Facebook makes me sad.

I came late to the Facebook game, but when I anted up - my photos, my details, my life - I felt easily excited when to read and wonder about my friends' - and their friends' - lives. Who had a baby? Who landed in Muscat for a month? Who had just baked something delicious? It was interesting to me. It made me feel closer to people for whom I was unable to be close. It did what it was supposed to do.

No longer. I find, lately, that Facebook makes me sad. The photos of beach ultimate in Hawaii. Groups of friends smiling, arms around shoulders, doing what they always do. Visiting each other. Continuing in each others' lives. Reading the musing of those who have time to bake, those who have things to share with a defined set of people - even those who have things to broadcast to everyone - those for whom social networks are just that. Networks of communication, love, laughter, support, hope...even just a good joke or shared recipe.

I feel sad when I scroll through this all. Sad to the point that - a year ago - I broke up with Facebook. I removed myself for months because I couldn't bare to look at it. I wondered what was wrong with me that I didn't have those photos with a core of friends, that I wasn't smiling while standing in the kitchen on a weekly wine night. I looked at those pictures of other people and interpreted them as happier than me. More connected with a social network - on and off line. And I wanted that. I've wanted that so badly since I left it in high school that I could no longer stomach knowing that other people had it.

Then I came back to Facebook. I'd had a baby. I wanted to share him far and wide. And I did. And people appeared. Only then I disappeared again. A new place, a new home, a new life. And I'm back to looking at photos, wishing again, to have a solid core. And Facebook makes me sad again.