It’s an old story about long distance friendship.
FOMO has ruined my life
Background information.
Basically, my personality is pretty fine. I am friendly and talkative (well, not that much for now), and I maintain my negative thoughts by doing meditation. I had good friends and received quite a lot of support from people around me. I was a great leader in most outdoor activities and projects. I gained respect from friends because of my ability. But there’s a day that went wrong and drove my life crazy.
Here’s the story:
There’s actually a period when I stopped doing meditation to focus on studying because it’s near the 12th grade and we have to confront the most important test in our student lives.
I usually have to stay up late so it’s hard to focus on doing meditation.
In order to accomplish at least 5 minutes of meditation, your physical body needs to be in a good state or not lack sleep to achieve the best results. And yes, in this short period, every minute is gold, so I’ll take advantage of every single moment.
It turned out to be one of the worst decisions that I made for myself.
So back to the main story: at this time, I haven’t decided to quit the relationship I’ve been dedicated to, which is with my semi-close friend (could be my best friend, idk).
We were at the same school, both in the dorm, and used to meet and talk a lot. After a period of time, we aren’t able to meet as frequently as we’re used to. We didn’t mention much about how to solve this problem (lack of face-to-face interaction), but we just understood that we might need to message more since that’s the only way.
Well.
At first glance, nothing bad has happened. We spent a couple of minutes of free time talking and mentioning what we were doing; were there any new things that happened or small achievements we could cheer ourselves up with?
But as soon as I turned on Messenger notifications (I used to turn off all of them), things went wrong. I became a slave to dopamine. And fear of being left behind.
When you have someone you dedicate time to but not to face-to-face communication, the smallest changes in their time might cause you upset. Even at the speed of replying, I suddenly care about this shit much more than ever.
You might ask unnecessary questions like,
- What if something had happened?
- Will I be left behind or somewhat?
- Did something wrong happen?
- Why did that person reply so late today?
These questions will be seeds to kickstart your anxiety (you won’t face these things if you don’t have any relationships relying on social media). From time to time, there will be more wrong stuff going on if you keep dedicating yourself to this sort of lack of face-to-face relationships.
You might ask, why don’t I hang out with other people?
It’s quite simple. Though our personalities are polar opposites, they've somewhat still had the foundation we share. We’re ENTP and INTJ, btw. If you’re curious about details, you could take a quick look on the internet.
In short, our personalities are quite hard to meet. It’s like when you have a thousand people, you might only meet one of them who seems to relate to you. That’s a small side problem!
At that specific moment.
There is a lack of time and face-to-face interaction. We’re now in a period of needing to focus on the test. What should I do?
Meditation is like a shield for me to handle stress and anxiety. Without maintaining it, I would usually overthink unnecessary moments and find it hard to decide. It was so hard to decide what to do when I was in this situation.
Keep messaging while studying, which will absolutely kill my productivity. But without doing so, it’s hard to keep this hard-to-find friend.
Then.
I decided to block him. Not for a while, I’m sorry.
Remember when I told you it was hard to decide at this moment? I was half wanting to focus on my studies and half wanting to maintain. Sometimes we can still meet when we’re at school, but I just can’t continue. Yes, forgive me for my lack of commitment.
I went back with the flow and kept messaging again.
The moment I decided to unblock, I messaged back. Another worst decision of my life.
I kept seeking trouble with him about unnecessary stuff. I didn’t know why I did it. Maybe it’s just my inner self trying to fight to get rid of this relationship because it knows that maintaining it isn’t the right choice anymore (that’s my imagination, though).
There’s a lot of stuff going on this period, but the end result was he’s finally blocked my Facebook account. *Make sure to note that at this period, most of the troubles we had were on my side. *
Damn good. We haven’t gotten in touch since.
After this period, I went through the test and successfully passed it. But I had some problems with my mental health later on. Part of the reason is the relationship, and the other half would be burnout.
Because the test is quite important, due to what I have told you, you might think I spend a lot of time chatting, but I did spend time learning as well.
Because it’s in the middle of the time when I tried to block his Facebook and I said something like we should stop here, blah blah, therefore I am able to focus on studying and ignore my emotions, which is quite unhealthy.
Before we move on, there are a couple of lessons I learned.
1. Real friends will meet in real life.
If there’s any relationship that relies on social media, you should definitely get rid of it. Don’t spend time with that relationship, even if you think you might not meet this type of friends ever again.
Just don’t think too much about this problem; whenever we don’t have much time to meet, that should be the end. Don’t try to maintain or do anything much. Please do value the people you meet outside more than on social media.
It’s just online and there’s not much of a signal for you to see whether they’re still care for you or they’re busy. The only thing you can see is the message and the status. I don’t think only based on those things can come up with an idea whether they still care about you or not.
2. Seek help from your classmates
Yes, I don’t like my classmates, but they’re the ones who ask me quite a lot during periods when my mental health isn’t that stable. It’s just that I am so busy chasing this relationship that I forgot that there are still lots of real-life friends who care about me.
I just can’t evaluate well at that time. I didn’t spend much time with them, but I was busy trying to quit this. It might be hard to meet again, friend. They also helped me a lot when I started to study at university as well. I still ask for help when they still see that my mental health hasn’t gotten better when other people don’t care much.
Not so many people has good classmates but trust me. It’s worth a try—better than some random people outside. You meet them more often, so it might be a good connection. Can take advantage of it and ask for help.
3. When you’re not fine, take time.
There’s a lot of stuff going on in your head. Just don’t keep working along with it. Don’t listen to other productivity people on the internet who ignore your thoughts and shit just to focus on work. If you’re not fine, take time to rest. If you keep working, it will cause you huge burnout and compound emotions due to your lack of attention to healing your inner child (I have no other words for this phrase, sorry).
Okay, the story hasn’t ended there.
I feel stuck afterwards. I consumed quite a lot of social media posts and, of course, TikTok as well.
The feeling of fear still exists within me, even after the relationship has ended. Part of the reason I figured it out now is social media sh*t. I tried to turn off most of the notifications, living well for another month without it, and things turned better at some point.
Before this time, I spent much of my time on social media, especially TikTok, which is the platform I hadn’t thought I'd use in the future. Like anyone else, my attention span has been cut severely. My head has always been in the cloud since then. The more news I consumed, the more afraid I felt about the world.
Here’s the trick.
Your mind is what you’re consuming on social media. When you consume something but have it on repeat, you will seek out stuff outside to support it. If social media tells you that society is broken, you will think exactly like that without questioning much. You’re not focusing on the present but rather, the endless possibilities.
I feel fear because of that. I can’t focus on doing work, but I keep worrying about the future just because of that. I can’t make a decision because I am always worrying about what would happen rather than what is happening.
I don’t really know who is actually caring for me. Keep protecting the possibilities of those “might-be caring people” and long-term relationships. That worrying and that lack of a present mindset have ruined my life.
In order to achieve such a cool mindset, I have used social media for so long. Now is the right time to take a break and get back to who I really am.
