Where have you been all my life?

[muckefuck]

Back in high school, there were several people I was close enough to that I thought I had made friends for life. By the time I graduated college, it became clear how naïve I was. Nowadays, there is only one person from high school (excepting family, of course) that I'm still in touch with and she hears from me only every couple years or so, if she's lucky.

So when my non-Skiffy dorm friends drifted away one by one, I was naturally disappointed, but I was no longer shocked and hurt. The longer I spent in the working world, the more I came to realise that there is a special intensity to full-time education--particularly when coupled with cohabitation--that can create the illusion of a deep connexion when really it's something altogether more situational.

Still, I harboured enough fond memories that, once the Web started to become your first stop when looking for information on anything, I began hunting people down. Some I did managed to contact, but predictably I got a tepid response or none at all. Many of the people I was most interested in seeing again were impervious to Googling due to the genericness of their names.

Not me, though. As I've bragged more than once, I'm almost assuredly the only person with my particular combination of surname and given name in the world today, and possibly the only in all of history. This makes me imminently Googlable. So, naturally, it added to my pain that none of my "old friends" have never taken five minutes online to find me and drop a line.

But today, all that changed. One of my closest friends in college, who I talked with almost every day when I lived in Hitchcock Hall, who even now I think about at least once a month, who taught me some very important lessons about myself and the society I live in, just looked me up and called me at work, completely out of the blue. We haven't seen each other since shortly after graduation, when she left for Guatemala and we lost each other's contact information; I would've looked her up, but according to sophisticated web accessories, there are over a thousand Americans with her exact name.

Now I'm not sure how I feel about this. After all, it's been several years since I finally moved into Acceptance and gave up completely on hearing a word from any of these people again until my 20th reunion, four years from now. My first reaction was utter joy, but--having been burned by a few ephemeral episodes of renewed contact with others in the past--I was too guarded to give into it. After five or ten minutes of catching up, it was replaced with something else: Suspicion. I couldn't shake the thought What is wrong with your life now that you feel the need to reach out to me?

No, there weren't any warning signs. It sounds like she's got a successful career she truly loves, two great cats and a loving and supportive husband (yes, that's the order she mentioned them in), blahblahblah--all the typical indicators of happiness. But then, if she were motivated by desperation, she'd be wise not to advertise the fact, wouldn't she? I've been through this before with another friend, who after several false starts moved back to Chicago to kick off a career in theatre that I really don't think is headed anywhere. But that was different: We were never nearly as close as I was with this friend, so keeping my distance from him was never that difficult, and when he vanished once more, it registered as no great loss.

But this is different, the stakes higher. I'm torn between wishing for the thrilling emotional rollercoaster of relearning a person I've always loved and a desire to pretend the whole thing never happened. My fear of commitment, of being an terrible, unreliable person to try to keep a friendship with, is reasserting itself.

I think I need to sleep on this.

Comments

[ceirdwenfc.livejournal.com]

I recently did the same thing as your friend. I googled my old friend who lives literally across the country. And the only reason, I looked him up is because, I missed him. I really missed him. We used to hang out a lot together, and we became close quite by accident, and when he first moved west, we wrote constantly. Long, lovely letters about everything. This year (well, the end of last year), I turned 41, and I've become nostalgic, and I lost his address, and I really missed him. I'm married with kids and happy, so it's not an unfulfilled kind of relationship. What I'm trying to say, not so eloquently, is maybe your friend had been thinking about you, and needed to reconnect. I hope I didn't wax too sentimental.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The thing is, both of us have been living in the same city all this time. Until recently, I always had a listed number in the phone book. If she had felt the need to reconnect, it is something that she could've easily done at any time. (In fact, I'm amazed that it reportedly took her an entire half-hour to track me down.)

I don't want to ask it of her too soon, but I really am wondering Why now? Sure, nostalgia is a factor, but by itself, it's not an explanation.

[thesilia.livejournal.com]

does it have to be "serious commitment to reestablish the friendship" or "nothing"? can you just take it one phone call or e-mail at a time and let it go where it will?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That's my intention, of course, but it'll be tricky given the former intensity. It sounds like she's still a very emotional person and it's easy to get swept up by someone like that if you're not on your guard.

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, now I start to understand your hesitation: the intensity of the former friendship, her emotionality. But I think you should go for it. It is the things we don't do in life that we usually regret more than those we did. Why now when she lives in the same city you do and your unique name has been in the phone book for most of that time? Maybe someone she loved died, and she found herself longing to reconnect with people from her past. Not uncommon for people in their forties or so... If she is too demanding and needy you'll have a period of awkwardness unconnecting. But if you don't reach out you'll find yourself wondering again and again over the years whether you should have reconnected.

[zabster.livejournal.com]

Oops, looks like I got logged out. Didn't mean to be anonymous there.

[nibadi.livejournal.com]

Ich will dir nicht zu nahe treten, aber könnte es sein, dass du im Umgang mit anderen Menschen, die nicht gerade deine "significant others" sind, paranoid reagierst? Ich habe den Eindruck, dass du Menschen, die dich mehr mögen, als du sie, für emotionale Kanibalen hälst.

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

Cool. Did you swap porn star names too?

Hum

[arkanjil.livejournal.com]

a few weeks back, I called my best friend from college to wish him happy birthday; i never hear form him, hes never there when i call, but I like to think he enjoyed the thought.

The line was disconnected.

I fired off an e-mail to mutual friends of ours who live close to him, but with whom I lost touch with over political differences (they took some offense from me fact checking the random patriotic screeds that they'd been mailing all over, post 9-11). They replied with a few short cryptic msgs, and then my friend sent me a short hello, with no details. I said hooray, and asked him how he was doing.

And so he told me, in a long screed that started off with 'I've made many mistakes in my life', and ending with him saying that he's perpetually depressed and he's been trying to deliberately eat himself to death.

Needless to say, I'm having some second thoughts now about waking up sleeping dogs...

keeping up

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I am writing from my home town, where I have only two old friends I keep up with (and plenty of family). This comes up a lot for me. I get shy about reconnecting with people, ashamed that I haven't kept up with them, and will they be angry that I haven't.

It takes bravery and energy to reconnect, and to keep long-distance connections going. Shyness is like a powerful inertia. Maybe technology will make things easier, with cheap phones and free internet.