I logged into facebook this morning at 4pm and found, again, that insistence that I provide ID to be allowed to continue to use their service. Only this time there is no week to find it. I’ve used it to say goodbye.

It feels a little like part of my sight is patched out. A constant rectangle on the right-hand side that I can’t access any more. When I open a new tab on chrome, it gives me, below the google search bar, eight of my most commonly used websites; one of them is facebook. I’ve gone there a few times without thinking.

I’m now blind to what my friends are doing or saying. I won’t be invited to events, or informed of meetings.

I need to delete the facebook app off my phone.

I spoke to friends on skype after it happened. One insisted that what I should do is use my birthname, lock it down to paranoia mode, and use a page to interact with people. I couldn’t explain to him why that didn’t feel right; it suggests a level of otherness about myself that doesn’t sit with me.

Why should I have to go to those lengths to interact with people on a social media network?

And if I did, would it become okay in my mind for other people to have to as well?

Another friend I talked to, similarly genderfluid, told me how they refuse to come out because this is the sort of thing that happens. I felt a prang of guilt for being in the position where it’s okay to come out, aware of my own privilege.

I don’t have a career that will be effected by being on the trans spectrum. I never lost friends. But that was mainly because I don’t have a career; I’m disabled. Speaking openly about my disability meant the people who I eventually gravitated to where more open minded than most.

From what I glimpsed of the posting on facebook of this subject, it was pointed out that facebook is a necessary evil for some of the volunteer work I do in a local performance charity; that people who don’t already have an account are often asked to make a fake one so they can join groups and interact about practises and costumes.

Will this hold me back when it comes to the next festival? Will I be asked to make a fake account, only to have to explain what is half a choice, half discrimination to them, and why I am currently facebookless?

I feel like most of my posting on this has become melodramatic and morose; I will try and post some happier things in the next few days.