Drinking and Tweeting (12 page)

Social media has completely changed the way we interact with one another. Instead of calling your best friend for a movie night, now you send him or her a Facebook message. Instead of mailing baby announcements when you have a child, you blast it out on Instagram.
And instead of your casual one-night Vegas wedding to your former friend’s ex-husband one New Year’s Eve’s remaining between you, him, and the county clerk, it gets blasted to the Twitter-verse and ends up #Trending on every gossip site from here to Timbuktu. Oh, wait, that’s just me. Either way, social media has made even the most intimate events something you share with not only everyone you’ve ever met, but complete strangers—narcissism at its finest. It’s how people announce engagements, travel plans, weddings, pregnancies, new jobs, new relationships, new shoes, deaths, divorces, promotions, and even breakups.

I think social media is the enemy of anyone going through a split. Technology is no longer just how we connect with each other, it’s how we disconnect with each other. You used to be able to break up with someone (a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, or friend), and he or she virtually disappeared from your life. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?

Sure, occasionally a certain sappy song or romantic movie would come on, and you’d wonder what he or she was up to, but there was no way to know. Of course, you could always pick up the phone (and more recently, text or
e-mail), but that would require that person’s knowing you were thinking of him or her. Where’s the fun in that? You never want them to know you’re thinking of them, so you refrain. Before long the memories start to fade. One day, you realize you can’t quite remember how she smelled or the exact color of his eyes. Eventually, without ever knowing it, you just forget that person altogether. You replace old memories with new ones, and life goes on. It was the clean break you needed to move forward.

Well, Facebook fucked that up, didn’t it? Welcome to 2013, ladies and gays. A breakup is no longer grabbing a tub of ice cream, a box of Kleenex, and watching
The Notebook
. Today, it’s the chance to enter into a second, extremely unhealthy phase of your breakup: cyber-stalking. You know what I’m talking about. It’s that impulse to constantly refresh his Twitter feed to see if he has posted anything new. Or that urge to routinely check Instagram for new photos of that face that you should already have long forgotten. So thanks to some dorky dude from Harvard—and the virtual parade of social media that followed—we can subject ourselves to this cruel form of self-torture. I was cursed with a front-row seat into my ex-husband’s brand-new life without me.
Via his new girlfriend’s Twitter page, I was pretty much able to witness every moment of their lives—partially because I was obsessed with tracking him, and partially because she loved to fucking post shit to piss me off (and still does). #FML. I knew better. You know better. We all know better. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop. It’s completely masochistic, but strangely satisfying. After months of waffling, you finally decide that you have mustered enough courage to “unfollow” that person on Twitter or “defriend” him or her on Facebook—a decision you will undoubtedly regret when you’re psychotically driven to check whether his profile photo has changed or when you’re obsessively counting how many tweets he posted in your absence (especially if he is “private”). #CrazyTown. However, that’s better than the alternative when one day you go to check his profile and you’ve been defriended, or worse . . . BLOCKED. #Gut-Punch. Or perhaps you’re like me and never “friend” or “follow” your ex and his or her new partner to begin with. Instead, you stalk their profiles through mutual friends, because you don’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that you follow them.

In my opinion, social media can easily become this all-consuming
obsession that drives you to other vices (such as countless bottles of white wine).

However, I’m not entirely sure if I subscribe to the idea of “twee-hab” (in which people seek professional help for social-media addictions). I can totally relate to those people who feel social media has taken over their lives, but cyber-rehab? Really? If you have the kind of money to check yourself into therapy because you can’t stop tweeting, go buy a fucking plane ticket to Maui and take a vacation instead.

For those people with preexisting dependencies and addictive personalities, it can be especially dangerous. And if that’s the case, seeking medical treatment to help conquer those demons is commendable. I just don’t believe that regular people need treatment just because they can’t stop refreshing their news feeds.

But if you’re like me, and you used social media as an emotional crutch to maintain some kind of self-destructive connection with someone that you should already have let go of, you don’t need cyber-rehab, you need to take your life back. But like all things, it’s easier discussed than done (except sex, which is easier done than discussed!).

I blame Eddie for breaking my heart, but I blame social media for keeping it broken for so long.

F
irst of all, I’m completely technologically challenged. When I was growing up, my hippie-dippie family never had any fancy electronics—I don’t think we even owned an electric can opener. My dad was much more concerned with his pot garden than he was with investing in a cassette player, plus his eight-tracks were just fine by him. We were the absolute last family on the planet to have a VCR or even an answering machine. And call-waiting? Forget it. To this day, my parents have zero idea how to check voice mail and are just learning how to send a text, which is difficult for my dad, who has three fingers on his left hand and no thumb. Recently, my sister attempted to set my dad up with a Facebook account, but when he inadvertently started giving interviews to his new “friends” (read: reporters), he decided take a break from social media. It’s probably for the best.

Technology has never come easy for me (and things usually “come” very easy for me, haha). When my San Francisco modeling agent forced me to get a pager to
contact me about casting alerts, I never figured out how to use the stupid thing. I missed a lot of castings. While I was overseas, cell phones weren’t mainstream yet, so we got phone cards to use at random pay phones. I never figured out how to use them, so I would go months at a time without talking to anyone back home. We would actually—gasp!—write postcards. #OldenDays.

Then I met Eddie. In the thirteen-plus years we were together, he never wanted me near a computer. (Hmm, I wonder why?) Most women would find that completely controlling and manipulative, but I was totally fine with it. I’ve said it before, but I had no problem being a kept woman, and at the time I liked having my man tell me what to do. It was hot. Plus, any sort of technology terrified me—and still sort of does. Even my remote control freaks me out. (I have to ask my nine-year-old to record things for me.)

I was perfectly content living in the dark ages when we were together. Everything I thought I ever wanted was right in front of me, so what did I need a computer for? If I wanted my gossip, I would buy a magazine. If I wanted to shop, I would drive into Beverly Hills and hit up Rodeo Drive. If I wanted to talk to my friends or
family, I would call them. If my parents wanted photos of the boys, I would have to mail them anyway. So, what was the point of figuring out the Internet?

Not until after I found out about the affair did I actually get behind a computer. I knew that if I was going to keep tabs on my husband (at the time, we were still trying to work things out), I had to get cyber-savvy. I wasn’t going to be a sitting duck. If my husband was stepping out on me, I wanted to be able to go see the fucking photos on
PerezHilton
myself (instead of having a friend describe them to me over the phone) or watch the video of him kissing another woman on
Us Weekly
on a fucking loop.

When I finally grew the balls to try to “surf the Web,” it took a while for me to figure out how to even turn the damn computer on!

I didn’t have too much success at first, so I just focused on the basics: Google. I could “google” my husband’s name, or his new girlfriend’s name, and there was just such a crazy amount of information out there. I would scroll through all the past stories online, purposefully reliving painful memories—not necessarily a healthy activity for someone trying to forgive and forget. For hours at a time, I would click through pages and pages
of stories about “LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian.” I would dissect every photo of this woman with my hypercritical eye, wondering what the hell my husband saw in this country singer. I was just so fucking baffled.

When a few weeks later a story came out in
In Touch
magazine that my husband was having yet another affair (this time he was fucking a Hooters waitress), I was able to grab a glass of wine and head straight to the computer to see for myself. After a few simple mouse clicks—and a huge gulp of sauvignon blanc—I landed on a gossip blog only to discover that the lead story had photos of my husband and some fucking slut having a great fucking time on my motherfucking boat. (This was the catalyst for motorcycle-tire-slashing-gate.) As always, my immediate reaction was to get even. I wanted my husband to feel the same absolute rage that I felt after seeing him with another woman—twice! I wasn’t ready to go fuck someone else, so I took it out on the motorcycle tires.

Not long after, Eddie was out of the house and shacking up with his mistress—the country-music singer, not the cocktail waitress. (It’s hard to keep them straight!) I was still living relatively under the radar despite the occasional weekly magazine outburst, so I wanted to find some way
to rub my “fabulous” life in both of their faces. Don’t get it twisted, my life was far from fabulous. But they didn’t need to know that. My options were limited, so I began toying with the idea of “accidentally on purpose” leaking half-naked photos of myself twirling around a stripper pole to a gossip website. I figured that nothing would drive Eddie crazier than the idea of other men ogling his soon-to-be ex-wife. During our marriage,
Playboy
magazine expressed interest in photographing me, and it interested me, but Eddie told me he would leave me if I ever did anything like that. I was for his eyes only. So I knew having naked photos of me floating around the Internet would drive him insane. Luckily, I had a great, levelheaded friend who talked me out of that monster mistake. I didn’t need those online so that one day my kids would stumble upon them. Instead, I discovered a different solution. Enter Facebook. My friend set me up on the social-media site and was exceptionally patient in teaching me how to navigate the system: “add friends,” “post to my wall,” “status updates,” etc. Of course I had heard of Facebook—I wasn’t completely dense—but I never had any interest in actually creating an account. I would constantly tease my friends about having accounts, referring to it as “Fuckbook,” since everyone was connecting
with exes and hooking up. For me, everything I cared to know about was living under my roof; it felt like an unnecessary addition to my already crazy world. But my life was changing, so I had to change with it, and I dove headfirst into the social-media pool. (Take my advice, dip your toes in first. It’s a much better transition.)

Initially, my page was simply a platform for me to brag on. I wasn’t “friends” with Eddie or LeAnn, but I knew that any information I shared online would eventually make its way to them via “friend” crossover. So, like any levelheaded, scorned ex-wife, I started posting trampy, drunk photos of my gorgeous girlfriends and me dancing in Barbie-doll-size dresses at Las Vegas nightclubs or lounging on tropical beaches wearing barely-there bikinis. I was desperate to send my notoriously jealous ex-husband into a green-with-envy tailspin after seeing how much fun I was having being single. And I wanted that country-music-singer girlfriend of his, whose only friends were on her payroll, to see how many wonderful people I had in my life—all despite my shattered marriage. I have to admit, I put up a fantastic front. To anyone looking, I was having the time of my life and going completely hog wild. In reality, I was going off the fucking tracks and was sad as hell.

At first, Facebook served merely as an opportunity to piss Eddie off, but after a while, I realized the other benefits of posting slutty photos of myself online: boys. My message box began filling up with flirty notes from all kinds of gorgeous men (and some not-so-attractive ones, too): friends of friends, former flings, and other blasts from the past. Facebook became more than just a passive-aggressive attempt to piss off Eddie, it became a chance to cyber-flirt with hot-ass, semifamous actors—and perhaps one or two of Eddie’s former costars—to grab drinks with, go to dinner with, and, eventually, fuck the shit out of, to prove to myself that I was still desirable. For a while, I felt I had the upper hand. I could simultaneously piss off Eddie and find new guys to distract me. I was hooked. Facebook was my life.

Then, Twitter happened.

Twitter and I have a love-hate relationship. It’s like an abusive boyfriend I keep going back to. I call it Battered Social-Media Syndrome. Twitter makes me feel terrible; Twitter makes me feel wonderful. Twitter supports me when I’m feeling depressed and beats me down when I’m feeling happy. I get into fights with Twitter and try to break up with it, but then I get lonely or have a few
too many glasses of wine and go crawling back to it, with my tail between my legs.

Okay, if I thought Facebook was difficult to understand, Twitter felt fucking impossible. Like, what the fuck is a “hashtag”? How the hell do I “retweet”? I still haven’t totally mastered the Twitter-verse, and it took me more than two years to get this far, but I did discover pretty quickly how to find LeAnn’s Twitter page. She just couldn’t keep her mouth shut and felt this incessant need to share every single moment of her life—with my family—with all of her Twitter followers. Checking her feed became my daily obsession. With Facebook, I had power. With Twitter, I was completely helpless.