Even long-term [should-be] committed readers of Rise are unlikely to remember Eva. Eva played a significant role in supporting me in the truly horrible periods just before I moved to Budapest, and just after I returned.
I could bore you with all the ways she helped me, but won’t. I was so caught up in my own complicated world at that time, that our relationship was very much all about her rescuing me from various evils.
Then she moved North, I met Pete, our lives changed, and we fell out of touch. Good old Facebook, eh? You know how sometimes you add someone but you don’t particularly talk to them, they’re just there? So I’ve seen Eva’s updates for a while now, and was starting to wonder if I’d added the wrong person.
The Eva I knew was happily married, sociable but settled, with a successful career at some financial institution or other. I know she had some health problems but she never discussed them in any detail. The FB updates I have been seeing are all about a single socialite never without a cocktail glass in her hand, and recently In A Relationship With someone who was not her husband.
Then one day she posted something that left no doubt she was the Eve I know, so I sent her a message. She replied. Our discussion was of course quite private, but two themes emerged:
- Facebook is The Great Facade. The single socialite is only the face she presents to the world. Behind the laptop sits quite a different person.
- We both turn 40 in about six months’ time, and this, for some reason, is causing us to reflect on where we are and where we’re going.
And from Eva’s perspective, she had been wondering if the Karen on her FB page was actually the same person she knew 8 or 9 years ago. I was in a mess back then, and the life I live now was unimagineable to either of us. And yet her marriage was already in those early, deniable stages of disintegration, and now she is where I was (albeit with a great deal more self-knowledge).
How did I get from there to here? I never planned any of it; but it seems like almost every step I’ve taken from that place has been a determined one. I suppose if you read through my archives, you might see the same thing. Not that I’m suggesting you waste your life doing that, dear reader.
This was a thought-provoking post to read, but especially today, the day after I turned 39.
Ever I joined Facebook – and unfortunately I was one of those ‘early adopters’ – I’ve often wondered about friends’ status update, and how truthful or reflecting of their lives they really were. Early on, I fell into the camp of “well, why would anyone create a facade?” I know, very foolish. Now I realise that they do, and I take each of them with a hefty pinch of salt.
Of course, as you point out, Facebook is also a wonderful – and probably unfortunate – tool for keeping tabs on people you knew years ago and are never likely to meet again, but with whom you’ve decided to retain some sort of connection via a social network. Sometimes I wish my curiosity hadn’t got the better of me and, instead of accepting those friend requests from people I last saw years ago, had just rejected them. (I think my most extreme case would be someone who moved away from my hometown when I was 14 years old, in 1985, and who is now a church missionary in New Zealand – why, to be honest, would I really want to know what she’s doing with her life, and why would she want to know what I’m doing with mine?) Maybe if I had kept my ‘friends’ to people who know a little more about me now, out there in non-virtual life, I would be rather more truthful about my life and divulge facts about it that, currently, I never refer to.
But yes, I think our natural curiosity about what old friends – not even friends, sometimes just acquaintances – are doing tends to outweigh any sensible notions. And it’s particularly the case when you’re close to turning 40, which for better or worse is always an age when you reflect on who you are and where you’re at in life.
That was quite a long comment, wasn’t it?
That is a long comment, Mr Witness, and I didn’t even know you were still here. You should definitely be committed.
The question of why accept friend requests from people you have long lost friends with is an interesting one. There are some people I have been happy to reconnect with, but that’s because I’m pretty bad at moving on and leaving everyone behind. It’s just the way my life has gone.
Having said that, I was quite affronted that a former school-acquaintance accepted and then de-friended me. It was like sixth form all over again.