By Gina Volpe

Like vacations and naps, all good things must come to an end, and so went my love affair with Facebook. Much like a boyfriend who started out so promising, letting you in on his world filled with cool people who knew how to spell, but who then got caught up with a bad crowd of offensive, or just atrociously annoying, nimrods and went off the rails. Facebook began so strong until the riff-raff started trickling in, tarnishing the site with their awfulness. Facebook betrayed my trust and ran around behind my back, changing its member criteria and forever severing the bonds that once held us so happily together.

As with all new relationships, the rapturous early days of my dalliance with Facebook were glorious. Joining the site in the golden years required a college email address, meaning that you were signing up to be part of a network of relatively intelligent, mostly literate (Michigan State students excluded), young people. It was a haven from the teenage idiots posting gross bathroom mirror self-photos with misspelled captions all over MySpace and the old weirdos sending creepy messages asking to be your friend.

And then, suddenly, that delightful College Students Only joining requirement was no more. Facebook decided any old jerk-off could sign up. It was like one day showing up at your boyfriend’s house and finding twelve skanks relaxing on his couch like they own the joint, and you’re left bewildered asking yourself, “What?” That’s how it felt to log onto Facebook and suddenly find friend requests from my old principal, my little sister’s 14-year-old friends, and like a hundred losers I used to hook up with (who definitely did not go to college and apparently have internet access in jail).

Even ignoring friend requests from the undesirables doesn’t eliminate them from my news feed and life. Every time a million of my friends comment, “DAYUM GURL U SO HOT THX FOR POSTING PIX IN UR UNDIES 4 US!” on the same awful picture, I have to see it on my home page. Then there are the people who actually make it onto the friends list. I’m just nice enough not to be able to deny my old babysitter but just mean enough to hope her house catches on fire, destroying only her computer, every time she posts the sonograms of her 12 kids. It’s a terrible conundrum and the story of how my relationship with Facebook became permanently shattered.

So why don’t I just delete the stupid thing? Consider it my version of holding onto a dead relationship long past its expiration date. I still cherish the memories of what used to be and harbor hopes of a possible restoration to former greatness. I just can’t cut the ties.

And so I trudge around with this dirty Facebook band-aid dangling disgustingly from my knee because I’m too big of a pussy to rip it off once and for all. Maybe some day I’ll get there, comforted by the fact that if times get rough and I hit a moment of post-breakup weakness, the warm arms of my ex-boyfriend’s familiar embrace will only be an account restoration away.