I don’t really follow celebrity gossip, but sometimes a pop culture story catches my attention. The latest one about Demi Moore’s total breakdown– with news of her using whippets, getting all jacked up on energy drinks and Aderall instead of eating, and raving all night long like she’s 17–is one of them.

By all counts, Demi Moore is a strikingly gorgeous woman who defies the laws of aging. If you were to judge her only on the outside, her beauty would probably far exceed the physical beauty of other Hollywood icons at that same mile-marker age of 50. Sophia Loren. Catherine Deneuve. Carmen Dell’Orefice. In comparison, Demi barely even has a wrinkle. Her face still looks like she’s in her late 20′s, and she doesn’t look “weird” like she’s had too much plastic surgery in an attempt to appear that way. So exactly what is it about Demi that’s so revolting then? Why is her obsession with remaining forever young any more unnatural than that of the rest of the entire American female culture? Why is the idea that, at 50 years old, her pounding Red Bull and uppers while huffing whipped cream canisters like a teen so much more scorned and ridiculed than the idea of someone else (who’s still too old to be) doing that?

I think it’s the gaping emptiness inside.

There is a gaping, raw emptiness to her that I think we all recognize on a cerebral level that makes us uncomfortable. We want to shun it, make fun of it, minimize it… because it’s too hard to look at.

I’m not sure what it was that was so refreshing about deleting my Facebook account, but there is this zing of exhilaration at the thought of “dropping off the grid.” Since last night, I’ve also deleted my Google + account (which I set up and then never actually used anyways) and closed down a couple of old email addresses. I was too ashamed to admit it last night, but screw it, I also shut down my fake (aka “stalker”) profile on Facebook, which I had set up to see what my (and past friends / exes) profile looked like to others. That’s just not healthy. Now I’m contemplating changing my phone number and only telling my closest friends and family, dropping the plan back to basic minutes and texts, and ceasing internet access.

I don’t know why this is so exciting. Maybe it’s the grown-up form of running away from home.

Only, when I ran away from home as a kid, it really meant I camped out behind the shrubs in front of the house for a few hours because my feelings had been hurt and I wanted to send a message to those around me. I don’t know if my grown-up version of “dropping off the grid” is sending a message to anyone… I just know it feels really good. Very, very …free.

Anybody who’s been in a life or death situation knows that your focus on Surviving is laser sharp. You don’t hesitate to jettison anything holding you back– boots filling with ice water and dragging you down, a leash wrapped around your ankle and anchoring you to a snag, layers of heavy clothing that bind and trip you as you run– you get rid of them, unleash them, cut them off and keep going as fast as you can to that pinpoint destination.

But everyday life is not a survival situation. Everyday life is cluttered with distractions, amusements, choices that don’t seem to have dire consequences one way or the other. Before you know it, your laser point focus is clouded. Diluted. Turned away. Your goals begin to change, or become forgotten underneath a new layer of “things.”

For me, Facebook was becoming an obsession. The Great Time Waster. Instead of encouraging my brain to learn, and grow, and create with that passionate spark I once had, I found myself reading mile after mile of status updates. Sifting through pictures. Stalking my ex and wondering if his new girlfriend was everything I wasn’t. Facebook had become the Ultimate Suffocation of everything that is good and healthy for me.

So tonight… I deleted it. In about 15 seconds, I set myself free. And pressing “deactivate” was the most liberating feeling I’ve had in a long time.

I was running down the road tonight. The air is crisp but not cold, because of the Indian Summer this year. I love where I live, on the lake. It’s where I grew up, and where I returned to as an adult. The road is unpaved, and crunches loudly in the dark. When the night is quiet, you can hear the footsteps of everything coming a long time before you can see anything. Because the road runs along the lakeshore, the houses are mostly small camps converted to year-round homes, and packed tightly. But it’s also heavily wooded. Mostly hardwood the further away from the shore you go, but all pines near the waters edge. Huge pines. Hundreds of years old, hundreds of feet tall. They are lovely. Especially when the wind is blowing off the lake and around their naked trunks. It feels wild and free. Savage.

There’s a house near the end of my run that has Halloween lights up now, orange jack-o-lanterns hung in a square shape over their fence. Just from their filtery orange glow in the darkness, I was immediately excited about the upcoming holiday. Filled with anticipation of something bigger and better than any Halloween that had come before… like the ones from childhood. Where my sister and I and all the neighborhood kids constructed a haunted house in our bedroom. With peeled grapes in a bowl for eyeballs, wet spaghetti in another for brains, and a keyboard with someone hiding behind it under a blanket so that only their arm was exposed to play the keys. Halloween seemed to last forever, when we were 10 and 7. But tonight, the Halloween lights are up and Halloween is already here. It comes and goes so quickly as an adult now. Summer, which stretched on endlessly when we were children, only lasts for 8 schedule-packed weekends. It flies by now. Everything flies by. It’s upon me before I even realize it, and gone just as quickly.

Great Halloweens and great Summers do not just happen, automatically, magically, the natural culmination of innate anticipation, any more. The way they did as a child. They have to be made. I have to make them. Seize them as they come along. Because they are here, right now. And in a whisper they will be gone again.

Sometimes you have to totally put yourself out there, and see if the Universe answers back.

I wanted an anonymous forum to express myself free of judgment, free of fear, free of self-consciousness. I wanted a place to write anything I want. Post anything I want. To be silly, euphoric or depressed. To talk about my search for God. For authenticity, meaning, and purpose. To talk about the beauty in life. Freely.

My goal is to become, as the French say, Bien Dans Ma Peau.