In a State of Near Deletion
I discover one morning that if I delay my cup of coffee, I feel high. Although the only drug I’ve tried is pot—and really it just made me sleepy—I think this must mirror the idealized experience: the daze, the calm, emotions padded as if swathed in bubble wrap. When I drop an egg on the tile and pour orange juice instead of milk into my son’s breakfast cereal, I think, Well, that’s cool. Funny even. When was the last time I laughed like this? But then backing out of the garage I hit a light pole. When I get home, I put water on to boil.
The morning back on track—coffee, Facebook—I think this could be a funny post. The guess-how-my-morning-has-gone variety. But I don’t post. I never post. I am merely a voyeur to the perfect—or at least more interesting—lives of my Facebook world. I watch them Aspire. Succeed. Make a Difference. I wonder at the way they whip out a quip. How they share and lament and take center stage without ever asking, “Sorry, do you want to go first?” Clearly, they were never told to speak only if they had something important to say. Or maybe the value of speech is determined by who does the saying. I’d been taught to value hard work and never draw attention to myself. There are reasons this is a good policy. No one will come for you if they don’t know you exist. Not that my parents put it this way; some things you’re just born knowing.
I don’t remember many of the “friends,” or even most of them. They’ve accrued like the dust bunnies behind the couch, or the weeds in the backyard that I swear every summer I’ll prune. By late fall, the weeds prune themselves into withered stalks that snap off in my fingers. In the virtual world, the names in my feed—Teagan, CJ, Amanda Wells—have been pruned from memory. Or maybe I never knew them to begin with. Does anyone really know anyone?
Caffeine + Existential Question = Bright Idea.
I create a fake profile. It’s so easy—easier than the false high—to become an altered self. I make up a name by combining letters from my street, first pet, and most recent celebrity crush, and then start liking things without fear of judgment: X-Files and The Cure and movies by John Hughes. Yes, I sing Journey in the shower. Yes, I know all the words to Schoolhouse Rock. I look up the high school kids I was never friends with but wish I could have been and send friend-requests. I consider sending one to the teacher I had a crush on, even though he was married and maybe gay. I see the photo of him and his husband. Yep. I send requests to the camp friends who stopped answering my letters after they all went on that Outward Bound trip, the one my parents couldn’t afford, and instead I spent the summer working at Altman’s Deli. At night, while they made out around a campfire, I tried to scrub the smell of fried kishka from my hair.
I realize I’ve created myself at twenty. I delete the account.
The next day I try to mimic the caffeine-free high by fasting, but that just turns me into a grouch. When my husband gets home from work and asks, “What happened to you today?” I label his tone antagonistic concern. I think of texting this to my friend Karen, but I can’t find an appropriate emoji, so then I think I’ll trademark one and make lots of money. But I don’t.
I create the person I could be if I had money. I call myself Ima Rich. Clicking on a handful of expensive brands, I watch my feed expand with all the luxurious items that the algorithm thinks I can afford. I send myself on a cruise to Alaska and adventures in Nepal and Brazil. What to pack? I decide to be worldly but casual. I like eco-friendly footwear and a watch made in Sweden and leggings that cost more than my prom grown. I get Botox and a tummy tuck, and consider the merits of microdermabrasion. I have not a care in the world because money takes care of everything. I tell myself this is OK because in third grade I was sent to school in a hand-me-down sweater with someone else’s monogram stitched over the breast, and Deana Mellman told the entire class I’d stolen it, and everyone believed her because my mother worked in a nursing home and our car had rust splotches on the door and we didn’t own a color TV. But this is shallow me, and on the shallow end it doesn’t take long to hit bottom. I feel sickened by opulence, a dieter who gorged at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Just to mess with the algorithm’s head, I like Costco and Ford and the State of Alabama. I wait a few hours, then delete.
A parent from my son’s school sends a text. She wants to know why I didn’t send a donation for the class fundraiser, and when I respond I didn’t know there was a class fundraiser, she writes It was posted to the Facebook group with a smiley face. I label her tone sarcastic helpfulness. I miss the days of answering machines with verifiable alibis: “Mira is not available to take your call right now.” My son whines that he’s hungry, and because I’d been planning to dine at Nobu, and because I feel guilty for missing the fundraiser, I snap, “I’m not your servant, get your own damn snack.” He takes three cookies that are supposed to only be for school lunches and I don’t object because I think that’s the best way to say I’m sorry.
My next attempt is to create a better human being. I follow PETA and Save the Children and Planned Parenthood and Doctors Without Borders and NRDC and multiple anti-gun organizations and the bloggers who expose Lies and Corruption. My feed is a dystopian montage of tortured animals and children’s sad eyes and bombed-out buildings and carnage. I learn that two-thirds of millennials can’t identify Auschwitz. Iowa has all but banned abortion. Giraffes have been added to the endangered species list. Members of forced-birth and pro-gun groups post death threats on my timeline and after three days I feel helpless and hopeless and decide there’s no reason to try because we’re too far gone. I make small donations to each of the charities, and, to protect what’s left of my mental health, delete.
My husband asks what happened to the car. I lie and tell him I didn’t know anything happened to the car. I drive a gray Subaru. Two of my neighbors drive gray Subarus, as do half the parents at my son’s school. The dented bumper has made my car easier to spot in the parking lot. No more clicking the opener at the wrong door wondering how that strange travel mug got into the cup holder. This is what’s called looking on the bright side.
I create the self who messed up, and messed up bad. I follow the rehab place that kids from my high school went to, and the community college they attended after they got out. I like Heavy Metal bands that used to make me cringe and the Cineplex where I would probably be working. I sign a petition to support using marijuana to combat opioid abuse. I think maybe I should try pot again, but then I remember the image of eggs sizzling in a pan, and the way the stoners I knew in college looked happy but absent, as if they’d sent their bodies to class while their minds slept in. I feel bad about my pretend relapse and follow AA and Holistic Healing and decide maybe I’ll just vape instead, but the vape-police are on duty and warning-articles appear. This profile feels like a choose-your-own-adventure book where every chapter ends and you die. I speed up the process.
My mother sends a text to find out why I haven’t called. No worries if you’re busy; just want to make sure you’re OK. Because guilt has existed in my life as long as I have existed in my life, it doesn’t require a label or symbol. I apologize with exclamation points and promise to call that night. It occurs to me that I texted Karen two days ago and she hasn’t answered. I wonder if she’s mad at me. I wonder if it’s because I haven’t liked any of her Facebook posts since I stopped checking my regular profile. Karen—blonde, tall, made it through college without student loans—posts often. I think of sending her an apology email, but does anyone still use email? It might get buried in all the promotions and newsletters and petition requests. Or maybe she’s already spammed me. I can’t believe I’ve destroyed our ten-year friendship because of this. I don’t think I’ll ever live it down.
I create the self I could have been if that one thing hadn’t happened and then the other thing. And if Thayer hadn’t pushed me off the swing in kindergarten, and if I hadn’t looked the other way when he did it to Hilary, and if Sarah and Katie hadn’t told me they no longer wanted to be my friend just because, and if my father hadn’t lost his job, and if I hadn’t bombed my School for the Arts audition, and if I hadn’t said no when Andy S. asked me out, and yes when Jason C. asked me out, and if I hadn’t let that one guy into my dorm room, and if I’d lost my virginity with the other Jason, the one who could very well have been my first true love but wasn’t-sure-wasn’t-sure-wasn’t-sure, and if my boss hadn’t told me, “No one cares what you have to say,” and if I hadn’t taken that to mean ever, and if I’d remembered to send that wedding gift, and if I’d stuck with piano, and if I hadn’t turned down the job in São Paulo because I was scared to go to São Paulo, and if I hadn’t turned down the management job because I was scared to be a manager, and if I had lived more, and loved more, and laughed more.
This person I create is current and cool. She knows the difference between retro and passé. She is an active citizen who can tell a joke and take one too. She is calm and vivacious and has never felt the need to justify her right to exist. She has aged well. I know she would never rewrite an email twenty-two times, or say yes to drinks with Laura after Laura spread that rumor at work just because Laura is the only one who’s invited her to do anything social in months. And I know she would never accept a friend request from the original me. I switch accounts and send it anyway. I can be a martyr that way.
In the middle of the night, I dream in my not-quite-dream state—the state always on alert for broken glass, or childish cries, or a car alarm—that the made-up profiles have all ganged up on me. They have met in a virtual bar and over virtual drinks have hatched a plan to expose me. They are angry that I create and destroy them without remorse. They are planning their own form of attack: destruction by public humiliation. I wake in a sweat and sense their presence in the electrical particles of shadow. They won’t get their way if I get there first. I slip downstairs, turn on my computer and open my profile, the real one with the request to Fake Amazing Me unanswered. That’s where I messed up; I gave them a map. I also used the same password for every fake email and profile, offering them…well…a secret password. I cancel the request but that isn’t enough. They lurk, and will always lurk, in the virtual space of what might have been.
Around me the house is silent, but not. The refrigerator whirs. The wall clock ticks. The air hums with invisible energy that I imagine to be fueled by all my worries and fears. I scroll the feed of bragging faces and happy faces and successful faces. I have no presence in this world. Would anyone even miss me? I prepare to deactivate. A voice in my head says, “Hold up.”
Who is that? Greedy Me is indifferent, Messed Up Me is passed out on the couch, and New and Improved Me still isn’t taking my calls. Twenty-Year-Old Me is mortified that I exposed her. That leaves Good Human Being Me. She gives me a takedown that ends, Your great-great-grandparents did not flee and sacrifice and suffer just so you could sit at your computer in the middle of the night erasing their tracks.
Guilt wins again. I write, Ever start your day without a cup of coffee? Here’s why it’s NOT a good idea, then shut down without posting. Maybe it’s just another caffeine-free high, but I feel okay about it. After all, I can always try again.
Marcie Friedman lives in the Chicago area where she works in theater and film production. Her stories have appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine, The Gravity of the Thing, and Blotterature. She earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.