Amy BoughnerThirteen years ago I was able to build a community around myself on Twitter. I might say communities. Different people I could talk to about different things – work, interests, motherhood.
Other mothers who helped me through postpartum and maternity leave. People who became friends who I now know in other spaces on other platforms.
And now Twitter is a thing of the past. It is not at all what it once was, and not a place I go to talk to the people I enjoy talking to anymore. The people I want to talk to are really there anymore either.
I miss it and I don’t. It’s probably good for me to not be there right now.
I am on Facebook and in groups there, I’m on Instagram, but the conversation isn’t the same. I’ve been on Reddit and on Discord but recently I’ve come up against what might be called unreasonable men on both. Comments made in passing became lectures about why I wasn’t understanding reality, how I was taking things to personally and also needed to calm down.
You know, totally the same way they would talk to a man.
I really enjoy the Discord group I was in, I haven’t been back since then.
Yesterday I watched as a driver behind me became absolutely enraged as I slowed for a turn. In my rearview mirror he was waving at me as though to move me along, flipping me off, and yelling at me. His face was distorted. I was going the speed limit, dude had been behind me for two blocks and he was enraged. It was 8 am.
And I’m sitting here today and I feel like I just don’t have the strength.
I am out of strength.
Twitter was good for me because I could talk into the void like everyone else and sometimes people would talk back. There was no introvert fear that I was trying to talk to people who weren’t actually interested in talking to me.
Now I’m back to wondering if I’m a welcome part of any conversation.
