Facebook: The Good, The Bad and The Salvation

Facebook can be a cesspool. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are wearing rose colored glasses with blinders on the sides. There are people you will find on Facebook who only put forth their most attractive moments, and will let you see just what they think will make you like them. More likes means better LIKED, right?

Whatever helps them sleep at night.

But if Facebook can be so phony and soul-less, why does someone like me invest so much time connecting there?

Let's start with parenthood. There are lots of parents who manage to maintain a healthy social life with a good amount of personal interaction with peers. Fellow parents connecting on the soccer field, attendees at monthly PTA meetings, coaches and dance moms can all be a social lifeline. Science has taught us, peer interaction is good for our mental and physical health, so these social outlets serve to keep lots of parents healthy and sane.

Not every parent has these opportunities. When both parents are working, or in single parent families, just trying to keep up with everyday responsibilities like laundry and homework can suck the energy out of any good mom or dad, making any kind of personal interaction an effort we just can't manage. We spread ourselves thin just to help our kids keep their grades up, devote a decent amount of time to an extracurricular activity, and pull off dinner a few nights a week that doesn't come from a drive thru. We have no time for personal relationships or friendly outings, and even if we can set aside an hour or two, we're too damned tired.

So if parenting the most typical of kids can run us too ragged to carve out an hour for coffee with a friend, I'd like you to imagine how difficult it is for some parents of special needs children. I've written before about the hardship of maintaining friendships as the mother of a child with severe autism. You can peruse the old blog posts to find those thoughts because I'm still navigating this "blog" thing and haven't figured out how to link that stuff yet. But rest assured, leaving the house for ANY social event is always a painstaking project, and most days and nights you will find me alone at the kitchen table, watching Criminal Minds, or playing Candy Crush, just killing time until I have to go pick up my daughter from whatever friend's house she escaped to, or drop her off at dance. Like so many other parents.

Until suddenly we realize, "Holy shit, I'm so fucking lonely".

This parenting gig was lonely enough when there was still a husband in the house. The fact that the marriage was dead long before either one of us would bury it surely contributed to the loneliness factor. But now that it's just me, there's a lot of silence around me. It's better than hateful silence, but it's still hard to endure. So how do I keep from banging my head against the wall, just to remind myself I'm still alive?

Oh, that's right...Facebook.

I have made some really great friends, from all over the world, thanks to the magic of Zuckerberg. Because I have set up a public Facebook blog page, I have found a way to interact with LOTS of people who can relate to the story I tell. I have (virtually and in a few cases, personally) met some amazing people who seem to think I am a writer, of sorts. I guess. I don't write the beautiful words so many of these friends are so skilled at expressing, but I guess if you like reading the story of some real life ups and downs, and you don't mind how they are expressed in exactly the same way they would be if we were sitting at a table, sharing a beer, then yeah, I'm a writer. I think of it more as being a storyteller, but if I'm writing it down, I'll suck it up and say I'm a writer.

Where do I write most of these stories? Oh, yeah...again, it's Facebook.

Once in a blue moon, I'll pop over here and tell some kind of tale to the blogosphere. But I don't submit my words to other publishing sites, because to do so would run the risk of having to give someone else power over my words. No, Scary Mommy...I don't want to put my thoughts in the form of a list. No, Huffington Post, I don't want to give you the right to change my words, or the title of my story. Whatever they might pay, it's not worth giving up my right to speak my own way. And I don't give a flying rat's ass how grammatically incorrect my thoughts might be laid out. I'm not fucking stupid. I KNOW how the words SHOULD be written in proper grammar, but most of the free world does NOT speak that way. So forgive me if I prefer to just tell it like it is, and not have to reconstruct my thoughts to follow some college English text book I never got to read. Believe it or not, I'm a pretty smart cookie, and I don't need to use fancy words and literary formulas to get my point across.

And before somebody else says it, I am NOT so full of myself that I think any of these publishing sites would actually pay for my words. My story is pretty simple, and not at all controversial, so I doubt any giant crowd would be interested enough to warrant a prominent platform such as a Scary Mommy or a Huffington Post. But the small crowd I have managed to gather, they are fierce. And they are loyal. And they are smart enough to decide for themselves that what I write about is real. And they can relate. That matters. It's why we connect.

So I tell my story on Facebook. Some people may think I lack ambition. Some people may think I lack any actual talent in the art of expressing the written word. That's fine. The truth is, my words are my words. And they tell my story. It's a true story. And those people on Facebook who have connected with me, (and I, so very much with THEM), they bring me validation, purpose, and the very real connection of friendship. Without them, I would truly be lost.

Some folks believe that Facebook is a dying outlet of social media. To me, it is very much alive, and bringing me the only interaction I have, some days. I hope it will remain the outlet that provides the greatest opportunity for me to find my peers. I hope these friends I have made across the universe will remain my friends for a lifetime. They have saved me in so many ways, and I hope they find something of value in our friendships as well. As for the phonies and the sharks in the cesspool, I'll continue to do my best to scroll on by and choose NOT to allow them to occupy my head. That's another saving grace of Facebook...I get to choose who surrounds me, and I can delete the rest. Now if only we could do that in real life...