares of all these people who had passed on in tragic ways who were as yet from beyond the grave still clamoring for attention. 

Oh, God...the desperation. Tenth level of hell desperation. At full volume. A skipping CD.

And it was addictive. I got sucked in very quickly. I found myself on this wheel. Running and racing and throwing up my own voice. Every thought I had, I rushed to post it. Every slight bit of joy I experienced, I had to make a tweet. 

It started to make my skin crawl when I considered...normally, the first person I want to tell anything good, bad, or indifferent to is my husband. But even within a few weeks, the first person I wanted to tell anything to was EVERYONE, and... it was unhealthy. Very unhealthy. 

This is how people ruin their lives, get sucked into slippery situations that end up wrecking cherished relationships. 

It's gross, honestly, is what it is. I felt like I was betraying...everything. Or at some point, I inevitably would. 

So I terminated it. Boom. Done. I'm backing out, backing away. I just can't. I shouldn't. And furthermore, I don't want to. 

My manuscript is now with an agent, miraculously, as well as my publisher. Time is going to tell me a lot, in these next several months. Even if nothing happens...I'll at least know, that what I bring was enough to garner interest in a publisher and an agent in reading my full  manuscript. This is enough of a tiny flame of hope to keep going. Even if nothing pans out with either, I can know...something is surely going to pan out with someone, at some point.

And in the interval, I need to just keep on writing. This thing just keeps becoming more and more vibrant and alive as I bring it into being. It exists. It is going to exist. I just have to do as I've always done: keep moving forward.

And so, I must detox from this experience. Shed this superficial feeling of loneliness because I became dependent that quickly on instantaneous, round-the-clock validation, attention, worship. This feeling isn't real; it is facilitated. Everything about that experience made me withdraw from my own real life that I love and get sucked into this unreal simulation in which all of my energy was being fed into the void, into being just another one in a thousand voices screaming just to be heard. 

I don't need that. 

In the event that my future agent/publisher requires a Twitter, I am going to operate under specific guidance as far as what's necessary for promotion of the book, and leave the rest. 

And meanwhile... I'm going to keep writing. Keeping writing is an affirmation of faith in a future that only God knows, but He has promised me, for He is a God who keeps His promises.