Choices.

Yesterday, Lucy told me that Aiyanna asked her why she was homeschooled.  Lucy replied, "Because I don't get along well with others."  Yes, it's funny, and not entirely true, but there IS some truth to her matter-of-fact statement.  For Lucy, school was a source of social frustration.  She does not relate well to children in her peer group.  She doesn't share the same viewpoints shared by the other children in her grade.  It goes beyond not having seen a single episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.  She got along quite well with the teachers and staff at school, but it's really not appropriate for an 8-year-old to count adults as "friends".

As a child, I did not have many friends.  I suffer(ed) from the same issues of unrelateability as Lucy.  Add to this that my family moved alot during my childhood.  I did not attend the same school more than one year in a row until my Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years of high school.  Rather than be sad about this, I simply found other interests.  I learned to enjoy being by myself.  Do not feel pity for me.  To this day, I STILL enjoy spending time by myself.  I am so comfortable being alone and in my own head that many times I have to make a conscious effort to really listen to what someone is saying.

As an adult now in my 30s, I have found friendships with others who are old enough to be my mother, aunt, and grandmother.  My closest friends are my husband, mother, and sister.  I look forward to when my daughters are adults and our relationships will evolve into the special friendships that older mothers and grown daughters share.

Why am I sharing this?

For the last few weeks, I've gone back and forth about deleting my Facebook account.  My foremost reason, really the only reason I would take such a drastic step, is for the same partial reason Lucy is homeschooled: Because I don't get along well with others.  (And I would add "online" to the end of that sentence.)  I believe I am quite personable in real life. (I could be wrong about this.)  I can talk about the fluffy, feel-good, surface stuff very easily, and it has the added bonus of no one outside of my inner sanctum knowing how I really feel about deeper issues.  Because that's where I get into trouble.

Facebook for me, and for so many others, is a place to let it all hang out, for better or worse, and share what you ate for breakfast, news articles you read, and passionate opinions on countless things.  Most people take comments from other people with a grain of salt and are able to keep their friendships on Facebook separate from their relationships with the same people in real life.  They can rant on Thursday about wearing pants to church, for example, and then be all chummy on Sunday.  Good for those people.  I can't differentiate like that, and I worry and analyze over posting things I have an opinion about, because even though it's okay for the organizer of the "Wear Pants to Church" event to write angry sentences like "For a church that claims the ability to choose as the act that saved us from damnation, they sure are stingy when offering that act to women." and call Mitt Romney a "dickalope" on her blog (The Mormon Child Bride--she got married at 20, by the way), it's just not as "funny" for me to politely disagree with her view on inequality for LDS women on my Facebook page.

This is just one example.  I put myself into trouble often enough because of my political views and religious beliefs.  And I hate conflict.  Yet I keep posting things that are controversial.  What's wrong with me?  I'm an idiot, I guess.

I've weighed my options.  I could simply post on the mundane things of life (and my life is fairly full of the mundane).  I try not to clog up people's News Feed with how good my blueberry bagel was, or how I was able to remove chocolate milk stains from a while shirt.  I could simply only post positive, happy things, and if I can't say something nice, then I can keep it to myself.  I could simply only be "friends" with those who have similar views as myself.  This is like having a party, but not inviting everyone who knows about it to come.  (Which causes more harm, I think, than posting strongly opinionated status updates.)  I'm sure there are other options, but frankly, I think I've already made my decision.

So I'm running away from Facebook.  I really don't have the time to check in anyway, since I now homeschool Lucy, and I have Sadie and Baby Antonio in the afternoons.  I will miss seeing what friends from high school are up to, but I can always check in with my brother.  My one faithful reader of this blog has her own blog, and it would be good for me to visit that more often than I do.  Others I am Facebook friends with are people I run into on a regular basis, or they're family and I really should do a better job of keeping in touch with them than just clicking "Like" every now and then.  And I've grossly neglected this blog, which is something I really used to enjoy doing before Facebook came along.  I am really feeling well and am quite at peace with this decision.

And so, after notifying my husband, this post will be published and posted on Facebook, and my account will be deactivated no later than 11 PM tonight.  You can see what I'm up to by bookmarking this blog:  http://ellisrambler.blogspot.com and you can also email me: gina (dot) davidsgirl (at) gmail (dot) com.

Much love,
G