Safe space

Hello

My name is Yanece

I am a 30 years old and super happy to get older. I am a black taino or puerto rica (t.s Madison voice). I was a raised a Muslim and I live in Harlem New York

Breaking up with the internet

An acknowledgment to spark a personal change: letters found in my notes.


I have a sever addiction to instant stimulation. I have always had issues with different addictions.

When I was in high school I felt so abandoned and alone that i simply submerged myself into Facebook

To feel like I was apart of something

I drowned and made myself extremely depressed. I’m also a manic depressant and I have adhd among other things. I would use the internet to feel like I wasn’t an invisible body in the world

A walking void. Like if I just disappeared there be no change to anything and it just wouldn’t matter. That’s the biggest recall statement from childhood and high school. If I just evaporated life would go on. I don’t matter.

I feel this way now sometimes. In high school I went cold turkey off Facebook. Deleted the app and just left it all alone. A bad breakup propelled me to do that. But I felt alone unimportant

How could

No one care about me?

How could no check on me?

Why am I not important to anyone?

So many feeling flood my mind when I go days without any interaction. And days without the internet to fill that void. Like walking pass windows into other people’s lives but never really connecting being to afraid to actually connect


I am an adult now

I’m online too much again. I replaced face with instagram. Instagram has done so much for me in different ways but it has had a hold on me.

Flooding my mind with content information

Blinding myself to these feelings and internal questions that stem from deep feelings of abandonment that I never dealt with . I tell myself that if I don’t stay online how will I make money? How will I be anyone

How will people know I’m here.


What is this obsession?

These questions that have to do with feeling seen.

Cause even when I was young I only felt seen when I did something spectacular but in my heart and head I wanted someone to just think it was spectacular that I was alive. And deeper reflection I see moments where people did. So why is my brain fixated on when it wasn’t there?


I have been trying to do that thing where like maybe if I replace the feeling of being seen by someone with being seen and held by me then maybe I can get a grip.

I want to step into this year flooding my own mind with hobbies and making things.

The internet has had such a hold on me.

It saves me from the depression that waits for me.

And maybe I just need to honor the sadness.

Live in it be invisible and only see myself.

Im being vulnerable and acknowledging something but who knows what’s next you know?

I have been avoidant for so long of so many things.

I want something new and lighter.

I’m ready to heal things

But the sadness that lives in me is apart of me. It belongs to me

But I play with it and the internet dictates it sometimes

And I’m sick of that.

So let’s see what’s next.

And this isn’t like a new year new me thing. It’s a how long are we going to do this? How long are we going to bury ourselves in hopes of being saved. In hopes of being seen and made happy. The little kid in me always wanted to be seen and I’m here to tell them that it’s not gonna happen in the ways they thought it would. That it won’t be out loud and from all sides. It will be soft and from within.