Committing Electronic Suicide

I’m reading a book called How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have by John Gray. There is a lot of good information in this book about what it is that truly makes us unhappy. We always think we need more of something to be happy and we’re always trying to fill the void with the wrong things. Basically the theory is that when you’re unhappy it is because you are missing a particular type of love in your life. There are 10 kinds and we apparently need some of each to be happy.

I’m using part of this theory with one of my own whereby I purge my life of things that are weighting me down and making me miserable. For example, when I moved from the last place (where I’d lived for 14 years with an emotionally detached alcoholic
husband), I rented an 18’ drop-box and filled it three times. Yes, I could have had a yard sale like most people but I needed a symbolic purging. I needed to unload the weight of all those things, memories, nightmares, confusion and clutter. I wanted to dump it all, so I did. I brought very little from my former life to this new one.

Most recently (as you know if you’re keeping up here), I began baring my soul in public as a method of purging negativity from my spirit to find out who I am, how to love myself and where I want to go from here. One of the discoveries I made about myself was that I am attracted to emotionally unavailable men, the exact opposite of what I need in my life. I forced myself to sever communication between myself and Mr. brief-but-extremely-stimulating-relationship because he is one of the emotionally unavailable types that I need to get away from. (I didn’t expect it would hurt this much but I’m sure if I can just hang in there, I’ll get through it. After all, what choice do I have?)

Today I reviewed the immediate prospects on the two online dating web sites I belonged to. One guy turned out (I believe) to be bi-polar or something. He always was way too negative for my taste but then he came uncorked on me about something through E-mail, poking his nose in my business where it didn’t belong. I blocked him on the dating site this morning so he wouldn’t be a problem.

Then I considered the other guys who have been writing to me lately and some are flaky, don’t follow through… just not what I’m looking for. I have had my fill of online dating. I have deleted both my profiles completely. Part of me is quite sad that I’ve effectively made sure there are NO prospects at all now, but what is worse, no prospects or poor ones?

Next I went and deleted the MySpace account I’ve had for 5 years. Then two Twitter ID’s (one under my real name), and finally I deleted quite a few of my instant messaging ID’s. I’m still not sure I will leave that realm for good but I might.

It really does feel like electronic suicide to me. I have been online since 1991, before the Internet was open to the public. I’ve been communicating with people online all this time and interacting with them in real life less and less. If there is one thing I have learned from Mr. brief-but-extremely-stimulating-relationship, it’s that I need human contact in my life. I need to laugh with people and hear them talk about everyday things.

I don’t need a man to E-mail, IM or text message. I need a man who can make me laugh, someone to go places with, someone to spoon through life with.

Who knows, maybe someday I’ll go totally crazy and get rid of my text messaging plan or change my phone numbers. I’m on a roll!