Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Will You be My Friend?

Can I just say?...Facebook kind of freaks me out. On the one hand it's nice to connect with people and learn more about them. I'm comfortable looking at pictures and reading insights of people I know at this moment in life. These are people I talk to and could hang out with.

It is the people that I have not seen or heard from in over 15 years that sort of takes my breath away. High school was not a fabulous place for me. I was mostly an average person. My school was small and I knew everyone, but was only good friends (or so I thought) with a few of them. After graduation I left for college and never looked back. No one else looked for me. For the most part I just faded away and allowed everyone else to fade as well. Ten years after graduation I got an email letting me know I missed my 10 year reunion. That is OK. I probably would not have gone anyway. A few friends caught me up on their lives and then we promptly lost touch again.

So now 5 years later I joined FB. I found several classmates. Some of them even sent me messages asking how my life is/has been. It feels very odd and somewhat forced to share my life with someone that let me fade away those many years ago. Is it a grudge? They forgot me then so they cannot know me now? My open mind and heart tell me to swallow the hurt and allow them in. The tough part comes after sharing. I posted very little and shared only enough to give a general snapshot of life today. Married with two kids living in xyz. I am finding they start off excited to see me and catch up, then they go back to what they were doing and I fade away again. I am also finding it is painful to again lose touch.

This quick catch up is fine for some folks. Really I am just curious where they are and what happened in their lives. I do not really want a relationship. FB works well for this. I saw a video of FB that really summed it up for me. It is a great tool and yet odd.

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