AMBER ALERT YOURSELF

I had a melt down. I felt it coming.

Now that I am writing about my emotional state or to be accurate, most anticipated recovery, my melt down should be correctly referred to as my melt up.

Let me begin at the beginning. My beginning begins with the always, never disappointing, wretched Facebook.

Yes. Facebook is wretched. Facebook is the extension - continuation of that all so beloved high school experience we have come to know and overtly ignore. The always easy to access experience of the low brow yet titillating to the leader - social group. The social group or clique is known by all with pain and loathing. Social groups or cliques are not only for our youths, but also for the adult who dabble in this wolf in sheep's clothing social media called Facebook.

It was around July when I started noticing with unbelievable boredom, how people I had friended on Facebook spent hours on end saying stuff without saying anything. Posting cute quotes, wise sayings, and the ever never ending "Like if you love Jesus." I tried to find the cyber definition of these posted and reposted sayings; which do not fall into the definition of meme or gif, but, do fall into the realm of aggravating as hell.

I love Jesus. I am for Jesus. But, I hate seeing over 75 posts a day insisting I demonstrate publicly, by clicking on a like button or on a share button, my true spiritual leaning and gut feeling each second about Jesus each day all day every day. I am comfortable enough to declare right here and now: my love for Jesus does not change every five minutes and I do not to prove it to others in any way.

It was this one day when 75% of my friends on Facebook had Jesus it up for hours on end in rapid fire: Jesus loves you, Jesus died for you, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus to the point where I felt like I would be some how looked down upon for not liking, sharing, or posting in like manner.

There it was the nexus of my melt up. I was about to start wanting to belong to the Jesus clique. I began to wonder what group would the Jesus kids (by kids I mean adults) put me into if I did not do as they did? Would I be considered a nonChristian? Would I be shunned as Satan's spawn and if any one liked anything I posted would they surely catch fire or believe they had soiled themselves in some way by sharing a thumbs up with me? Would anyone like anything I said at all that was not Jesus-esque?

I began to think about FAKING IT to fit into the group. And yes, that is when I felt like saying "You know what - I do not have to belong to your group. I am grown."

But my last post was a final attempt to reach just one person, (who in a wonderful twist of my never dull fate turned out to be myself), before self was sacrificed. It was me who was in danger of self sacrificed and being replaced with another voiceless member of the cool kids page constantly saying (posting) something and yet saying nothing. My final post was wrapped in a last gasp of defiance to be different proudly. My last post asked; "Do you ever feel like just taking the mask off and howling at the moon?" To me the mask is the action of copying, following mindlessly a crafted ideal of acceptability. The mask perpetuates a day spent on Facebook being validated by likes and shares of a clique generated sense of being loved. Truth be told we have used Jesus as our cover for many things. Can our need for attention to belong become a pretense of liking Jesus when each like Jesus gets makes us feel some kind of way? Is it the account holder, who does their best to generate hundreds of likes for Jesus a day, that mean girl or jock who has found a way to separate as was done in high school?

I met the slippery slope. I stared the slippery slope in the eye. I refused to lose my little girl who wants to belong and yet yearns to follow her own path. The vulnerable high school girl who lingers still - escaped being sucked up into the world of reposting generalized verbiage. Verbiage Facebook users use to send  smoke signals dictating  who belongs where continually guided by high school standards of operation. I refused to let my essence to be kidnapped by the insidious nature of wanting to belong or to feel loved even if it is love by "like"generated by 4,000 plus cyber friends. 

So, today I say I had a melt up. I decided to get rid of Facebook and make sure to take every opportunity to howl at the moon and have people just stop and stare at me and declare openly I could never be a part of their social group whether it is on Facebook or in any ecohigh school type climate plopped down anywhere.

I felt my little girl inside of me being lured away to some place forever lacking security and genuine love and I Amber Alerted myself refusing to be carried off. I must howl and hear my voice whether or not I have well formed words at the time of my pending demise of my autonomous thought, feeling, belief. I will howl at the moon to remind myself to remain free.

I howl at the moon for those who do not have the courage or strength today to how. I howl at the definition of the word CLIQUE. A clique is a social group most often seen in junior high or high school settings, and generally more often noted among girls than boys. However, adults can certainly belong to a clique as well, and one might see these characteristics displayed particularly in the upper echelons of society. The adult group might also be called a “set.”

Generally, the clique is organized among younger children by those who appear to have enough in common to befriend each other. Unfortunately, friendship can quickly give way to power struggle, peer pressure and ostracization of those outside the group. In fact, outsiders targeted by a clique may be subject to insults and bullying, which can be psychologically damaging.

Often the group has a defined leader, though leadership may change from time to time. The clique may extend informal membership to younger girls in order to perpetuate it beyond the original members remaining in a particular school setting. This group may be seen as the “in crowd," and may have a corresponding male group with which they exclusively socialize.