I finally stepped out of a very toxic relationship

Thoughts from the weeks post-breakup

I have been actively writing this piece for almost three months now. It contains a lot of raw thoughts which make me cringe a bit as I am editing it. However, I have decided to keep many of those raw thoughts, because I believe that I am not the only one who has had them, and knowing that you are not alone in having them, somehow helps. This piece starts out quite melodramatic, but it gets more hopeful towards the end. I promise.

So let’s bring on the melodrama

I finally stepped out of a very toxic relationship.

For years now things have been feeling slightly off. So I told myself that if I just worked a little bit harder, gave more of my attention, sacrificed a bit more of my time and self, I could make this relationship work. But alas it did not help. The more I gave, the more was asked of me. I had to always put on a happy face, otherwise there would be consequences. Trying something new or different, would result in punishment by isolation. At one point I was asked to do embarrassing dances for attention, I refused, which resulted in another round of punishment by isolation. I started to lose connection with my friends more and more. The worst was that I started to believe all the subtle lies. The lies that told me that I would be nothing if I left. That there was nowhere else for me to go. That my friends won’t choose my side. The lie that I cannot be an artist without it.

On the 13th of November 2023 I stopped using instagram. I made a story, explaining my reasons at that point and how people could get in touch with me. I made sure that the link to my substack newsletter was clearly visible in my bio and then I deleted the app from all my devices. I was drenched in relief.

The first two weeks was rocky. I kept on hearing those voices in my head telling me that I made a mistake. That I would be better off just going back. I itched to know if I missed anything important. Tried to convince myself that things would change if I just went back and tried harder. I spoke to some friends about the breakup, trying to explain, more to myself than to them. But I tend to be stubborn when it comes to my principals and I was determined to not let myself down.

After exactly three weeks I got a soppy email from instagram, asking me to come back, telling me that there were things that I have missed out on, but being very vague about exactly what. It was the first time that I got an email from them after opting out of it way, way back, so I guess that they have noticed my disappearance.

By week four I have gotten over the jittery phase and started to step into the ‘I don’t know what to do with all my free time’ phase. I was starting to experience wonderful pockets of boredom. I started to daydream again, started to feel more creative. I bought a little notebook for all the ideas that I would constantly come up with. Two months later I have filled more than a third of it with thoughts and ideas. That is a record for me.

At some point I started to wonder what my friends were up to, so I messaged them, and where geographically possible, met up with them, to do… life.

A few days before Christmas I went on to Pinterest to get some DIY Christmas tree ideas. And as one would, I stumbled upon the Pinterest page of another artist who were running a big print sale at that moment. For some or other reason I felt discouraged, not because I thought my art wasn’t good enough, but because I was wondering why I would even try to make art when there are so many other artists in the world already doing it. I realised that this was a feeling that I would get all the time when I was still using instagram, I however struggled to single it out, because I was so deep into it. It was just one more lie that I have been feeding on.

Less emotion, more business sense

Somewhere in week seven Emma Gannon announced her departure from instagram.

It was around that time that I started to think of it with less emotion, and more of a business brain. I started to evaluate the platform as a business partner and not as a social tool to use to connect with friends.

I made a rough calculation of the amount of time that I spent using instagram and was shocked with the result. It was more than a month's worth of work days. I asked myself what would happen if I dedicated the same amount of time to doing “exposure” work outside of social media platforms.

Week eight: after stumbling upon this Ted Talk, I started to question how ethical it is of me to ask or expect any of my subscribers or fans of my art to follow me on social media in order for them to be able to see said art. With my artistic practise I want to encourage people to start to again see and experience the world around them. The beautifully mundane and gloriously, under appreciated parts of the environment that they find themselves in every day. How can I then ask them to step away from real life and onto a highly addictive, attention destroying platform in order to see my art.

It went from an emotional, to a business, to an ethical issue.

At the end of the week ten I decided to drop in on instagram to update my story that explains my reason for leaving. Nothing had changed. My follower count was still the same. I barely had any new DM’s, likes or comments. Most people didn’t even notice that I was gone. It was a great feeling to just log off and delete the app immediately afterwards.

I hate that instagram has managed to convince us artists that we cannot have an art career without it. My data, however, tells me otherwise. (Well, at least in my case.) Throughout the 11 to 12 years that I have used instagram, I managed to accumulate a whopping 880ish followers. A hundred of which I got overnight, after someone with a big following attended one of my workshops and posted about it in her stories. Clearly I am a more interesting person in real life than on social media. I maxed out at about 60 people actually seeing my posts and stories. That didn’t mean that they gave more than a second’s attention to the post. On instagram you get rewarded for how much you interact with other accounts. Doing things like commenting on and liking posts will mean that your own posts will be shown to more people. No wonder so many people comment with just an emoji. That way you don’t even have to look at or read the caption to comment. There were so few instances where people actually left a thoughtful comment. The thing is, to comment on other posts merely for the sake of leaving a comment, so that you can gain more followers, just doesn’t sit right with me. It feels incredibly fake. It is incredibly fake. You get to a point where you just don’t know if any interaction is real anymore. Knowing all this, why did I still try to make that relationship work?

My here and now

Stepping away from Instagram was hard at first, but then it became really easy. Once I managed to take off the emotional glasses, I started to see it more clearly, for what it really was. It was numbing my creativity, only showing me the same type of things, over and over again. It promotes quantity and sensation to the detriment of health and wellbeing. It disconnects us from the world around us, under the guise of fostering connection. It blinds us, it numbs us and it mutes us. And we allow it to.

It stays a choice.

Conclusion

As artists we have been given a gift, and with that gift comes a responsibility. The responsibility to see and experience the world, raw and unfiltered, and to then communicate that in a form that speaks to more than the cognitive. We stand at the forefront of the evolution of culture, holding up a mirror to society to show it where it is heading and hopefully steer it in a better direction. Art, music, poetry, dance… the arts has the ability to speak to the soul on a level that goes deeper than understanding. It can lift spirits and tear down walls. It can foster empathy for people and situations that are hard to understand. And we can not allow filters and algorithms to blind us. To mute us.

I still have an instagram account. I don’t use it. I realise that people use it as a search engine when they hear of an artist. So if they happen to come across my feed, they will find a highlighted story in which I explain why I am no longer using it, along with a link to my newsletter and website. Art is too important to this world to have it’s fire quenched by algorithms. So I choose to take the road less traveled and bundu-bash where needed, because the other option will probably destroy me in the long run.

Thank you for spending time with my raw thoughts today. I hope that they will bring encouragement to you on your journey. I know I am not the only artist that has struggled with social media, so feel free to start up a discussion in the comments.

Until next time,

May your notebooks be filled with fresh ideas.