You Can't Go Back

"Friends come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime."

I was introduced to MySpace in 2005 by my 19 year-old assistant. Suddenly, one old classmate or friend would lead to hundreds of others. I was mostly content to cyberstalk. What was truly frustrating was not being able to find the people I wanted to find in the sea of the people I didn't care about.

Yes, I reconnected. How did it go? I've never gone to a high school reunion so I imagine it's much the same: start with what we "do," catch up on who married or fucked who, who died, crucify the former asshole jock now pumping gas, who had a sex change, who let themselves go and of course what teacher turned out to be a pervert. After that, there usually wasn't much to talk about. BUT I held high hopes for a couple truly special people I knew would welcome me with open arms when I found them.

Before any re-discovered old friends get their feelings hurt, I'll say that there have been exceptions. You know who you are. I don't have to educate anyone who uses social networks about the arc of reaching out to someone from 20 years ago and how that might play out.

In 2008, I messaged my former best friend from when I was 15 and lived in another state. I'd been thinking about doing it for 3 years. Back then we were inseparable. In our little clique, a couple times the boys ALL showed up wearing the same blue button-down oxford shirts and 501's. I was the smart one and got rid of the shirt after the first time it happened, the other 4 didn't. But I digress. Yes, it was initially a JOYOUS reunion. He came to visit once with we were 19 and it didn't go well. My girlfriend hated him and I couldn't stand his new wife to be. Fast forward--he'd gotten rid of her and married someone I had liked a lot. I talked to both of them for hours on the phone over several calls in a 2 week period. Long-lost family. And then the differences kicked in...as wide as the Mississippi. They were as right-wing and religious as they could be. They were kind of cool with my being gay but in everything else we were just too far apart. In the process, I'd reached out to (or they reached out to me) about 30 other mutual old friends. The end was ugly. UGLY. Over the years, we'd grown and changed in opposite directions. Honestly, I wish I'd have just left it alone and remembered everyone the way they were. 5 years later, my memories of them are good and the sting of the dissonance of our adult selves has faded. In my memory, we're all good friends, age 13-15 at an age when politics and such don't really matter.

What prompted this blog? Someone I couldn't find via social networking. Be careful what you put out into the universe because the universe may cough it up. Cough them up? Yeah, THEM. In this case, him. I was friends with his girlfriend first, we were a hard-drinking, fun-loving crowd. In other words, the booze still made us look sexy instead of just making us look drunk. Yes, I stole that line from Mommie Dearest.

OK, so here it is: 5 days ago I ran into an old friend who was a mutual friend of 2 of the people I'd been hoping to find. He pointed me in the right direction of one of them. I immediately found him online and Facebook. I fucking LOVED this guy. He had been dating my girlfriend but there was always sexual innuendo and him putting my hand on his muscles. When he was drunk he'd come on to me but I always thought he was teasing. But that wasn't our relationship; we were friends and had a lot of fun and a lot of booze together. I remember holding him once when he cried. People used to say he had a big crush on me. No, that's not why I wanted to find him. I loved his smile and he was fun.

I've had one reunion I can think of with a person from that part of my life that was like we'd just seen each other 10 minutes ago. I just KNEW this would go the same way. I hoped it would. This guy made such an impression on me that I used him in my first novel. In my fantasy, he'd be overjoyed to see me and drop whatever he was doing to have hours-long conversation that lasted until the sun came up. He was always a big talker. I can still hear his boisterous laugh. He was one of those people who was always overjoyed to see me. But that was 20 years ago. It took 4 or 5 hours to work up the courage. I had his phone number. Do I text? Do I call? I elected to message him on Facebook. He answered the next morning, "...how nice you reached out...the old days...ha ha." And that was it. No second message. Done. In "going back," one of the most painful possibilities is realizing that the person you've been thinking about and missing all those years could care less about you.

2 years ago I was on the other end of this. Someone I knew from a job almost 20 years ago when I was in my addiction recognized me when I went into her coffee house. She called me by name and recalled life then with glowing detail, telling me she'd thought of me every day and told every one of her family members about me. As it was one of the darkest parts of my history, I'd blocked a lot of it out, including her. "The last time I saw you, you were covered in bruises and I never saw you again." It must have been obvious I didn't remember her. After thinking about it for a couple days, my brain produced a few details, but I imagined her disappointment as she gushed and I had nothing to give in return. I wanted to be what she wanted me to be, she was so happy to see me. I just couldn't do it.

As it's been raining past, I was given a link to another person I loved dearly and lived with when I was 18. From his Facebook page it seems like (I know, it's easy to look fabulous on Facebook) he's had a great career and he looks really good, one of those men who are far more handsome at 45 than they were at 20. I never thought he was hot before but he sure is now. I've been looking for him for many years. With the sting of my recent aborted reconciliation, I'm thinking...I think I'm just going to leave the past in the past.

I know I can't go back. I honestly don't even want to. The only part about my past that calls is my grandparents still being alive. If I want that special feeling from whatever time of my life that appears golden in the lens of reflection, I know that no person can deliver that feeling to me today. I'm a vastly different person than I was many years ago. And in some ways I'm not. Is it wrong to do it?I don't know, but I'll say this: in my few successful reconciliations, each person is in my life in a different way than they were before and in that, I've learned to appreciate them in a new light.