A Facebook friend posted about going through her Facebook mailbox back to 2006 and how she realized how many people blocked her though she couldn't imagine why.
To my knowledge, I've been blocked on Facebook by two people. One is a man who may have multiple personalities to a lesser degree than they make movies about. Anyway, I shouldn't have been having any relationship with him (thankfully, we are half a nation apart and it was all on line). It was more frustrating than stimulating in every way. I think he reminded me enough of the worst parts of my ex, who I still needed to scream at but held back due to my son. So while this on-line man probably got more than his share from me, it's not like he didn't evoke a lot on his own. It just would have been kinder to both of us not to have much to do with him. Once during one of our crazy feeling arguments, he asked me to un-friend him. He said he was too much of a gentleman to do it and how I wouldn't understand that. I decided it was only getting more insane, and I should cut it as a favor to both of us. I told him I would. Then I did. It wasn't blocking, just un-friending. A day or two later, he wrote me in the Facebook mail wanting to know why he was unable to post comments on my page. I sent him a copy and paste of his request. I'm not sure he knows what all his selves are doing. Then all our private messages disappeared and I couldn't see his page at all. He had blocked me in response to me un-friending him which he had requested in writing (the only way we communicated). It was too crazy. Though it hurt my feelings at the time, I am blessed to have been blocked. However, he seems to have un-blocked me as now I sometimes see his name here and there on FB. We are not FB friends, we don't communicate, so I can only imagine he unblocked me so he can look at my picture and jerk off. Oh happy day.
The other time I was blocked was the first time it happened to me, and I was so unknowing about all that stuff that I didn't know I was blocked. I thought the other person was no longer on Facebook. It broke my heart when I figured it out. It was someone I'd been friends with since we were children. It wasn't perfect, and we had periods apart, but we grew very close during her years of motherhood and then mine. There were still problems, and most unfortunately, we weren't fixing those problems. When I tried to address things, we'd begin but there'd be lots of denial or really just not seeing, and we'd always go back to zero. I also probably didn't present things as well as I could now. I also didn't accept the limitations that existed no matter how I might have presented things. But no matter how we were dealing, we felt like family. More than seven years ago, we had the worst break-up between us ever. During it, she said awful things to me. Truth was irrelevant, it seemed, and terribly out of character things were said about me by someone who I thought really knew me. I couldn't believe the awful things she needed to believe about me. My feeling was she needed to justify moving across the country (which she was doing to help a family member but I knew I may never see her again and neither would my son, who was close like a nephew and aunt enjoying sleepovers, Thanksgivings, etc.). It's easier to leave someone you don't like. She painted me as someone it would be easy to dislike. Guilt works differently for different people. It was terrible. And with each cruel thing said to me, I saw it as less and less likely we will ever be able to bridge again. I of course responded with hard responses, but mine were true and not invented. However, they were being shot out of a cannon and not said in a helpful way. I was under attack and responded in kind. I have since become even more grounded in the belief that things went as they had to go no matter how painful it was and is. The betrayal I felt was infuriating and heart-tearing. I feel awful about the estrangement with her children, my son and just all the sadness.
A couple of years ago, she made contact. I felt guarded but still preferred hearing from her. I found her as confusing as ever. I was not as open to figuring things out and all the energy that entails as I used to be and sometimes might be. I was trying to accept a much lighter, distant something. Like sisters who don't do well together, I still was glad to know she was alive in spite of many health issues. We were Facebook friends though we used Facebook differently. I'd occasionally visit her page and share something fun or positive or funny or any combo. One day, I shared this.
Though it cracked up everyone else who had seen it on my page, she decided I was making fun of her and of my best friend because they have spelling difficulty sometimes. She claimed I was saying she was stupid and all kinds of stuff. I was shocked. My best friend does have spelling challenges and is also someone who even as a child could take apart, fix, and put back together your radio. A genius in his own right. He is a very open minded, growing, intelligent, talented, hilariously funny, and compassionate human being with integrity. His spelling is a detail and not representative of intelligence; it is probably more connected to handwriting and stuttering. He is wired differently than many; hence, his difficulties and his gifts. She is not in the same category regarding spelling. My buddy who really has trouble with spelling doesn't even know why she'd put herself in the same category with him. She's what I'd consider average (not exceptionally good or bad) and makes some mistakes that, if proofread, she'd fix most of. She has a child (adult now) who struggled with dyslexia and is bright. She and I have both been teachers. I assumed she knows, and knows that I know, that spelling is not a measure of intelligence. I explained to her that everyone including my buddy thought it was so funny and that I should share it with my adult students. I told her it wasn't meant to make anyone feel bad.
The next time I tried to visit her Facebook page, I was unable but I was not told I was blocked. I thought she closed her account to get away from evil me. I wrote to her son and her ex-husband who she is in contact with and asked if she was all right. I was worried she was in the hospital or something like that. I also wanted her to know that she should have her FB account and do whatever she likes to do, and I will not post anything on her wall if she found it so upsetting. No response from either. Neither cared to tell me she was not in the hospital. I tried to not keep my heart so open if this was how it will be treated. My buddy was able to go to her page. That was when I realized I was blocked. I wondered if she told Facebook that I was abusive and if they needed to see the offense. I wondered if they agreed the capitalization joke was abusive. I didn't know how all that worked. I found it very teenager-ish. I thought blocking was to protect yourself from death threats and rapists and things of that caliber. I felt crushed that she saw it necessary to block me, the person who still cared if she was sick or injured.
Other people who know us look at me like why are you thinking that had anything to do with the joke? From a distance, I can see it as her problem. I had to remember when I once complimented her blouse, she responded by telling me, "So you don't like my pants?" When I'm involved with her, it feels like she demonizes me. I feel bad that she has the need to. I don't want to find myself having to defend each breath I take to someone who didn't even think she should provide an example from reality to back up terrible accusations she had thrown at me. Sometimes I don't think she remembers. She once considered visits from me as giving her her sanity back. We used to go out and have so much fun together. Her laugh was always so one hundred percent. A line became famous among the three of us when she, my other buddy, and I were going to go out for my birthday but were first in one of our kitchens revving up. She had me hysterical laughing, and I said, "Don't make me pee in my pants on my birthday," to which she replied, "If you don't want to pee on yourself, don't invite me to your birthday." My buddy and I still recall that and many other moments that make us relive the hilarity. We had Mad Lib games that resulted in priceless lines -- one had Al Sharpton and Nancy Reagan in a scummy relationship together. I'm laughing as I write this. Memories cannot be blocked by social media, not yet anyway.
The only person I ever blocked on Facebook was a man I didn't know who sent me a picture of (presumably) his penis getting licked by a young woman. He wrote a note offering his penis to me and letting me know its characteristics: color and size. Isn't that special.
