Life Without Instagram, (There is a World Out There, Come on…)

A little over a week ago, I decided to take a break from Instagram; I had spent so much time looking through the cracks of other people’s lives that it felt as if I was losing touch with mine, with what life was before Instagram came along.

I did not plan on writing an essay about it. “I’ll send out a newsletter,” I had said in my last Instagram story; I had no idea of what would open up to me once I put the phone down. But I should rephrase this: I had no idea of what I would open up myself to, once I put the phone down.

On Tuesday, the day after going offline, I was getting ready to go out and thought: “Who am I putting make up on for? I don’t have to take a selfie.”

Notice the verb I chose to use, “have to”.

I felt sad and superficial for thinking that.

I needed to go to Nordstrom to exchange a pair of boyfriend jeans I had purchased online a few days before; I had put pink lipstick on, and yet something didn’t feel quite right. Something seemed to be missing.

A heat wave had turned the San Fernando Valley into a desert — the sun burned my skin, the seemingly never ending Ventura Blvd looked ghostly.

“What did I do before Instagram?” I had typed on my phone, before going into the store. “I don’t remember.”

How big was your world, before we “had to” post photographs on the Internet? Do you remember?

The wind was hot and dry, my hair was tied in a high ponytail; I walked into the store feeling confused, naked, restless, and very self-conscious. The phone was in my purse.

While I waited for the exchange, I looked around for something to buy, but I didn’t find anything I really wanted.

“I don’t really need anything,” I said to myself.

Truth be told, I would have bought everything, from the white shirt with tiny red hearts printed on it, to the black dress that had been hung not far from it. I would have bought anything that could fill the void I felt inside, a void that wasn’t by any means caused by not having Instagram, but that social media had seemed to saturate with its apparent unlimited access to other people’s lives.

Not even 24 hours had passed, and I already had a realization: Instagram made me greedy, unsatisfied, not enough. I wanted the new clothes that that young writer had, that supermodel’s pool, that actress’s Gucci belt – superficial things, people I don’t know, don’t even follow, people I don’t care about, and yet who sparkle like glitter in a time of darkness. I felt ashamed. I am not a superficial person.

But I wanted.

Instagram made me want things. It made me think I needed those things in order to feel important, to feel okay, to feel appropriate.

I wanted.

I left Nordstrom, and before walking to my car I stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at the bright blue sky – not a single cloud. Palm trees slowly danced to the rhythm of the dry wind, and California looked me straight in the eyes in all her splendor, in all her beauty, almost extraterrestrial, almost surreal.

“I hope I can remember this view,” I thought. I didn’t take a picture.

The following day, Wednesday, I was at home with Catherine while Ben was getting a haircut. I made for her a spread of roasted bell peppers and goat cheese; I fed her that, and the milk I had pumped earlier in the morning. While she played in her playpen, I prepared lunch for Ben and me.

A bucolic scene appeared in my head, suddenly, like the genie out of the Aladdin’s Lamp. Close your eyes and imagine beautiful mountains, the Italian Alps; hear the sound of a river that runs on the other side of the street, and also hear crickets. Imagine vast meadows where purple flowers grow, and yellow, too, small white mushrooms, and stinging nettles.

It’s lunchtime, five cows and two calves graze in the nearby field, towards the end of the street where there is a fountain and a dog barking, perhaps bothered by a family of tourists passing by.

I have just made pasta with tomato sauce for my husband who is coming back from work, work to which he will return after coffee, taken in a glass, with one teaspoon of sugar, no milk.

That scene had been a dream of mine when I was younger.

In the evening, Ben played Largo; it was one of his best shows to date, and also the first during which I didn’t even touch my phone.

On Thursday, I saw my doctor for a follow up; I had gotten shingles, so he wanted to monitor the healing process. I didn’t have to wait long before he could see me, but not having the phone in my hand as I waited for him, the nurse and I began to talk; she had just become a grandmother for the third time.

“How long have you and Ben been married?” She asked.

“Three years,” I said as she drew blood from my right arm. “And you?”

“29,” she said. “I ran away from home with the man who is now my husband when I was 15, and we have been together since.” Her story was fascinating and very romantic — a story that, with the phone in my hands, I would have never heard. In fact, with the phone in my hands I am unavailable, to life and to people.

I began to wonder whether my troubled relationship with social media wasn’t actually a troubled relationship with my phone.

“In a way, offline, you see who your true friends are,” I said to Ben over dinner that same day. I had made octopus salad and grilled corn on the cob, but I wasn’t satisfied with the result.

“Instagram makes you lazy,” I continued. “You like something someone posts, and you assume you know what is really going on in their lives.”

It was on Saturday afternoon that I began to not miss it. We had just had lunch, Catherine was asleep, we had talked about a podcast Ben is following on the BBC, about the new house we are looking for, and about nannies. After lunch I lay down in bed for a while, and I began to scroll through photographs on my iPhone, photographs from the past eight years.

“In Maui we had no idea that Tom would die, and that our lives would change so drastically,” I thought looking at a beautiful picture of us on the Road to Hana, in Wai’anapanapa State Park.

We had spent our baby-moon on the island during a break from the tour; Tom would pass three weeks later.

“When I was in Beverly Hills with my mom near the Rite Aid at the corner of Bedford and Little Santa Monica, I did not know what Catherine looked like.” That was December 13, and three days later she would be born, on her due date, the most beautiful tiny creature I had ever seen.

I cried.

Looking back hurt very much, but at the same time I felt inspired to hold onto the present more than ever, not for fear, but to ink life in my memories forever.

“What’s the difference between looking at photographs on your iPhone and those on Instagram?” you may be thinking.

“The difference is that I often use Instagram to run away from the present. Looking at how much and how fast life has changed makes me want to be in it,” is my answer.

It’s Monday, and one week has passed.

“C’è tutto un mondo intorno che
Gira ogni giorno e che
Fermare non potrai
E viva viva il mondo
Tu non girargli intorno
Ma entra dentro al mondo
Dai…”

Matia Bazar sing in their 1980’s song “C’è tutto un mondo intorno”

It means: “There is a whole world that spins around every day, and that you can’t stop. So hurrah for the world, and don’t just walk around it, walk into the world. So come on…”

***

I didn’t know what to make of this piece when I first wrote it. I didn’t find it poetic, particularly well-written, nothing special. But after a couple of days meditating on whether I wanted to publish it or not, I understood that it had been through writing it that I had been able to look inside, to look back, to look around me.

“So what happened without Instagram?” you may be asking now.

“Being without Instagram made me stay with my feelings,” is my answer.

I didn’t run away from anger, fear, sadness, from the wish to get high, from the disappointment for having smoked cigarettes, the lack of desire, or the postpartum depression. I didn’t escape the vulnerability that comes from the disarming love I have for my husband and daughter. I felt uncomfortable, but I stayed in it. I am in it.

I missed seeing what my friend Georgina in Australia is doing, or Marthe, in Newfoundland, Payton in Nashville, Erica on tour around the world; I missed sharing the end of my day with my followers, and laughing about it with Ben. But I had missed life more, the good old life, real life.

Walk into the world, come on… Matia Bazar sing.