Mark Zuckerberg came across as a socially inept weirdo in The Social Network, but in a supreme irony, he went on to found the world's most famous social media website. Facebook's power was reaffirmed recently when it announced the launch of tools that would enable a person out of a relationship to avoid their ex on their timeline. You laugh out loud when you read such news.
You and he broke up three months ago. In the initial days, you could not stop yourself from visiting his profile and checking out his pictures, his comments, his "likes". If he posted a smiling picture, you took it as a personal affront. You could not believe that he took almost no time in locating the bandwidth not just to laugh uproariously but to share that vulgar fact with the world.
It bothered you immensely, not just his insouciance but your desire to track it diligently. You did not want to unfriend him and come across as grumpy. So, you unfollowed him, and thus ensured that you did not see any more of him. But you and he still had common friends and he hung out with them, and they posted about it. You knew it was all in good faith, yet you could not help detect wild conspiracies hatched to cause you misery. You unfollowed some common friends too.
Even with that done though, events of his life and the fact that he is so over you are everywhere. You have noticed that he has started "liking" the comments of this someone more than he "likes" the comments of others. When he posts about the latest Hunger Games movie, this someone says they want to go with him. And he "likes" that they want to, and he follows that up with a smiling emoji for a comment. You stare at the precise point on the screen where the emoji is displayed. It's like a dagger through your heart.
Since this someone has appeared on the scene, you have come across pictures of them together on Facebook, pictures in which they slip a hand casually on one another's shoulder, or look ahead as they laugh over a common joke. It need not be anything, you tell yourself. "Just friends" do such stuff all the time. But you can't help wonder if there is maybe something about this someone that you lack. If the someone is better in some precious, inimitable way, you start wondering if there are things you do not know, and you start to lose sleep over this.
You deactivate your Facebook account, and you suddenly understand why people used to leave town in earlier days when they were dumped. Facebook is the new real estate and all our desires and fears play out there. You dream about him and the someone together, and you wake up with a bad feeling. You hate this about yourself. You really should let go. You don't know anything. Maybe there is nothing between them. Maybe there is. It's not your call to take anymore. You are not a factor. Things have changed.
The trouble, as you see it, is that the story is not proceeding as you would have liked. You don't want him to return, but equally, you don't want him to find someone so soon after you broke up with him. You want time to be a factor, time that will assure you that you meant something to him, and that, in the final analysis, your story with him stood for something, even if it did not last.
You curse Facebook for bringing all this knowledge into your life and burdening your glorious sadness with anxiety. You get ideas. Maybe you should go back to him and apologise. But weren't you unhappy with him? You were not unhappy-unhappy, you tell yourself. You can be demanding and besides, the past few days have changed everything. You reactivate your Facebook account and send him an apology message. It reads rather desperate but you cannot help yourself. You relax for the first time in days after you hit "send".
He does not reply. He saw it within an hour of your sending it and it's been two days but there is no reply. The crushing humiliation of it makes you shed tears. You wonder why his rejection affects you more than his presence ever did. Is it an ego thing? You don't know but it can't be only that. You want him to acknowledge what both of you had, that block of shared space-time. With him silent, you might as well have never lived it.
He is not coming back, you finally tell yourself and you deactivate your account again. You read about Facebook's new tools for broken hearts, and you laugh out loud. You are hurting so deeply that laughing is the only option.
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