Old Friends can be New Strangers

I have had a lot going on this past month, mainly in the way of work. Hooray! A few friends have been so wonderful as to throw some small jobs my way, all done from home. I bit the bullet, bought a souped up laptop, and got on with it! I ended up working some long days and nights, but overall it was really good! Thank you friends; thank you Universe! Keep it going!

It has meant that I have spent a good amount of time these past couple of weeks sitting on my well-padded ass, so when I am finished with this entry I am going for a walk.

Facebook has been on my mind recently. I have been getting a lot of invitations to be friends with people from the past. I know that that is a popular use of Facebook, to look up people you have lost touch with. That can be good and bad. The past is very subjective. For some, it may be nice to remember a certain time in the past, for others, maybe they are glad it is the past and want to leave it back there.

I have had a few people from high school look me up. That was not the happiest time of my life, but I did know some nice people back then. So, I am now friends with them on Facebook but I do not know what to say. It has been 22 years since I have seen these people. Honestly, who the hell are they? I don't know them anymore. If we have things in common, we are not going to find out on facebook. They all have photos of their kids climbing jungle gyms and photos with their partners on trips to various places. They look like older versions of themselves, smiling, and I am happy for them, but I don't have the need to share anything. I wonder if I am cold, or if that is okay. I mean, come on, if we were meant to still be friends, it would happen, right?

When I was in Boston, a friend from high school contacted me through email. He got my email address from my brother, who he found on facebook. The friend invited me to lunch, so we met up. It was nice, but the more we remembered, the more we remembered how %*!$*'ed up our home lives were, how messed up everyone else's were and how strange some of the adults in town were. In conclusion, we had been so involved in our own personal miseries and trying to hide it from everyone, that our friendship was never that deep, and we didn't know each other very well back then at all. So we hardly knew each other now.

We had a nice time at lunch, almost like strangers getting to know each other, and said goodbye. He has not tried to become my friend on facebook, and I am glad. There is no ill will but truthfully there is just no need.

Another person recently found me on Facebook. I didn't remember him at first. He told me about his memories of me and our friendship, and I don't remember them as clearly as he does. We worked together the summer I was seventeen, doing canvassing for a political action group. It was the summer in which my innocence unraveled, finally. I witnessed drugs and experienced my first romantic and sexual contact, along with the disintegration of a friendship with a girl who was discovering her own secret powers of attraction. It was interesting and exciting at the time, but now that I am friends on facebook with someone from this period of my life, I am realizing that I want to leave it in the past.

It was painful. I experienced my first real pangs of jealousy. I lost the one friend at the time that I loved and trusted. I was surrounded by men who were in their twenties, horny and creepy. I was completely awkward with myself, and in the end, made very little money and the organization fell apart.

The thing that is strange about it is that for him, these times were good, and still are good in his memory. Our friendship was important to him, and he claimed to have had a crush on me. He was 6 years older then me, had already graduated from college, and had a thing for a 17 year old girl? He was remembering a letter I had sent him all those times ago lifting his spirits about something. I don't remember that at all.

I was in a bit of a fog at that time, trying to figure out how I felt about my family, wondering how I was going to move ahead into the future. College in Boston was my dream at the time; I needed to figure out how I was going to achieve it. I was also so used to boys staying away from me in school that i was oblivious to any kind of advances or gestures or even words an interested young man my try on me.

I have thought about it and run down various paths in my memory, and I guess I did really have a friendship with This person. But now? Well, no. I don't want to delve back into the past. What's the point? I was a child. Things have changed so much since then. Why dig it all up. And if he wants to, then he has to do it on his own.

My friend Angela told me she just rejects anyone on Facebook she doesn't want to be in contact with. I couldn't believe it. "Won't that make them feel bad?"

"Aren't your feelings more important?" she asked.

I wish I was more grown up sometimes!