It was way past midnight when
she finally reached home. The effects of the whiskey were wearing off. She was
no longer high on happiness. In fact, her head spun and she was feeling dizzy.
She wished she had refrained from displaying her dancing skills at the club.
Her legs ached. She got out of her heels and sat on her bed. She switched on
her laptop and signed into her Facebook account.
He was still on her list of
"Close Friends". They had broken up a week ago and even though she
had changed her "Relationship Status" from "In a Relationship"
to "Single", she still had not been able to remove him from her list
of “Friends”.
She glanced at the list of
notifications. He had changed his profile picture. He was with a girl – from the
backdrop, she could make out that they were, both, in the living room of his
house. "Who is this chick?"
she wondered. She looked at his Wall Posts. His status read, “Best Weekend
Ever!!” She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach as she saw his latest “check
ins”. He had visited a pub with her on Saturday evening, and on Sunday, they
had gone for a movie together, after brunch at a restaurant which used to be
her favourite.
She could not stop the tears
from rolling down her eyes. She wanted to scream but no voice came out of her
throat. She wanted to send him a message but he had changed his number. She did
not have his new contact details. She was frustrated and she cried herself to
sleep.
The next morning, she could
not focus on work. She wondered how it had been so easy for him to move on.
Even though she knew she was making a mistake, she could not abstain from
logging into her Facebook account once again. There was another notification!
He had changed his “Relationship Status” once again to being “In a Relationship”.
He had uploaded new photos as well, of the weekend he had spent, with the new
girl in his life.
As she stared at the screen,
she, suddenly, burst out laughing. Surprisingly, instead of remembering the
times she had spent with him in the last two years, it was a casual
conversation with her mother that was playing in her mind. “Your generation
is a strange one,” her mother had stated. “All of you are moving towards a
culture of exhibitionism. It baffles me how you enjoy giving minute-by-minute
updates of your life to the whole world. In our days, we had one camera and we
developed the photos once in a year…But you upload pictures every single day –
of lunch, of some kitten on the road, of your cubicle in the office – keep me
away from all this. I do not need Facebook to let my close friends know what is
happening in my life.”
Not being able to concentrate
on any task, she decided to take the rest of the day off. After a long walk by
herself on the beach, she dragged her legs home. Once again, she logged on to
her account. This time, there were no notifications. She typed his name on the
search bar but his profile did not open. He was no more appearing on her list
of “Friends”. He had blocked her! She was even more amazed when she realized
that this information did not devastate her. Although she was a little mad, at
the same time, she also felt relieved. He had, with the click of a mouse,
erased all possibilities of the two of them having any access to each other’s
lives.
It was now her turn to shoot
ahead. She managed to force a smile on her face as she clicked a picture of
herself and uploaded it on Facebook with the caption “All Smiles J J”. She
felt pleased as her picture received some instant “likes”. She had succeeded in
showing to the world that she, too, was moving on…