OK. It's been over a week now since I left Facebook. My mind is calmer I'm sleeping better and serenity is returning to my soul.
As an autistic empathetic person with a long term visual memory and the ability to read rapidly while scrolling, my Facebook timeline, with over 800 friends and multitudes of pages and groups, was becoming a journey into the pathos and pain of the entire world. I quit watching television news over 30 years ago because the images stayed in my brain. If I have to watch the suffering of the world I just don't have any energy left to do good works or communicate efficiently with friends and neighbors.
And then listening to the conversations of friends near and far and neighbors complaining on the neighborhood groups had become too much for me. Friends from far away made me long for other beautiful places and friends nearby had conversations and posts it was just better not to hear about.
I found I was spending way too much time thinking and worrying about people who had no impact or influence in my life anymore and knowing what my friends were doing without ever inviting me was like being a lost Aspie girl in school again, wondering why no one invited me to parties. BTW autistic people like being invited even if they can't or don't go.
I find I am thankful for much I learned and people I met on Facebook but I am still enjoying my respite.
I got a ride this morning from the father of a young friend of mine, who lives in Southern California when not visiting here, and he said his wife knows everything going on in the world just from reading my timeline. So maybe I might have done some good with my forwarding information and humor.
But I'm off duty now.
More musings later
