So this happened first while I was still home, back in June or so. I was going over my Instagram stories (I hardly ever did that, ever), and all of a sudden I came across the story of a senior from college who I obviously wasn’t fond of. In my head I practically shouted “WHY are you in my feed, insert expletive“, quickly visited her profile and unfollowed her.
I was surprised at the amount of anger this individual, whom I haven’t seen or interacted with in over five years, was capable of rousing in me. While I felt some relief in unfollowing said person, I also felt good for standing up against somebody who I clearly knew did not have good intentions, who probably put up a good persona that the world was obviously keen to follow, but I know what kind of a person you really are <insert expletive> I said to myself. In my defense, this was a senior who was openly rude to a lot of people while we were still in college, but her (then) popularity and resourcefulness meant it all drowned in the politics of getting things done. But isn’t five years a long time to carry it through?
I swiped left to view more stories, I think I unfollowed some 10+ people who no longer belonged to my present. I had probably “Follow back”ed them on account of familiarity at some point in our lives and forgotten about it. (I didn’t watch people’s stories on Insta, and I still don’t go through my feed a lot unless it’s food or dance).
I repeated the exercise again yesterday. The rage that seethes from nowhere into my head as I see a story pop up is scary. It’s like I still live in their wrong act, whatever that was. Of course I have my own self-appointed moral code as do most of you (I’m guessing) and I think that’s fair. So I unfollowed a couple more people, I realized I didn’t want to count the number of people I’ve thus shut out of my life on account of my own moral code, it would be painfully higher than expected.
I wonder what that makes me? Does that make me unkind? I’m just one of those many that can survive with very few people in my life, just because I think I do know the reality of most people, and in such circumstances it makes more than enough sense to keep people out. Yet the rage (and disgust, I’ll admit) I felt made me, well, sort of ashamed of myself. I felt like a teenager still holding grudges when I consider myself past that shit. To feel that kind of disgust for fellow human beings is not one of my proud moments, and yet I realized I wanted no part of them in my Insta, just like there’s no part of them in my present. I felt petty, lame.
I don’t know what that makes me. I hope it’s human.
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