Walls

This morning I'm thinking about the protection my own "walls" have given me against the outside world and it's is sorta changing my world.

For someone who spent their life protecting her gentle sensitive and "different" soul from others, why would I allow myself to open myself to nameless faceless miscreants on the internet? 

Why would I allow myself to be hurt by ignorant abusive comments by someone I wouldn't even allow myself to get close to in real life?

I know that I first got on social media to connect. I was in a new marriage, new house, new babies and basically trapped in my big, beautiful house with all men. So - I needed to connect.

At first, it was great! I found games to play with others, connected with old classmates I hadn't seen in decades and found an easy (and nonverbal interactive) way to communicate with my friends and family.

How has it morphed into this? Yes, the social media platforms are still my primary method of communicating with my family. But over the last two decades, I've trimmed my acquaintances and "friends" back to basically the few I had to begin with - with the wonderful exceptions of friends I had lost touch with in my childhood and a couple of "game" friends who turned into real, albeit online, friends.

Everything else out there has become toxic. Watch a few fun cat videos and then BAM a stupid ad or politic post interrupts the fun. All my news alerts have become climate change wildfires and floods, or horrible political horseshit flung by elected idiots with no intellect at all. I cringe when I open my phone now. 

I'm starting to realize what has happened. I don't know if it's me or the world, but most of the world is certifiably insane now - weather included. I need to build the wall again.

I don't know how to do that without losing contact with the people I love so I need to think about it. It's not hard, I just need to do it. It has been an addiction, and sometimes necessary to distract myself from a day of physical pain, but I need to find a way to put up that wall again. 

I need that wall. I always have. Until now, I've seen it as one of my flaws. But from here on out, I will see it as a way I protect myself because I love myself :)