Faces

I've been Facebooking. I'll reluctantly admit it's not all that bad. I can't speak to the long term viability, but in the short term Facebook is having a big impact on me, and here's why. I've spent the last 18 years largely avoiding my hometown of Huffman and steering clear of old acquaintances. But when I have gone back I always find myself getting really sentimental. In the last few days, through the magic of Facebook, I'm seeing pictures of 35 year olds with families who, in my mind, should still be 18 year old kids with their whole lives ahead of them.

I'll cut to the chase. I'm crying inside and I'm trying to figure out why.

Maybe it's just the result of my mind trying to process so much information at once. Maybe it's a lot more than that.

I've been friended in recent days by people with whom I had complicated emotional ties as a kid. I've talked to a few people who just revealed to me that they had huge crushes on me. I had no idea. I've talked to others that I had such feelings for. Strangely, after 18 years those feelings seem to have resurfaced - although they are tempered considerably by age and wisdom. How strange that even after 18 years old joys and pains can bubble up as if they were there waiting just below the surface all this time. Makes me wonder if time really can heal all wounds, or if it simply distracts us from them.

I've learned of a number of former classmates who have died - cancer, car accidents and suicide started taking their toll immediately after graduation. It's weighing heavily on me.

I think part of the problem is that it has brought to the forefront of my mind my own mortality. In the aging faces of kids I once knew, I see myself. In their deaths, I see my own. But it's more even than that. I want to run home to Huffman and grab these people and hug them, and it's baffling me. It's like I want to go back in time, back when we were young and had the whole world at our feet - back before our futures were written, or at least before they were revealed. I want to push aside petty things. I want to push aside fear and insecurity and do it all over, but better. Better in that I want to talk to people I was afraid to talk to. I want to be nice to kids I was mean to. I want to forgive kids who were mean to me. I want to hug those that would soon die, and laugh with them one more time.

I realize I cannot go back in time. I realize that what's done is done. But I also realize that, if I live long enough, there will come a time 20 or 30 years from now when I'll look back on my 30's with a similar nostalgic, sentimental view. What will I regret at that time? What will I wish I could do if I had a single day to go back to being 35 and do it over again? Today is that day. I am 35 and my future is not yet written. What I will remember tomorrow will be determined by what I do today. I find some comfort in that.

Still, I wish I could understand where this pain in my heart is coming from. I'm even getting sad thinking that all of those innocent, silly kids, myself included, are now gone. They're adults now, doing adult things. The memories I have of those people are just that: memories.

I was thinking today that I've known these people longer - much longer - than anyone else in my life except for my immediate family. Some of these kids I remember from elementary school. For twelve years we climbed that ladder of public school together. Even those I wasn't close to, we still essentially grew up together. I think I need to see at least some of them. I need to see them face to face and talk to them. I think it's time for me to bridge who I was with who I am. I've been hiding from my other life for a long time, and I don't even remember why anymore.