It was Labor Day weekend, and I was consciously avoiding Facebook and Instagram. The year before I’d been bombarded with pictures of numerous acquaintances enjoying holiday weekend lakeside retreats that left me feeling friendless and inadequate. I was determined not to be subject to such jealousy again.

This past year, I’ve given up social media on all days but Tuesdays. On Tuesdays, I binge on my feed until I am overwhelmed with envy and hopelessness and am left wondering why I keep doing this to myself. Why not give it all up.

(Because my family is there. Because my memories are there. Because sometimes I find out about cool opportunities like this movement class I’m taking now. Because maybe it wouldn’t be so awful if I wasn’t such a self absorbed person. Because maybe I’m going to need to influence people again some day.)

The Labor Day weekend I withdrew myself from social media occurred before I’d developed my Tuesday rule, and it was a big accomplishment on my part to stay off of the platforms for a few days. I did it, waiting until all those happy boat pictures were buried down deep in my feed.

I was proud of myself, and then I went to pay someone for something on Venmo. Turns out, this platform has a feed it defaults to when you open the app, which shows you what things your contacts have been paying others for recently. Like freaking shared holiday weekend expenses. All that effort only to be foiled by Venmo!

Yesterday, which was a Monday, I needed to make a payment on Venmo. Of course, my eyes naturally scanned through the first few payments listed on the feed, and all of a sudden, I was swept up in the activities of people I barely know, some of whom I haven’t talked to in a couple years. They were paying each other back for food and drinks and outings to the movies (note: all of these were expressed as emojis and the amount of the actual payment was hidden). There were mysterious exchanges as well. For example, someone might comment the payment was for LOVE YOU (heart emoji).

I spent this past summer living in Paris and visiting all the collections in the Louvre. After I did this, it wasn’t apparent right away how this experience changed me. But one way I’ve noticed recently it did, and not to sound too snobby about this, was it made me realize how incredibly I could spend my time. I could give the minutes and hours of my life to learning about human history and witnessing the major achievements of artists throughout the centuries.

I’m no longer able to go to the Louvre every day, but I still want to dedicate 0% of my time to reading about the recent money exchanges of my Venmo contacts. Especially if they occur on holiday weekends. Especially if they’re going to make me jealous. Which they’re pretty much 100% guaranteed to do.

On road trips with my family as a kid, I liked to play a game where I pretended to be a host of a radio show about roadkill. It required a lot of vamping, and then whenever we passed an animal that had met an untimely end, I’d describe it in detail to my listeners: the bloody headless torso of a deer; a decomposing skunk who’d left behind its scent; and most often, an unidentified pile of fur. I’d always end these segments by assuring my listeners that there was a clean up crew following our radio van who would take care of the carcasses.

This week on my way to the gym for a noon workout I accidentally hit an animal–what I thought was a squirrel–spotting a split of brown fur dash underneath my car. But what turned out to be a rabbit. I didn’t feel a bump when I hit it. It was only when I slowed to a stop and looked back in my rearview mirror to see its spasming body that contact was confirmed. I made the block, and by time I returned, the rabbit had gone still. It was lying on its side, one dead eye looking straight at me.

This was the second rabbit death I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. The first was my rabbit Hoppy, who was attacked by my neighbors’ dog after the dog had jumped our fence and busted into Hoppy’s pen beneath our tree house. I watched this unfold from my dining room window, one story above the backyard. A couple months ago, I saw a rabbit being pursued by two foxes at Tilden Park in Berkeley, but I’m not sure how the chase ended because after stopping to look at us the animals dashed off the trail into the surrounding scrub.

I wasn’t sure what to do after confirming the rabbit I accidentally hit was dead so I parked on a side street, Googled my problem, and ended up calling 311. Eventually I was connected to DeKalb County Sanitation Services, but it turned out I was in the City of Atlanta’s jurisdiction when the incident occurred. After repeating my story to four different telephone operators, some of whom reacted with what I felt was unwarranted enthusiasm for the situation, I was able to file a service request. By the time I left the gym a few hours later, the rabbit was gone–the imagined clean up crew of my youth brought to life by the Department of Public Works of the City of Atlanta.

As a child, I attended St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Cincinnati every Sunday with my parents, my sister, my aunt, and my grandmother. A mix of stone and red brick on the exterior, the building was massive with high vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows. There was a large sanctuary in the front of the church with alters to Mary and Joseph on either side, a choir loft in the back with a pipe organ, and in between rows of long dark wooden benches with kneelers that flipped down. The floor was hard tile fading with age.

The population of the church had been dwindling for some time, which would eventually lead to its closure, but while it was still open, the small numbers meant my family could stake out our own section where other parishioners wouldn’t overhear my dad’s jokes.

There was one joke he liked to make during the intercessions when prayer requests from the congregation would be read to the crowd with the ending line, “We pray to the Lord.”

To which, we’d all respond together, “Lord, hear our prayer.”

We’d do this back and forth for every individual prayer request, and if the petitions had stacked up and this went on for awhile, my dad would lean over to whoever was closest to him (with the exception of my grandmother) and mutter with feigned irritation, “Why are they bothering Jesus with this stuff?”

When he made the joke to me, I knew he was kidding, but it nonetheless prompted an important question of faith–why does an all powerful God who has seen the world since the beginning of time care about what is happening to me, a little nobody.

(In high school, I would come to believe that God wanted to hear from me because of His love for me–a love that I was unworthy of because of sin. My attempts to gain God’s attention during this period consisted of prayers in which I let Him know that I knew I didn’t deserve His time but would be grateful if He could reveal His plan for me anyway.)

Growing up, I pictured God as a man in the sky taking note of all these requests, processing them like a high speed computer, and granting or denying them according to His divine wisdom. It was a lot to handle, but He was God–not part of the human congregation down below growing weary of saying “Lord, hear our prayer.”

I gave up social media for Lent this year. My motivation for the tech fast was to see less posts that would make me feel jealous of others’ success, but I also found relief in seeing less posts about other people’s problems.

This feels bad to say because I want to be there for people, and I think sharing on social media is a good way to reduce stigma around issues many people face but that we have trouble talking about like debt, death, mental health, etc. Still, giving up social media made me realize how limited my bandwith for this information is, and it showed me the value of attention–mine and others.

I’ve posted three times on Facebook since my Lenten restriction ended in April. I’ve wanted to share things, especially the posts I’ve written on this blog, but I haven’t felt right asking for people’s attention while I’m figuring my writing out. I’ve conserved my own attention by only checking social media sites on Tuesdays.

I don’t think my current social media restrictions are the “right thing to do” on a moral level, but on a me level, it’s been the right thing for now. Because I’m not an all powerful God who can handle everything. I’m a little nobody trying to make good of some of the moments I’ve been given. A little nobody who wants to be there for people, who wants to share, but who hasn’t figured out yet how much I can bear witness to while still retaining the ability to create and connect.

I’m sitting on a brown upholstered chair on the edge of our green front lawn with my black bag beside me on a blue folding chair when a red dump truck comes down the street. The driver honks his horn and slows to a stop in front of me.

The passenger window descends, and the man inside, 40s or 50s wearing a buttoned uniform shirt, says to me with a smile, “You look so relaxed.”

“It’s a nice day,” I respond. And it is. The sun is out, but it’s not yet too hot. I’m seated in a spot shaded by my neighbor’s tree.

Contrary to the man’s assessment, though, I’m not relaxed.

It’s launch day for a week of major home renovations. HVAC technicians are already at work inside our house disassembling the heating and cooling system. I’m waiting on another set of workers who will remove old insulation from our attic.

I’m not sure where I should be while all this is happening. I’d started the morning with my chairs close to the house but then progressively moved them toward the street, which is how I end up talking to the man driving the truck.

“Whenever I see a beautiful woman I have to stop,” he says.

It seems more like a compliment than a catcall. And with other stressors on my plate, I don’t want to take the time to determine if this is a problematic street interaction that reinforces patriarchal norms and should be challenged. So instead I just thank him.

He rolls up his window and drives on.

I sit on the edge of the lawn marveling in my training as a woman–my ability to appear relaxed and even beautiful in the face of inner turmoil. Turmoil that eventually pushes me out of my chair and into my car on the street. Farther from the house and all that’s going on inside and barricaded from anyone that might drive by and call me beautiful.

I sit in my car going over details of what happened moments ago. I recall the turn of the key. I remember tugging at the door handle. The lock was tight. I know the door is safe.

But familiar circuits are firing in my mind. The heavyweight champion enters the ring and roars. Check! Check! Check!

The skimpy underdog hops the ropes. Start the ignition. Drive away. 

I envy the underdog’s quick footwork and their ability to move on.

My mind is leaden and fixed on the status of the lock.

It would be so quick to check, and it would feel so good, euphoric even. I crave certainty like a drug. And without it I’m…

Climbing out of the car, approaching the door, jerking the handle–watching the champion deck the underdog who falls to the mat. Will they survive to fight another day?