Sometimes social media is confusing. Really confusing.

So y’all know I love Twitter, right? We have established this fact?

Good.

I love being able to shout out to the universe things that I think are ridiculous or hilarious.  Sometimes I find that people agree with me.  Sometimes I get no response at all.

But one thing I hate about Twitter?

Sometimes it makes me feel like I’m all young and insecure again and hoping I’ll be able to sit at the cool kid’s table.

And then I go and say something that *I* think is completely reasonable and not inflammatory and because I only have 140 characters, I get people all o_O at me and then I don’t know if they’re really upset or just Twitter-upset and then I start to panic that people don’t like me.

Yes.  I am 28 years old.

Yes. There might actually be the beginnings of a panic attack as my heart starts to race and I frantically think “should I tweet back a response and see if this person understands and/or likes me still? Did I just ruin a Twittership???”

Yes.  This is the internet we’re talking about.

Yes. This is all irrational. 

I get that.

I do.

But still.

I have an urge to be liked.

It probably stems from being mooed at when walking down the hall. And from being called “Mooranda” in elementary and middle school.  And from having people not like me because I spoke up when I had something to say. And from having few friends until high school.  And from losing most of those friends after I moved away to college.  And from not really living close to most of my friends now.
 
So I reach out to the internet for socializing because I’m in geographical isolation from people (and yes, I realize we chose to live here) and then I get in a not-really-but-could-be e-bate and I just feel all icked out about it.

Instead of embracing the outspoken parts of myself that I really do like most of the time and just being all “to hell with it” when people disagree with me or accuse me of having a platform, I get all middle-school girl-ish and remember what it felt like to walk into the gym every morning with my white knee-socks, black chunky Mary Janes, jean skirt and baby doll tee, black velvet cameo choker and teddy bear backpack purse. 

(I only wish I were joking about the description of my middle school attire.  I’m totally not.  Not even a little bit. And no, there are no pictures.  THANK THE SWEET LORD ABOVE FOR SMALL KINDNESSES.)

It took a long time for me to grow out of that awkward phase of life where I was desperately trying (in all the fashion-don’t ways) to find my identity.  Sometimes I’m still not sure I like what I’ve found.