hauntings

This morning I received a Facebook friend request from a boy I had a crush on for nearly six years. I haven't seen or heard anything from him since high school. I was already feeling forlorn upon waking and this nostalgic twist only deepened that sentiment. It just seems silly to me: a virtual friend request years after having never gotten the relationship I wanted in person. What exactly is the point of that? Nevertheless I accepted, only to get a dull two-line message in return. Of course I've been curious what's come of him as well as many others from my past, but at the same time I can't help but want to leave it as a mystery or a cozy memory, only called upon for rare occassions. Instead facets like Facebook provide opportunities for such unnecessary codas, which I'd say almost ruin the original encounters.

Sometimes the past is best rested to the past. Relationships in life come and go - we find the right people when we need them, and we drift away from them as we grow apart. I wonder how teens now are going to be able to have those same (and what I consider important) experiences with advents like permanent cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Myspace, and Facebook. With these, relationships linger well beyond their necessity and like looming high school reunions, one never knows when they're going to get the surprise attack and be called upon to enumerate what they've been up to for the past 'x' amount of years. These encounters do nothing for me and I prefer being an ephemeral presence to all but a few. Such a desire also explains why I change AIM screen names every few years, weeding the no longer necessary people out of my life.

And with a few more encounters like the one today, I'll be deleting my Facebook profile as well. I'm not even sure if I want to respond to his message. What for?