Friday, November 21, 2008

Facebook

I love Facebook. I really do. In some ways, it's changed my life. It has reconnected me with some very special people who I foolishly allowed myself to lose touch with throughout my life - especially the years after college where I apparently lost all my brains for about 2 years.

I rarely send out friend requests. I almost always wait for people to send them to me. I have reconnected with people from all times in my life...including a couple people who were in my class from grades 3-6. I haven't seen them in 20 years, but hey, it's kinda cool to see what they're up to now, right?

And throughout my year and a half on Facebook, some people have dumped me as their friend, or decided Facebook wasn't for them and cancelled their account. That's cool too. If they were a true friend, I've been able to keep up with them on email. It's all good. I'm not about to take things personally. I have a busy life and find it challenging sometimes to just keep up with the things in my own house. To me, one of the fun things is just to catch up with people we once knew. I'm not looking to be best friends with all my Facebook friends, but it's an easy way to keep in touch. And yes, I've turned down a couple of requests myself from people who I didn't recognize or only knew in passing.

So, it was a little out of character for me to send out a friend request the other day to a girl I knew in Grade 9. She was showing up in the "people you might know" place in the bottom of my screen. No big deal, right? If she didn't want to be my friend, she could ignore me, if she did, we could catch up with each other. We hung out a bit in Grade 9 because we were both a little lonely. I had friends, but not in all my classes and felt pretty uncomfortable in my own skin (grade 9 was the 1st year of high school, so I was very young feeling and very unsure of myself). She didn't have a lot of friends either, so we just kept each other company. Or at least that's how I remember it.

She, on the other hand, thought I was giving her charity for hanging out with her back then and was quite angry, I think, that I would dare show up in her life now. She sent me a message to tell me why she was not accepting my friend request. It was short and to the point and told me in no uncertain terms that she wanted nothing to do with me.

Fair enough. I respect her candor. And was a little surprised that she'd bothered to write. I can totally respect her opinion. I wrote her back to apologize if I'd made her feel that way, because it hadn't been on purpose and left it at that.

And that is that.

Except it stung a little bit. And it's taking me some time to let it go.

Hearing her opinion of me that differed so much from my opinion of myself really makes me question myself. How people see me. What people must really think of me (or at least did back then). My sister laughed when I read her the message because it is so opposite of who she knows me to be. My husband reminds me that it was a LONG time ago. And I know that and I'm a very different person now. But still.

It also makes me think that I need to be more charitable in my opinion of others...including those girls that I myself hated in high school for being so cool, having so many friends, and in my opinion 'looked down on me'. I like to think I'm over it, but if one of them sent me a friend request, I wonder how I'd react? I would definitely think it was strange...that's for sure.

So, that's where my brain's been at these last two days. There's a bit more to the story that I won't share here, but the end is the same. I feel bad.

I'm also struggling in the eating/exercising department. And since I'm off traveling again tomorrow, it'll have to mostly wait until I get home. As long as my pants still fit, I'll be happy.

3 comments:

  1. ah honey, that sucks. It would sting me too. love you.

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  2. Oh wow. She must have a lot of stuff going on in her life to make her react that way. Sorry you took it personally, I would have too.

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  3. wow. i can't imagine how much un-delt with issues she must have to send a response like that. i haven't ventured into facebook, just myspace but i am happy to have lots of friends, whether we knew each other well back then or not...we have all grown and changed... apparently, some have just not changed for the better!

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