My Comeback Story: How I Deactivated My Facebook

By Sister Sunshine Smiles

Bismillah

A personal story, My comeback story! To bring awareness and motivate to keep working towards a better self!

I have studied computers out of personal interest and fascination towards the extremely wide aura of never ending development in technology and its services that doesn’t seem to cease to grow. I love the very fact about technology evolving continuously bringing things to your very home, even fingertips now. Knowledge comes pouring out to you. All you need to do is search it right.

So sometimes, I stop keeping a track of the time I spend on the internet and I end up being a big potato bag; sitting for hours straight and when time has swiftly flown by, I mistakenly glance at the time and to my utter disappointment, I realize just one thing, that it’s not going to come back so fuss I can fuss all I want and curse myself all I want! Either way, it’s not going to change the damage of the loss of time that I, myself had done!

And when I look back at the computer screen to accuse, I always saw “facebook”. Initially, it kept me entertained but eventually I came to recognize, it was addiction, PURE addiction. Addiction to such an extent that it was the first thing I checked after my sleep. I would interrupt my study schedule to fill my boredom time with FB. Yes, it started with a promise to self of 5 minutes and it would end up in an hour or even two of wastage of time.

Beyond wastage of time, I got so obsessed with just checking for updates that I would feel like FB is controlling me, I felt it ordering me to go check at every short interval of time. And with such frequency of checking and no updates available it started affecting my head. I would get irritated with the obsession that was overtaking me. The anticipation started getting the better of me.

I completely believe it has its benefits. Like the innumerous Islamic sites with access to religious content to increase my knowledge. But all it took me to let that go was, the fact that the same benefits were available to me on another option, a much more self controlled option, Email or probably the original website itself.

I don’t know if it was the continuous tabbing and self evaluation or what, but after a while I just got bored of it, probably because I started spending more than necessary time on it or probably I felt too old to use it. I grew out of the social networking phase. The whole gaga about everything wasn’t me. I had made a virtual world and at one point of time, I had to realize that reality was going to knock me down one day. I didn’t even know when the day arrived.

I truly began to feel the need to disconnect. From the social aspect, I personally had say about a 100 to 150 friends on the friends list but I don’t believe in leaving my life like an open book. I don’t like to tell the whole world what I am up to or where I am going today. I don’t, I just don’t! I am an introvert. I have my tiny circle of friends who I like to share my life with. The others are probably acquaintances, colleagues, relatives etc. In time, I realized that the ones who are really close to me know where to find me through other means and so that wouldn’t be a problem. I wasn’t asking for social outcast. Nobody likes to be lonely! I guess I just needed to take back control of my life myself!

I had tried disconnecting before, maybe once or twice, but I couldn’t see myself keep at it. So I ended up going back. I had seen a few friends do it too and I swear I couldn’t imagine seeing myself thoroughly disconnected. But when it happened, I felt the difference. I do agree that sometimes, I wondered if it would make a difference if I went back. I had tried going back too by the way, but I couldn’t stay for more than a few hours, only to confirm my decision for myself that this was finally permanent.

When I had begun my self evaluation test, I started feeling so worthless that I began to notice that not only was I slacking my obligations as a Muslimah but also neglecting my social responsibilities towards all the relationships that require me to be responsible for some or the other thing.

Ultimately, I think each one of us have different reasons and different factors for everything we do. For me it was my self evaluation result which upset me. I knew I was better than what I was giving to myself and my own life. And all I had to do was tab my un-productivity and eliminate and take measures towards self development. It’s not easy and it’s definitely not a one time done thing. It’s a long process, a slow and never-ending one. It is the baby steps which count, one little step at a time!

I call this My Comeback Story, with due humbleness!

And I hope and pray that all us Muslimahs invest our time in doing productive things and are always climbing the ladder of self betterment! InshaAllah!

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