Unfriend
It was bound to happen. I was unfriended on Facebook.
It’s actually not the first time I’ve been unfriended. My son unfriended me because I embarrassed him by commenting on his status. (Hey, he friended me…but I should have known better.) He said I could friend him again, but there is no way I would do that—it would have to be the other way around. (On the other hand, he is friends with my dog, so I can still read his profile if I choose.)
Today it was by someone I’d known since kindergarten who I was once very close with but haven’t been friends with in quite some time. She friended me a few weeks ago but didn’t seem to want to converse or reminisce. I didn’t get it. Why would someone with whom I would seem to have so much to talk about bother to friend me if she didn’t want to talk?
I won’t get into the not-very-interesting details of why I believe she unfriended me (well, they are actually pretty interesting, but only if you know her), other than to say there was no blowout; it was done silently. I hadn’t actually planned to contact her again, so I probably wouldn’t even have noticed her missing from my list. But she’s friends with my friends, and I saw that what should have been a lively blue link to her profile was now a dead black.
It occurs to me that “unfriend” might work better as a noun than a verb. She and I were friends—best friends for a time—and now we’re something different. We’re certainly not the opposite of friends, i.e., enemies. But we clearly are not friends anymore, and I suppose that makes us unfriends. Kind of like how vampires are undead.
I have unfriended a few people myself. Two were boyfriends who broke up with me. I’m sure they understood that gesture for what it was: a complete severing of the relationship. The other person was someone in town who I barely know but had been talking with at a party. She kept showing up in my “People you might know” list, so after the party I went ahead and friended her.
She seems nice enough, but the fact is I don’t know her well enough to have her reading my exchanges with old friends. She’s a mom at the school, and having someone in the middle of the school social scene reading about my life without knowing me well enough to be protective of it didn’t feel right to me. I’m sure she didn’t notice, or if she did, how could she care? It wasn’t personal. It was the opposite of personal. Unpersonal, as it were. (That is such an abuse of a word it’s actually hurting my brain.)
Regarding the old friend, if we were actually still friends, the unfriending business would be upsetting. If it mattered, I would be snarky about it here, which would make a much more entertaining post. I do find the whole thing interesting—the differences in what old friendships mean to different people—clearly interesting enough to write about it. But being unfriended doesn’t move me other than to shake my head and say, “Boy, is she in a different place.” It would have been nice to reconnect a little or whatnot, but, really, that friendship was dead a long time ago.
And that is all I have to say on that, because otherwise, it will appear I doth protest too much, and, honestly, I don’t. I have so many, um, refriends, I prefer to keep my focus on them. The unfriend wasn’t a small part of my youth and childhood, though, so it’s not exactly nothing, but it’s not exactly something either.
Changing subjects…Today was an unfortunate day because I woke at 5:30 and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I have been having a lot of experiences lately where something in my dream wakes me up. This morning it was that I was sure the phone was ringing elsewhere in the house. Two days in a row now, I have been drifting off to sleep only to dream I am slipping on the ice (which I have actually done in real life once so far this winter, and it’s not such fun) and I awake with a jerk to try to stop the fall. Someone suggested this might reflect a loss of control, which is oddly accurate for how I am feeling these days. In any case, the result is I am quite exhausted today, and that’s the unfortunate bit, because for the second time this week I have very little sense of what I’ve written.
Which means it’s a good time to sign off. I have no idea what my Sex in the Suburbs column will be on Monday, but I’m sure it’ll be awesome, whatever it is. Next Wednesday I will publish a wonderful essay one of my high school classmates wrote at my request, so please be sure to come back for that. I was giggling like an idiot when I read the first draft.
Have a great weekend, stay off the ice, and thanks for reading.
