Selling My Soul Online

What might life be like without social media and vulnerability regrets...

Last Saturday I sat home alone and after declaring my low-spend year only 78 hours prior, dominoes decided to bring me a surprise pizza I had nothing to do with apart from paying for it. I was feeling very sorry for myself which makes me want to vomit at my lack of resilience regarding being alone given the current state of the world but also, I had just eaten £16 worth of pizza and I’m not that frivolous.

No one was here to suggest I do something with that month-old red cabbage that defies nature’s law of decomposition. No soul to suggest a takeaway vegetable pizza doesn’t count as an ‘essential purchase’. My belly swelled as I ate my feelings past the point of comfort, something that doesn’t happen often these days, but it was a sad Saturday.

Glutton for punishment I scrolled Instagram like a vulture does a fresh kill. Some friends were together and I’d not been invited which is not surprising assuming they’re probably drinking and I can’t really do that anymore because a) I can’t orgasm under the influence and b) I will wake up feeling like a Mars bar that someone’s sat on and spend all day reassuring myself in the bath that I’m not an embarrassing twat. Biting into the last bit of cold, garlic bread I’d left on purpose to reclaim some kind of sovereignty over my actions, I locked my phone and placed it out of reach like it needed to be taken to Mordor at dawn. I tried to cry but my body was too dehydrated from all the salt. Nothing happened apart from wishing I’d not checked my phone.

Isn’t it strange that I now know I am here and they are there. The exact distance looming between us. How strange to imagine a time when I wouldn’t know what everyone was doing. If they’d gone out without me or what they were having for dinner. I imagined a time when I didn’t make my business everyone’s business. A time when I’d put my Saturday morning croissant on a beautiful plate just for me to enjoy. Not for people online to see or for my uncle to leave one of his classic comments beneath like ‘looks gross’, which makes me want to throw things at him. I took the picture, uploaded it, added an indulgent amount of butter that Instagram couldn’t handle to the already buttered croissant and then ate it all the while never realising, I didn’t do any of that for me.

Scrolling on TikTok I saw a video of a woman who, apparently doesn’t usually share much online, document her break up in real time. Boxes of her partners belongings holding up the walls in her home and my heart felt hollow. In this strange moment I mourned the parts of my life I’d given freely online. Parts of my body. My soul. All the time’s I’d panicked in a beautiful corner of the world that I’d not gotten enough content. Had to take a picture of my food before I could put it inside my salivating mouth. I felt laid bare and wide open on the kitchen table, inviting the world to consume what they desired and comment on the taste. Like I was one of these women spooning out their insides like the flesh of an avocado and spreading it over some sourdough bread for the world to see. #brunch.

That moment I wanted to remove everything. I’d delivered my young milky thighs into a 1:1 square for the world to see and divulged parts of my life in the name of being ‘vulnerable’ that I wasn’t sure I now would. I’ve been told repeatedly as someone who once had a face-forward online business to be authentic, to share the real, the struggle and to talk about where you were and where you are now. That if you didn’t post something it must be a ‘block’ to push through. I have posed in my lingerie under a shadow of female empowerment but I didn’t feel like I was in the shade right now. I felt hot as I pulled against my rollneck. Maybe it is empowering. Maybe that’s what it was. But why did I want to wrap her in a blanket and carry her home?

I’ve been selling myself online for years. Not in an only fans kind of way, I’ve not made any money. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing this if I had. But selling my life like it was a commodity, a daily show which is rich for someone who laughs at reality TV. To strangers, girls who hated me at school, exes who wouldn’t even spend money on a postal chlamydia test ahead of us dating let alone invest in anything I’m parading online. To prospective clients. To further my life in some way. To be someone.

And.

Good.

God.

I am bored.

The thought of taking another picture of my own face makes me recoil. I can’t handle the disappointment of seeing the most beautiful sunset in my life and being pissed when the picture looks more like a rocket lolly melted on the side of the pavement. Maybe that’s nature’s way of letting us know that an Instagram story isn’t where the life is. Not where the beauty lives. That not everything in this wild and precious life is able to be stored in the cloud.

After reading this you’re probably wondering, or not, if I deleted all my social media, but I haven’t. I need to go and save some writing I carelessly stored on an app owned by people I don’t know, but right now I can’t face it. And I’m frightened. Who will I be if there’s no one around to see who I am? Will I still bother to move my body if I don’t share it with the world? Maybe I’ll eat my pastry off the baking tray and is that even a problem? Will I miss out on life? Do the right thing even when no one is watching? Maybe the seven thousandth retinol product will be released and this one will work and I’d have missed it. Perhaps Instagram will become just another party I’m not invited to.

So, this is a hiatus no one cares about, because I am pretty sure it’s only me who’s invested in my accidently curated life online. That morning scroll replaced by a morning stroll. Focusing on writing, moisturising my plump lips, kissing people I love with them and finally becoming mysterious. Seducing myself. Baking more bread and eating it with lashings of butter as my legs swing over the kitchen counter. Actually laying myself bare on that kitchen table and allowing my safe space’s eyes to feast and take parts of me I willingly yield. Liking my own life instead of waiting for someone else to. Never doing Pilates again because it bores me. Decorate my home the way I want to. Maybe I’ll finally discover clothes I love when I’m not wondering if what her skin would look like on mine. Have secrets.

A homecoming. Lines of code dissolving and diminishing anxiety. Becoming sacred to myself. Parts of me I keep just for me and occasionally, when that succulent moment presents itself, sharing that morsel with someone who’s so close I could hear their heart beating if I closed my eyes tight enough.

Kirstie x

I would love to know about your relationship with social media. Even when we don’t use it for work, I think we often don’t realise how much we feel the pressure to broadcast. Each of us with our own reality channel and we are the actors, editors and copy writers. Have you come off socials or reduced your time spent on them? How do you think your life would be different without social media? I’d love if you’d share this with me, but no pressure, as I’ve been learning, we don’t owe parts of ourselves to strangers on the internet. I will continue to give dominoes my card details and address though, of course.