So, last week I vanished from Facebook.  For a few days I even pulled down my blog.  And while I admitted that the whole thing made me incredibly sad,  it also felt extremely liberating. Just the idea that I could do it – that I could walk away if I wanted to, that the option is always there – made me feel infinitely better.

It was a fairly easy decision to re-publish my blog itself, if for no other reason than the fact that keeping it down made entirely too much work for me.  I was getting a ton of emails, people were asking me about individual posts, I was wanting to share things that I could no longer share, and I’d created a whole bunch of broken links all over the place.   The rational thing to do was to bring it back, a whopping three days after I’d announced that it was down.

The Facebook page is another matter altogether though, and I feel at peace about taking a good long break.  I never gave any sort of explanation for that…. partly because I don’t feel I owe any explanations, but also because I didn’t yet really have an explanation, other than that I knew I needed to step away.

Today though, I have an explanation, and I thought I’d share it for the people who are still wondering.

First, I’m sure there’s an appearance of something akin to a child’s playground tantrum:  “That is IT.  I’m taking my ball and GOING HOME!”  And sure, that’s part of it.  I mean, I was hurt, and frustrated, and burnt out, and had had it with everyone and everything.  Given the timing of my exit, a lot of you assumed that I left because of the last couple of conversations we’d had on my wall, but that really wasn’t it.  I’d been a hair’s breadth away from making this decision for months, and that just happened to be the impetus that pushed me over;  not the reason itself.   I was not feeling heard, and that’s really one of the worst feelings in the world, isn’t it? Don’t we all just want to be heard?  I verbally vomited shared a little bit of that in the Things I’m Not Saying post, and while it was a very true representation of how I was feeling at the moment, in hindsight the full truth is a little bit different.

I received another email this morning wondering what had happened to the Facebook page.  It wasn’t one of the sweet ones, telling me she missed me, and that she hoped everything was okay (and absolutely, I got those too, and they were appreciated.)  No, she was almost…. indignant.  Angry.  And she wasn’t particularly nice about it.  Why did I leave?!  Why didn’t I tell her what was going on?!  She was wanting to share a specific post, and she couldn’t find it, and what was she supposed to do now?!

I literally read it as I was walking out the door.   I was frustrated because I was supposed to be playing Minecraft with Tegan, and I had to postpone to go the doctor.  The surgeon’s office had just called to tell me that they’d had a ton of cancellations (half of the valley is flooded right now), and if I could come in right then, they could get me a cortisone injection, as a way to sort of cross every t and dot every i before we decide that a revision surgery is the right next step. Spencer wasn’t feeling well, so I was doting on him;  I felt bad for bailing on Tegan; I was off to get what I knew would be a painful injection that would render me out of commission for the rest of the day; I had a million little things to do when I got home…

and all I could think about was a stupid email from a random stranger.

I realized at some point during the 8 minute drive to the doctor’s that the issue was NOT the email.  It was not the other person at all.  All this time I’d made it so easy and convenient to blame others for what had been happening, when really it was my own issue all along. Somewhere along the way, I’d failed to set appropriate and healthy boundaries for myself.  It wasn’t that I simply got the email (and others like it), it was that I’d allowed them to take up any space in my head.  In my day.  In my life.

I allowed that to happen.

Every day I went to my own Facebook page, and I’d read the comments and while I KNEW intellectually that I’m the same me no matter what; that what others say to me reflects on them, not me; that I don’t have to give any attention or weight to any negativity;  that I don’t have to even blink an eye about not living up to anyone’s expectations but my own… while I knew – and KNOW – all of that wholeheartedly, I was letting it creep in.  Letting it create that tiny dark spot on my day.  Letting it make me tired.  Letting it get me down.  And over time, it all just got to me.  But it was ME, and not the “haters”.  People are allowed to think whatever they want about me. People are allowed to call me whatever they’d like.  People are allowed to email me. People are allowed to expect too much of me.

And I’m allowed to protect me.

So that’s why I took down the Facebook page, and why it will stay down for the time being. Because of what I’ve allowed it to do to me. When I figure out what I need to do to stop the negativity from digging its way in (and to be clear, I’m not asking for advice),  I’ll be back.  And I’ll be glad too, because I do miss it.   A lot actually.  But I’d be lying if I said that it hasn’t been really really nice to go a whole week without being called names.

I’ll figure it out, and I’ll come back.

In the meantime, I’ll be nursing a shoulder and playing Minecraft with my girl.  Because priorities.