unfollow

     I could hardly read the screen, my hand was trembling so much. But there it was. He’d posted another picture with that girl.

     I showed the phone screen to Donna, “Doesn’t this girl look just like me?”

     Donna squinted, “No,” she took a sip of her drink, “She looks sort of like Emma Stone.”

     I glanced at the picture again before scrolling down, “He told me I looked like Emma Stone.”

     She was on her phone too, but it was hard to tell where her fingers were scrolling. Instagram? Tumblr? Who cares anymore, Emma Stone’s twin is dating my ex. I scrolled back up to the picture and clicked on his profile.

     “Should I unfollow him?” I asked, my eyes burning from the brightness of the screen in the dimness of the bar.

     Donna shook her head profusely, “He’s a total asshole, you have to see how long this girl stays with him. Plus, he told you you looked like Emma Stone. You’re Steve Buscemi at best, Bambi,” she joked.

     So I kept following him.

     On Snapchat, I felt like I was grazing shoulders with him down the street and going to all of his favorite restaurants and movies, like we used to do. The videos he posts, with songs that I introduced to him, playing in the background as he strolled down the sidewalk. We would spend hours in bed, music softly vibrating through his bedroom as we talked about our favorite songs and artists and everything. Now I saw everything in an entirely new perspective, that of which I was not a part of.

     On Instagram, I was going to the big events with him. Weddings and parties and special dinners with his boss, and I could feel his hand gripping mine as he nervously approached his superiors. I imagined scissors in his hand, posting new photos at new events with the new girl, cutting me out and replacing me with her in scenes that were essentially the same.

     On Tumblr, I was in his mind. Feeling what he was feeling. Songs, pictures, quotes, books, stories, poems, it was all there and I recalled those late night conversations about a time he wished he’d pursued a creative career. All of that ambition was laid out, exposed, as I scrolled and scrolled.

     I was in his mind, always, on every app.

     So I did what Donna told me exactly not to do. I unfollowed his boring days, of the new places he finds with her and the strange license plates he sees when they drive around together. I unfollowed the casual parties they attend with her mini skirt and his button down, and that caption that he would have used for a picture of us. I unfollowed his dreams and his music and his mind. I unfollowed everything about him.

     This foreign feeling, of entirely obliterating the presence of somebody who had been so present, felt like packing up a mansion and moving into a studio apartment. Five years of posting together was now the past, left behind in the stately manor.

     When Donna and I met for drinks a few days later, I told her what I had done.

She dropped her phone on the sticky table, “Bambi,” she cried, “You naive spotted deer, why would you that?”

     Though I always appreciate her nod at the absurdly depressing children’s movie, the one thing I have never enjoyed about her calling me a deer is the fact that deers are complete morons. I would not consider my decision to block him as anything close to moronic.

     I answered, “Do you still follow all of your exes?”

     She replied swiftly, without hesitation, “Of course.”

     “What do you get out of that?” I asked as if she had murdered somebody without intent.

     I realized that if I had dated as many people as Donna had, and still followed all of them, I would be static and unaffected by the progression of time. I’d always be remembering what I was like with one of them, the things we did together constantly on my mind.

     “A booty call, Bambi,” she put her drink down and placed all of her attention on the matter, “When you still follow them, they’re always there to backslide, you know? Loneliness is essentially nonexistent with this strategy.”

     In an attempt to keep from arguing about it, I chugged the rest of my gin and tonic. It was a flawed plan. She treats time like she treats her sexuality, with fluidity. Time is not progressive for her and she refuses to let people leave her for the fear that nobody else will come along.

     She made a quick observation, “So, you unfollowed him from everything, but-- and this is where my plan to never unfollow anyone is solid-- what’s stopping you from searching him on Google or whatever?”

 

     I called a Google help service.

     “Hi, this is Google Customer Service. How may I help you today?” the nice man said on the phone. I wondered what he posts.

     “Yeah, I need to filter search results. Like, if I look up… a name, for example. I need there to be no results for it.”

     The guy was silent, just some phone fuzziness and heavy breathing to fill the exchange. He replied a while later, “Okay, you can use SafeSearch to block explicit results. But I cannot help you block a human from your search results.”

     I sighed, “Okay.”

I made a promise to myself not to search his name. I kept it, too.

     Days, weeks, months, years. He dissolved from my thoughts. I eventually stopped imagining what he’d snap back if I sent him a picture of something that reminded me of him. I stopped thinking about those Instagrams posts with that girl. I ceased to wonder what was inspiring him, what he was doing and posting at all hours of the day.

     No more.

          I moved on.