beautiful letdown

Was just scrolling through the profiles of some of my “friends” on facebook and something occurred to me. Okay, two things occurred to me.

1. I am surprised to see that I have “29 friends in common” with someone. I don’t know if this has to do more with the whole living in the moment thing or with my hopelessness with numbers, but I’m surprised that I know 29 people period, let alone 29 people who know someone else I know. My mind boggles at the bigness of the world.

2. As I glance over profiles from friends from a long time ago (college, before….some of those I can’t even call “friends,” I think), I wonder what their feelings and memories toward me are. Like, when someone sees a friend request from me, do they only add me because they don’t want to hurt my feelings? Or do they think, hey I haven’t seen her in awhile, miss hanging out with her, oh I remember that time when, wonder what she’s been up to…..?

I’ve found some people that I’m glad to be back in touch with again. “In touch” via facebook often meant very loosely–they haven’t sent me a single personal message but I get their status updates all the time. Can’t help but wonder what they think when they “add me.”

I really only add people that I am interested in communicating with. Facebook is much too nosy to broadcast life to relative strangers (at least the new version is). But I don’t always reach out, mostly I guess because I am worried about what their real memories of me are–did I annoy them to death? Was I mean or rude? Was I selfish? Honesty like that is kind of rare, so I guess I won’t ever know.

I think I should write a story on this.