Today's Flushable Post: Facebook Fails & Regurgitated Pain

Facebook is the devil. I'm fairly sure I've said that before. I mean it. I've been lucky in that, sure, I've found / been found by old flames and ex-crushes and people I just liked to fuck...but that doesn't mean that I would have anything to do with them presently. Mostly, those reintroductions just make me feel pretty good about myself and my current situation, as fucked up as it is. I can always look at them and say, "Well, at least I'm not like them!"

A couple of weeks ago, my old best friend from high school and many years beyond found me. I was taken aback. We'd parted due to her ongoing drug fixation (remember - i was doing all i could to stay clean and i was actually winning at that point), and I basically told her I couldn't hang out with her if she was going to continue to use drugs in my presence. She picked the drugs, and all her drug using buddies, over me. I was fine with it at the time but, like most other things, I didn't truly deal with the feelings of being abandoned. After all we'd been through, I couldn't figure out how she could just let me go that easily...I would have done anything in the world to defend our friendship. Especially if it were something as simple as to just not smoke out of a 4' bong when my buddy was visiting - for just a few hours.

After some time had passed, I tried finding her. In another life, I was a skiptracer for collection agencies and auto repossessions. I used every tool available to me and I still couldn't find her. Not a big surprise, seeing as how her name is so incredibly common.

At my 10-year reunion, I ran into someone who still talked to her on occasion. Word on the street was that she was living the full hippie lifestyle in a community/commune/colony/compound type place that was totally self-supporting and sustained. Not my kind of shit at all. I LOVE my indoor plumbing and shampoo! So, I kinda gave up.

I'd never actually forgotten, but I'd given up. I still thought about her every day, I still wondered how she was doing, and I just missed her. She was the closest thing I'd ever had to a sister; the only woman I truly got along with and there was no backstabbing; someone I really loved and thought of as family. Past the initial hurt, there was just a sense of loss. I just missed her, plain and simple.

The ugly truth of the matter is that she never cared to look for me. My name is unusual. I live in roughly the same place I did when I was a teenager. If you Google me, I pop up all over the place. I'm even still listed with 4-1-1 because - holy shit - I still have a landline at my house! Years and years went by and she never made an attempt to contact my parents, my friends, or me directly. She's been back to our town several times, apparently, to see friends, but she's never tried to see me. I accepted this fact a long time ago.

And then, I get the message asking if I would add her as a friend. How ridiculous that phrase sounds when it's typed, although I know how Facebook means it. There was no personal message included in the add, just the request. Of course, I approved it, and spent a few minutes looking through the pictures she'd posted of her new family. I left her a few nice and genuine comments, and she thanked me for them. And that was it.

I'm happy for her, because she looks very satisfied and content. It's very clear that we are two completely different type of people at this stage in life. Maybe all those things that bound us as friends have completely disintegrated by now. She doesn't seem to be hankering for any conversation, or perhaps she would have asked me something as innocuous as 'how have you been,' but she hasn't done that.

There is no way to reflect on my life, my accomplishments, my adventures, my mistakes, and my triumphs, without thinking of her. She was there for all of it. She helped me discover my own strength, my own identity, my own voice. I wish I could say that I can get over this, that this is all 'high school shit' and it's time to move on, but it wasn't. She was a fixture in my life from the first week of freshman year well into my 20's - a decade of friendship. It was, arguably, the most important friendship I've ever made. So yes, it does hurt that it's of no consequence now. I can even deal with us not really communicating and just having an icon on a page.

I just wonder if she ever thought of me.