“Cal can have periods where they will struggle with feeling anxious.”

Student Services Adviser

I refer to the time between March and October of 2020 as “the really bad stretch.” You reading this aren’t my therapist, so I’ll spare you the details. During this time, I would be checking Twitter and the news for an hour or so before bed, and for upwards of an hour in the morning. This began the moment I would wake up.

My best friend lives in America. In COVID America, in the Thin Blue Line America. I met this friend through Twitter, and we are so close I cannot imagine my life without them in it.

I uninstalled Twitter from all my devices and blocked it on my computer at the start of 2021.

In my life, it has been a source of joy, levity, cruelty, compassion, outrage. I found community through it. I saw video of the Beriut warehouse explosion only two minutes after it happened. In Australia, it was 1 am.

I cannot possibly speak on the merits of Twitter. If it is ever put to trial, I would be too invested to serve in its jury. All I know is what it has done to me, or what it let me do to myself.

I am glad to be rid of it.

I miss it.

I don’t know what to do without it.