I lost my Instagram the best possible way anyone can—for pro-Palestine content.

To say I was delighted at the time would be incorrect, but I was taken aback and had feelings about getting that final message that my account would be disabled. I had said I didn’t care, right?

But there I was, a person who had Instagram for years, and having feelings, even though I have practiced non-attachment for years too. A life, erased. Lauren, who I met in Rome, will never see my kids. I can’t follow the journey of Josie, the girl I met on a plane to Mexico City 11 years ago who told me she wanted to pursue the love of her life she met in a hostel in Thailand and went on to do so. My photo atop the largest church in Latin America, gone. No more Coachella 2013 pics. Fashion Week in September 2012 seems to have never happened.

The first few days must’ve been what it’s like to come off a drug. I picked up my phone with nothing to do with it. I felt a little like a kid that had done something bad. For a little bit, I started to get caught up in Tiktok, which I always thought was just a better app.

But over time, I noticed how quiet and calm my mind but also my life came. It almost caught me by surprise how much less there was to worry about, and how much of my thoughts at time had to do with social media. It felt a bit like summer vacation, with nothing to do—I realized that summer reading is a bit like having to be “online.” It’s seemingly never ending, and you have to do it. Not exactly a good feeling.

I downloaded an app called Screen Zen and used that to further manage my social media usage. It worked remarkably well just by having a barrier to opening an app and requiring me to confirm to open again—something that perhaps Instagram should try out to preserve its users’ self esteem.

“Participants who spent more time on Instagram had higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater comparisons of physical appearance, and lower self-esteem. Moreover, we analyzed the relationship between the score obtained on the different scales and the types of content viewed, with no differences between those who mainly viewed professional content and those who primarily consumed fashion and beauty or sport and nutrition content.”¹

My self-esteem did indeed improve, without me noticing, overtime. I quite liked myself before and I like myself even more now, and it’s hard to tell if I like myself more because I have changed or if I changed because I like myself more. But that was perhaps the smallest benefit.

Do you have any idea how it feels like to not have to care about people? If you are on social media, likely not. It felt amazing to truly not have to care what someone I barely know did on vacation. It feels great to not know things about people I either barely know or don’t want to know. To not keep up was so liberating. There was so much joy in not keeping up—with trends, with the Kardashians, with anything.

To not have to care about my own Instagram and how it looked was a load off my mind. I had no idea my instagram was so important to me until I lost it and it was amazing how other things, real, healthy things, became more real for me. I realized they needed my attention all along. I never realized keeping up, even online, cost me so much of my energy. Suddenly things no one ever posts about on Instagram became exciting and rich!

All the time I had wasted rolling my eyes at people’s water bottle trends suddenly made me feel like the joke was on me. There is an art to not caring that I suddenly found so much joy in. I don’t know what went viral in August. I don’t know what Gen Z is wearing in the United States. What did Kendrick do? I don’t know what people are drinking out of or what athleisure brand they are patronizing. I don’t know the latest it-purse. I don’t know and it feels so good.

I suddenly was left with so much time on my hands which caused me to pick up writing and eventually, make this website. I also picked up painting, which went nowhere but served as something I could do with my hands and produce something real—even if all I produced were literally watercolor blobs. I initially thought about googling “how to paint,” but I realized that was not the point. It surprised me how I instinctively knew how to draw from my time practicing as a child, and I wondered what else I know that I have forgotten. As I painted nothing for no particular reason, I could not help but feel so ecstatic for the freedom of doing nothing. I came to love the freedom to not have to impress anyone, and I noticed how pervasive the need to be impressive had become in my life, even as I had thought I that wasn’t important to me.

It feels like my whole life changed since June, when all of this happened. I feel more in the world and of the world. I swore to a friend a few months ago that not having Instagram has allowed me to be more in my body to a point that I can actually, literally feel my body in more ways than I used to. “Shut up!” she said. How do you post about how good your body actually feels? Is that impressive?

While you were on Instagram, I received a few dear friends from Sayulita. We played Sorry! into the night and ordered Little Caesars. We went to nearby Tepoztlan. I have a distinct memory of all of us sitting on the balcony in the room the four of us shared, her on her partner’s lap and me on mine, both of us leaning forward towards each other while we laughed, the guys rocking to and fro in the rocking chairs and having their own conversation. I almost adopted a street dog. While you were on Instagram, I made new friends and ate Peruvian food that day, and no one ever saw it. I saw the most beautiful butterfly just sitting on the sidewalk. While you were on Instagram, we prepared for a hurricane and I got dengue. We bought a plot of land. I had a walk and coffee. I spilled something.

There is so much beauty in the mundane that I hadn’t noticed in years.

These tales of good and bad, fun and boring is not to make anyone feel bad. As I experienced the world without Instagram for the first time in many years, it took me by surprise how while I was on Instagram, I had undoubtedly missed so much in the real world, and finally doing something real felt so good.

I have realized that I can now go hours without looking at my phone. Lately, I am not even really sure where it is sometimes. Not only do I miss nothing about not having my phone—I feel like I am getting everything.

In the middle of this space I have found myself more creative. Not just creative watercolor painting, but even finding creativity and small joys in activities like putting together an outfit or cooking, or deciding to put up an alter for Day of the Dead. I found I want to create more. I have been prolific.

But more importantly, I am almost shocked at how worthwhile it is to just be—not necessarily do all the time. A few days ago, laying on the couch in the evening watching The Office, I was overcome with the desire to let my hair down and just enjoy how it felt to let it loose from its bun. I rubbed my head. It felt so good. It surprised me how much I enjoyed this simple act.

I think I am surprised by how much there is to life that is worth learning that no one will ever know about, or worth doing just to enjoy, or worth doing even though no one will ever see, or worth photographing because you just want to remember it. There is actually so much to just living without anyone knowing about it—some days I almost feel like I have a great secret, though there is none. Just feeling like I have a secret makes me feel lucky.

There is so much to do that no one has to know about, and there is so much I can be that not everyone will ever get to see. 

Between being unbeholden to social practices, unbeholden to caring, and unbeholden to doing, I have found something so liberating.The freedom to reinvent myself—or—the freedom to be the me I was all along.

1. Khan, M. F., Vetter, S. H., & Periyakoil, V. S. (2023). Impact of Social Media on Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Journal of Mental Health, 32(4), 567-580. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2023.10131713