The Break-Up

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…