Unfollow

It’s so silly. Unfollowing someone, ceasing to see one’s content on social media. Internet. In 2022, this thing of unfollowing people online is a resounding click, a symbol of release. Finally. 

When I was a teenager, and had to endure a breakup, I had nothing to exorcize my broken heart, nothing to help me turn the page. We only had our eyes to cry and our heads to make big decisions, that no one would be aware of – because it was in our heads. But words, because they are not tangible, are almost always reversible. 

Then, with the breakthrough of Facebook, Instagram, twitter etc, the symbolism of breakups has taken a new turn. 

Today, when I say to my friends that I need to move on from a guy, they almost always answer straight off : “did you block him?”, as if getting him out of my phone would take him out of my head, and even more, of my life. It is absurd, and yet… 

How many letters did I write to say goodbye? How many words did my fingers punched on the keyboard to scream my despair after a break up, humiliated, cheated, destroyed? How many times did I want to ask for forgiveness and how many times did I want to insult? 

Before, break ups were a mute atrocity, and only our sheets would witness that rage of loving, the unstoppable flowing tears and begging for the pain to stop. 

But now, we have that tiny little button to whisper to us “if you click, you’ll move on. You can free yourself”. 

When life changing decisions could only be said in the secrecy of oneself, we now have the ability to say to the entire world “I am done thinking about you”. To me, this symbol has a mind-blowing power.  Our parents would say that it is nothing just to click on an unsubscribe button, that social medias are only a vain vail of illusion, not something tangible. 

But in our digitalized culture, unfollowing someone is affirming “I do not want to love you anymore”. It is not only “I don’t love you anymore”. It is even worst. It is the will to stop loving.  A desire not to feel any longer. 

And receiving “I don’t want to love you anymore” is significantly violent. It is a fracture, a farewell, an oblivion. It is not “I hate you” or “I despise you”, because both still mean that you feel something. No, it is “I choose not to consider you anymore”. Indifference, to me, might be the most devastating statement in humans’ relationships. Because indifference is disinterest. 

Saying to someone “I am not interested by the person that you are”, is saying to them that there is no emotion passing by you when you think about them. “You are not provoking any form of emotion to me”. You no longer exist. 

There. This is what unfollow means. You no longer exist, farewell. 

So when a guy hurts me, when there is a break up, this very moment when you unsubscribe from one’s profile is crucial. Crucial and terrible. I don’t know for you, but I do struggle to click. Because when I do, it is not only that I don’t want to love that person anymore. It is that I have to stop, even though I still have feelings. And I have to learn how to stop loving. I need to keep them away from my eyes, so they can stay away from my heart. 

I need to forget them. Unsubscribing to someone I love, is giving up on feelings. It is probably for the best, but renouncing to feel, accepting forgetfulness, is sometimes even more painful than the breakup itself. Mostly because people like me, who on top of literally living for feelings, regularly drown into nostalgia. I am a feeling-craving creature. 

Almost every time, unfollowing someone has been like breaking up all over again. It hurt me, and I didn’t want to. Every time, I sent that clear and strong message to them, or to the universe, that said “I take you out of my life”, while my heart was bleeding from such an action. Because every time, all I wanted was to see that person crawling back, drumming against my door, begging to start over.