I set up a Facebook profile ages ago thinking I would use it once and a while to stay in touch with some of the people I grew up with. It was a way to remain connected even though we’re really no longer in each other’s lives; to remain in the past while life quickly spins into oblivion and before we know it, we’re 30 and have no idea where the past ten years have gone.
I am notorious for updating my status for a day and then leaving it sit for weeks or months on end. Every time I load and refresh that website, I get nostalgic seeing the people I was friends with all those years ago. People who, at the time, were my world. People whom I spent hours upon hours with each and every day for the better part of my formative years. Those that had a significant part in molding me into the person I have become.
The only way I have kept in touch with those people has been through a volatile website which has come under fire for sharing and using our data to their advantage. Not very promising, is it? And it’s not even that I’ve managed to keep in touch with anyone through that website, but instead have managed to creep on their pages, view their photos, and for fear of being too overzealous, I comment sparingly on events in their lives. A few seemingly heartfelt congratulatory messages when someone posts photos of their nuptials or a birth of a baby. Not very personable, is it?
Last night I spent hours looking through photos belonging to those who were a huge part of my life so many years ago. Some of them barely even recognizable, after all, ten years in a long time – especially during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Had their names or vital information not been included in their profiles, I am almost certain I would not have known it was my long lost friend had we passed on the street. That breaks my heart; the fact that these people, once so very important to me, have become strangers save the history we share.
Facebook has become the bane of my existence. I crave the ability to check and see that a former lover has married, a former best friend still remains that flighty lovable person I remember. That one of my (many) high school crush(es) is still as adorable as ever. What saddens me is seeing those whom have remained friends after all these years and I have been absolutely horrible at keeping in touch. All those relationships which have grown and changed over the years no longer include me. Most of that is my fault. As years have gone by I have become more and more reclusive. I’ve avoided reunions and gatherings. I almost never go back to my hometown to see friends who still live there. They’ve been asking me to come visit and for some reason, I just don’t. Though I long to have even a minute portion of my past life back, I make no effort to make it happen.
I found out a couple months ago that my high school is to be demolished. Years have been unkind to the old building. Its population has decreased to the point it makes more sense for such a small town to amalgamate all the schools into a simple K – 12 school and rid The Board of these older dilapidated structures which are unkempt and underused.
I’ve thought long and hard about trying to host a final class reunion in our old school gym; something along the lines of a 1995 Dance Party. As much as I’d love to do something I’m just not the planner type person. I have no idea where to start or how to even initiate something of that magnitude. Instead, I fear I will sit back and watch as the old high school is demolished and wish I had done something.
Similar to what I have been doing over the past ten years: watching from the sidelines as old relationships slip further and further into the past.
