An open letter from a Libertine to Facebook Friends

Having to tell our Facebook Friends we were breaking up was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

We had just talked it all out, exhausted and tear stained, our faces warmed from the freshly cut heart in between us, and as she sat with her computer between her knees, I asked her,
“So, do you want to . . .change your Facebook Status first . . ?”

There aren’t enough words that describe emotional states to describe how many looks passed across my face. I had no clue about the propriety of the event. As she was younger than I, I had discovered that many rules of propriety have changed, and not to the looser. She had taught me by example that Emails were NOT casual conversation, and that the Social rooms needed to be taken seriously, if one was to be taken seriously.

After ten seconds of twisting in the wind, bending my face like a Mandarin to clue her in on my willingness to discover what the right thing to do was, she said sure. And in a brief polite Socratic scene I learned that Facebook Status change was a big deal and that she appreciated the gesture of being allowed to change it first.


That odd moment led me to my own laptop. When I entered Facebook, I noticed that my Relationship status had automatically changed when she had changed hers.


Only one of us needed to change it, to make us both separate.


Then, as I looked at the Facebook page, I realized that even though I had less friends that most, I had, that is had, to say something about the change. It would be rude not to. I don’t talk to my family anymore. None of them. And yet I was socially compelled to politely acknowledge this change in my life to a sea of avatars.


And despite the truly historical significance of the realization, despite the wonder of the connection I felt to the universe, despite the sea-change it represented in my own head; the loss of love trumped it all into mere trivia.


And now will come the days, the weeks, the months of wanting something you have destroyed. And hating yourself for still being the fool who wishes. . .
I had been a greater fool before, so I have perspective on this issue.

And calling myself a fool is being kind.


I betrayed all that shouldn’t be betrayed.


Betrayal is a virus, a sleeping plague that curls up in every cell, first breeding rationalizations and then doubt. Untreated, you die a filthy bag of empty faith and broken promises, fouling up the universe with the trail of disappointment that extends behind you like a Bridal Train of Suffering.


I don’t know the prognosis with treatment.


For I am self medicating, self diagnosing and now I prescribing that I expose most my private mind to you, the Avatars of my planet, whose biological ‘self’ that generates your beautiful thoughts, I will never meet. Relax, it won’t get National Enquirer.


In weeks, perhaps Sophie will fade into the background of my mental desktop, and Facebook folk will step up, as you have in the past with brave camaraderie and good hopes.


For now, I still metronome between running from and running to, grasping at distractions.


And for some reason, I need you to know this.

Thank you for being there, I can only respond by being honest. Which scares me a little.


I know you will have pain, worse than mine, and I hope I can be there for you in my own personal drop of Avatar.