I am writing this post as a post mortem on my attempt at social networking. For about the last 4 years I have been trying very hard to create a world for Vanessa. A world where I could interact with people as the person I have always wanted to be. That person was mainly the girly side of me. At first the process was full of promise. I came out to some ladies, befriended them on facebook and it seemed that it was going to be an amazing opportunity to finally be able to girltalk and discuss things that impacted me without the fear of being overheard or being outed by the narrow-minded folks that fill my life. The way I went about it was by coming out to ladies and seeing if they wanted to be fb friends or, if they were too close to my boy side and had fb friends that might out me, just message me on fb. Facebook also was a mechanism whereby I followed glamorous drag queens, other crossdressers, and cool fetish people in the area.
What eventually happened was I ended up realizing that developing or trying to build friendships on fb was dependent on a few things. First of all, there are people that are on fb rarely. They could just love me as a person but they just didn't use fb and trying to get them to go on more to chat with me was doomed to failure. The next issue was the harsh and brutal reality that evolved. Ultimately, I wasn't worth the effort. I had hoped my caring, supportive, playful manner would facilitate these ladies wanting to chat with me. It didn't. The way it ended up being was, I would get on the computer and send somewhere between 5 and 15 messages with various assorted greetings or questions about situations that the person was involved in. So, I might send a question about how someones spouse's job hunt was going or I would ask about a recent illness or I would just say good morning. Then I would hope for some feedback. It really was a lot of self-denial to continue to lie to myself and say that these ladies wanted to talk with me. This is not to say that they didn't like me but the truth is, they didn't care enough to make time. I did. I wanted to build those friendships and I actually have a busier life than any of them. So, in the end, I got lots of "gee, I'm sorry I haven't sent you a message in the last while" comments. That only worsened the situation because it meant that they felt guilt, which I really did not want this to be.
This is something that makes me incredibly sad as it isn't just the loss of a bunch of ladies that I chatted with on occasion, it is also the end of a bunch of interactions. There were a handful of ladies that I only chatted with on fb and with the death of Vanessa, that interaction dies with her. But, my sentiment is, you know me, you know where I work, you can call if you really want to find out what happened. I have an email address and I will give it out if a lady wants to contact me. But, I check that email a few times a week at most. There were also a few ladies that actually were good at chatting with me and I am sad that this closes that window but I need to be done with all the negativity that my online life was generating.
I won't go into particulars about what caused what and all of the things that caused me to get to this point. Suffice it to say that I heard the message loud and clear but fought with it for some time. It really should have happened months ago but I was just so resistant to believing the message I was getting.
I have also made all of my flickr photo not public anymore. I have deleted my twitter account as it really was doing nothing for me. I had tried to hide any google+ photos of me as well...with my goal being completely off line now. I will still use flickr as a photo album of sorts.
The truly ironic part of doing this is the fact that it won't even register with 99% of people that I interact with. I felt unwanted, so I went away...no-one even noticed....so I was unwanted. I also felt like a bother, a big ol' pain in the backside...so ending that is really important as well. A good example of the irony is the fact that I went into work 2 days after deactivating my account and I worked with 4 ladies that I chatted with on fb...only one noticed and she only noticed b/c it was her comment to me that really served as the "splash of reality" that made me accept that fb had failed. The two really good communicators both noticed the day of and, sadly, thought I had blocked them...which shows they don't know what it means to be blocked.
Anyway, I've got work to do and I'm sure nobody will read this and nobody will care but...I feel that writing this blog does serve a therapeutic process for me.
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