The need to disappear every few days

I once briefly dated (and later attempted keeping in touch with) someone who’d go off the grid every couple months for weeks at a stretch. And when I say “off the grid”, I mean absolute disappearance. She’d be completely off her socials with her last update being months ago, her iMessage would be in a constant “notifications silenced” state, her WhatsApp would have a stark display picture stating she’ll be scantily available (with a response rate of two weeks). Yes, I could call her (or hit the “notify anyway” button) and she’d probably pick up, but part of me felt like I was interrupting her disappearance? Akin to tapping the shoulder of a coworker when they’re wired in and gently swaying to their lo-fi focus mix as they put three AI services to the task of creating a marketing copy.

Despite my initial annoyance with the friction in catching up with her, I realized that I was actually envious. I’d imagine her enjoying hours of deep focus not worrying about how many people hearted her low fidelity IG story from the show she went to last night. I’d imagine her being twice as present, intentional, scribbling morning thoughts into her journal, and watching the baker at a local coffee shop lining fresh croissants in the display shelf devoid of any urgency. I’d also imagine her not worrying about tiny pivots in life and being scrutinized by strangers and friends watching her every move. “Now, wouldn’t that be lovely?”, I’d say as I let out a sigh and proceed to click on “View as a connection” button on LinkedIn and marvel at the newest update on my profile.

I live a highly extroverted life. While I actively try to organize my calendar and space the events out for introspection/breathing/sleeping/eating, it quickly starts to look overwhelming. I also welcome serendipity with open arms, and often say yes without fully evaluating my energy levels. I’m not strictly advocating against living a life full of people and deriving energy from it. However, I want to highlight the recurring issue that I often grapple with - living life in narration-mode. See, people love a story arc - with a start, middle, and end - and subconsciously apply that to how they perceive and engage with books, movies, and - would you believe it - lives of others. Us extroverts, in an attempt to constantly be able to conjure up an engaging conversation or simply live a life worth writing about, give birth to a narrative identity. Now, this concept is a whole class of psychology and I’d hate to bore you with it, but it’s useful to go through a definition of it.

The theory of narrative identity postulates that individuals form an identity by integrating their life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of the self that provides the individual with a sense of unity and purpose in life. This life narrative integrates one's reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future.

The last time something made me feel so seen was half a diagnosis of ADHD by a friend (there’s a running theory that people who have ADHD tend to think that all their friends and family also have it). Anywho, focus on these six words - “reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future”. Isn’t it marvelous that our malleable memories are capable of engineering our entire lived experiences and imagining a future vividly before living it? Where’s the catch though? Glad you asked.

While storytelling is a great trait/skill (depending on how natural you are at it), it’s another thing to live every moment as if it were going to be documented or narrated using themes from growth, communion, and agency. Not only does it deem the small moments as “unimportant”, it makes it almost impossible to appreciate moments of tiny gratifications. It’s also quite the task to break character as we live the life of the hero of our stories. Dare I buy flowers myself today, it doesn’t fit my founder personality.

With this article, and my most recent need to escape from the voyeur-friendly life I’ve created, I reflected if there’s a way I can live without feeling the burden of this identity I’ve formed. I generally agree with the idea of rewriting our past in a way to “glean meaning from hardships”, and manifesting a future for myself, but I’ve been figuring out ways to relieve myself from trying to control my narrative. Going “off the grid” or “breaking up from your phone”, I realized is an effective temporary strategy (despite the 11 steps to doing so with our internet presence wildly spread out), but to truly address the root of the issues, I really need to stop worrying about how my life looks to others. Your parents have been saying it all along, my millennial readers. Also, eat your millets. And your greens. Sleep advice is for a future post.

Have a wonderful day, and don’t hate yourself for wanting to archive that story that you excitedly posted a few hours ago. We get it.