I've lived in several different states and many different towns. I left friends in all of them. Many of them I have stayed in touch with. First it was due to the ease of email, then to the beauty of the Internet, and now Facebook.
When I started my Facebook page I did not intend it to become a tool to find old friends or to post old pictures. I planned on using it to reach students and whatnot. I decided I wanted to keep different parts of my life separate. Part of this was because I lived in a college town of 20,000 people and worked at a university that had a student population almost as large as the town. I already felt like I lived in a fishbowl.
Then I moved and began to use Facebook to keep up with yet another group of friends I had left behind. And then my mom joined. And then other friends. And friends of friends. And... then friends from college. Not just the people I had seen from time to time over the last decade and a half, but the people who dropped off the face of the earth and were only heard of in bad rumors. The ones I hoped hadn't become a statistic.
It's been fun, catching up. Seeing my goth punk friends look like, well, grown ups and parents. With jobs and families, no hair (not by choice, but by age). It's an odd reminder that we all grew up and got old. Posting pictures so we could laugh at ourselves with people who lived on the other side of the world.
And then there was one friend who contacted me... He was the one I have wondered about and thought about the most over the years. I heard some nasty rumors about him post graduation, but I never knew if they were true. If they were, I had hoped that fifteen years later, he was okay. And I guess I wanted to know that he was okay. Then he friended me on Facebook.
It was weird. This person I had wondered so often where and how he was, and then there he was. The kicker? He lives six hours south of me. We've been catching up via email. I sent him a blackmail-worthy picture of him and one of my roommates at a Halloween party. Turns out the rumors were more or less true, but in the end, he's done well for himself. That makes me smile.
But what I didn't expect was the emotion from the memories. It's funny how one picture, one sentence in an email, one simple thing can bring back such strong memories--memories so intense I can feel the air, smell the smells, and remember so vividly how I felt during a specific time. And this one person has brought back some memories so strong, I was really taken aback. Some of the memories are cringe-worthy, given the drama that is your life when you are 20 years old. But others? Others are intense because they revolve around the first grown-up hurdle I ever had to face: the death of a good friend. We--all of my friends and I-- got each other through it. For whatever reason, my recently-found Facebook friend and I leaned on each other a lot during that time period. Because of that, and other things, he is one of those people I thought of often. And now I know where he is and that he's happy. And that makes me smile.
I also realized that the people I often thought about, the ones I wondered where they were or what they were doing... I have found almost all of them.* And you know what? Despite everything, we all turned out pretty damn good.
*There are two more I wonder about. But as one long-lost-friend said, it's just a matter of time before they pop up.
3 comments:
I've had a few of those moments lately, too--one of my friends who I haven't seen since the summer after we graduated from high school just popped up on Facebook last week, and oh my gosh, I was so excited to hear from her.
There's something about people you know in those formative years, I guess--it seems like even if they fell out of my social sphere years ago, they can pop right back in and it's like no time has passed at all. (Well, maybe some time. haha)
It makes me feel really lucky to be the age I am--we didn't always have the internet/Facebook like the kids do now, so we had some time to disappear. But now we're lucky enough to have those tools around so we can find each other again...
I was thinking about that--what it would be like to have Facebook, or even the Internet, during those years. First of all, those pictures from college look like youthful indiscretions now. Back then, I'm wondering if any of us could've gotten a job with those things online. Plus, not seeing those pictures in twenty years? They are just that much funnier.
But also how much easier it is to keep up with people with things like Facebook, etc. Back in my day (I say as I sit in my rocking chair on the front porch with a blanket on my lap), staying in touch with friends you weren't in constant touch with was hard work and took effort.
True, definitely--keeping tabs on people after I left for college got really hard (even as someone really into letter-writing and, later, e-mailing). It was a natural transition point, where some people got carried along in your wake and some floated off in different directions...I'm sure that's still the case for kids getting out of high school/college, but it seems like a lot of the mystery will be gone about where their friends are. Not that that's bad, but I dunno--I think I would've had a harder time growing nostalgic for those times if they were always a few mouse clicks away, y'know?
Not that that's bad--just very different than my experience, even though I'm not all that much older than "the kids." It puts how much the internet is changing our social dynamics into perspective for me...interesting stuff to think about.
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