Google is a strange and wicked beast sometimes. It can be like a reverse Ouija board, where it's you who spells out strange code which might or might not be understood by the receiver. Let us just say that there was a time in my past, a good time, and I was curious about where those people of that good time had gone off to. And now, after over three years, I somehow entered just the right keywords, and unlocked the door into hell.
Not my hell, though. Someone else's. Of that circle of people from the good time, two had been keeping a steady blog for at least two years, and I was able to skim over their past that came after I left. Sometimes it was morbidly boring, or mildly interesting. It struck me how dull a person's life can be, how so little can happen that they can barely make it interesting for themselves and must pool their pedestrian existence into a network of other blogs and somehow create a thing that has more meaning than the sum of its parts. But it doesn't quite work. It just ends of being a history of idle thoughts and fleeting drama, cross-commented ad nauseum, down into the depths of digital nepotism until it's just a morass of back-and-forth.
But there is a strange richness to it. As the puzzle pieces and layers come together, the canvas of the human condition resolves in almost aching relief, because of what is not experienced, rather than what is. Bitter almosts and ghost pains like missing limbs bubble under the surface. There is more to all of it than meets the eye--so much that goes unsaid, despite all the talking.
One of them, of that circle of Goof Time people, spoke of going to a wedding of a girl he'd dated for a long time, before I dated her, before she nuked my heart, and it was troublesome and unsettlingfor him to watch who he thought was The One to stand up there and get married, when he thought he should have been at her side instead. After college, several of them moved back home and saw each other every once in a while, but sometimes there's a break after that final stretch of formal education, where people who've known each other all their lives can still drift apart. And they all kind of drifted apart, eventually. But he came back for this wedding to watch her get married to some guy.
I wish I could have told him then that he wasn't missing out on anything, that she wasn't the One and isn't, in my opinion, anyone's One. He apparently does not know the story of her and I. Not many people do, because it is not a happy one and not really worth repeating at this point.
But he's drifting. I skim over his posts over the last couple years, and he seems lost. He seems a little heartsick. I remember him, and he was a good guy, and he doesn't deserve this shit. That spark in him that wanted her kept him away from wanting others, I think, and she hasn't served him well. Which doesn't surprise me. So now I find myself wondering if I should tell him the story. Because it looks like he needs to know more than I want to not talk about it anymore.
Of course, there are other motivations to telling him the story that I struggle with. I'm concerned that I might be subconsciously vindictive. Tearing down an idol out of spite. Is it better for him to have this idea of her, instead of me basically telling him that this girl he's known since he was a boy, and loved once upon a time, and can't turn away from, has done very bad things? What is better for a man? And do I have the right to risk his peace of mind in order to allow himself to pull away? If I were in his shoes... I don't know. I can't say.
Not my hell, though. Someone else's. Of that circle of people from the good time, two had been keeping a steady blog for at least two years, and I was able to skim over their past that came after I left. Sometimes it was morbidly boring, or mildly interesting. It struck me how dull a person's life can be, how so little can happen that they can barely make it interesting for themselves and must pool their pedestrian existence into a network of other blogs and somehow create a thing that has more meaning than the sum of its parts. But it doesn't quite work. It just ends of being a history of idle thoughts and fleeting drama, cross-commented ad nauseum, down into the depths of digital nepotism until it's just a morass of back-and-forth.
But there is a strange richness to it. As the puzzle pieces and layers come together, the canvas of the human condition resolves in almost aching relief, because of what is not experienced, rather than what is. Bitter almosts and ghost pains like missing limbs bubble under the surface. There is more to all of it than meets the eye--so much that goes unsaid, despite all the talking.
One of them, of that circle of Goof Time people, spoke of going to a wedding of a girl he'd dated for a long time, before I dated her, before she nuked my heart, and it was troublesome and unsettlingfor him to watch who he thought was The One to stand up there and get married, when he thought he should have been at her side instead. After college, several of them moved back home and saw each other every once in a while, but sometimes there's a break after that final stretch of formal education, where people who've known each other all their lives can still drift apart. And they all kind of drifted apart, eventually. But he came back for this wedding to watch her get married to some guy.
I wish I could have told him then that he wasn't missing out on anything, that she wasn't the One and isn't, in my opinion, anyone's One. He apparently does not know the story of her and I. Not many people do, because it is not a happy one and not really worth repeating at this point.
But he's drifting. I skim over his posts over the last couple years, and he seems lost. He seems a little heartsick. I remember him, and he was a good guy, and he doesn't deserve this shit. That spark in him that wanted her kept him away from wanting others, I think, and she hasn't served him well. Which doesn't surprise me. So now I find myself wondering if I should tell him the story. Because it looks like he needs to know more than I want to not talk about it anymore.
Of course, there are other motivations to telling him the story that I struggle with. I'm concerned that I might be subconsciously vindictive. Tearing down an idol out of spite. Is it better for him to have this idea of her, instead of me basically telling him that this girl he's known since he was a boy, and loved once upon a time, and can't turn away from, has done very bad things? What is better for a man? And do I have the right to risk his peace of mind in order to allow himself to pull away? If I were in his shoes... I don't know. I can't say.
keep doing that.