saturday night’s all right for blogging

A couple weeks ago I joined the rest of the world and "got on the Facebooks." I was compelled to join Facebook because I thought that by joining I would be able to stalk some old flames. This isn't the case. Unfortunately Facebook's default setting allows only those designated as friends to view the juicy stuff.

Of course I'm kidding. I would never stalk an old flame on Facebook. Cyber-stalking isn't as fun as actually physically stalking someone.

Seriously though, the discovery of old names from my high school days (I graduated Highland Senior High School in 1997) has stirred up many emotions. Shock never ceases to strike me when I see the name of some long-forgotten classmate and his or her accompanying profile photo. ("Oh my god, that's so-and-so!") And judging from those photos, all my former classmates are either happily married and/or have at least one child. And those who have neither are apparently having the time of their lives parasailing on some sun-soaked beach far away from here. It's quite depressing, actually. It feels like high school all over again: everyone except me has seemingly found a group of which to assimilate. They have made all the right choices, and I can't seem to get my shit together. Yes, I have finally collected myself, but fuck! the time that has forever slipped away is not something that leaves the memory so easily. Neither are the memories of the embarrassing carcass I occupied as a high school student.

I'm terrified of friending a classmate from those days of mortification because I feel as though my high school ghost clings to everything – and memory is impermeable. Yes, I realize we have all grown and matured into 30 year-old adults, but my metamorphosis was embarrassing and painful. I suppose I still haven't resolved the issues that were at the core of my self-imposed exile. I wanted to belong – I still want to belong – to something so badly that I accomplished the opposite of my intentions, and, in doing so, became a cardboard cutout. An imposter. An imitator. Embarrassing.

When I reconnect with someone I haven't seen for a while an inevitable question eventually arises: What have you been up to? See, my response to that question is never simple and eloquent. I feel as if, to answer the question sufficiently, I must crack open the dog-eared book of my inhibitions and neuroticism and impart every motive for every decision I've made since our last contact; however, history has told me that most people are not interested in the psychological underpinnings of choosing to wear a pair of black Chuck Taylors over a pair of red Sauconys. So, in lieu of answering those inevitable questions, I wonder about what happened during my high school days. And wonder why all my former classmates look so happy in those profile photos.

xx