Facebook, in spite of all of the grumbling about all of its issues and copyright and possession of photos and censorship, does have one fabulous part; you can use it to stroll down memory lane and look at yourself five, six years back. It's kind of interesting to see, at least to me, what I was doing, who I was talking with, what I was saying, and what was important to me at sixteen. That being said, it is true that what goes on the internet stays there. Amidst the old photos of me dancing, me and my ex and me and my pets, there was a photo that I really wasn't sure how to feel about it. It's a picture of me naked as part of an article done by a British teen magazine. The article was on living at a naturist park (or nudist) and my experiences of growing up with that lifestyle. You can't see anything exciting in the photo as naturally it was all very coy but you can definitely tell that I am naked. It's on my Facebook because a friend of mine saw it on the interwebs and posted it to my wall.
Luckily for me, it's not an issue that that photo came up but it did surprise me to see that on my Facebook wall and realize that pretty much anyone can find it. My only regret is that I did not have time to wash my hair before the photo shoot and I can tell that it's slightly greasy. Also the old bicycle that is in the picture. Yeesh that thing is a piece of junk. I am ashamed to be seen with it!
I did run into a couple of other things that were interesting in my Facebook-memory-lane-stroll besides naked photos. I found a lot of pictures of myself and my now husband (we were dance partners) and it makes me smile to see us so close even back in our late teens. I also found a lot of photos and notes and wall posts that involved myself and a person I used to be very close to. We knew each other from two onwards and after we got past the fighting like demons phase we spent several years swapping boy stories, teasing each other, exploring the world of puberty and growing up together and eventually sharing the experiences of dating. I can't remember who exactly I came out to first but I'm pretty sure she was one of the first people I did nervously tell.
Seeing these photos on Facebook is strange because seeing them, I remember the various stories of what was happening at the time. There is one of us dyeing her hair which happened just after she had just been dumped and we were trying to do something fun and distracting. There is another one of the two of us at my graduation and subsequent party afterwards and I remember her helping me as I struggled to deal with moving away and my disintegrating relationship with my now ex.
It's weird seeing these photos and remembering the emotion behind them because I haven't spoken to her in over a year and two months ago, I ended up not inviting her to my wedding, something that at sixteen I could never have believed would happen.
We didn't have a big fight, or a major blow out, just a loss of connection. I lived in another province for a year and when I came back I moved in with my to-be husband and I began my first year of university. This girl, now young woman, and I got together a couple of times but each time it felt like we had very little to say to each other. We were growing up and our lives were moving very rapidly in different directions. I was in university and living with my partner. She was working on starting her career in tattoo artistry and was discovering dance clubs. I didn't like the noise or expense of clubs (still don't. Minus gay bars) and I hated the idea of wearing tiny clothing and getting hit on by strange men. I was trying to save and was worried about finances whereas she still had the luxury of living with her parents and was able to be free of that concern.
I suppose I envied her somewhat. She was able to dress up and make herself up and look extremely attractive and was able to go out and be free of monetary concerns. I wanted to stay in and was tired and busy due to being in classes all day and then having homework in the evenings.
We stopped getting in touch with each other. It was a lack of effort on both parts and four months ago when I was figuring out my end of wedding invites I chose not to invite her. I am sure she knows that I got married; Facebook is very incriminating that way and I know she knows that I was engaged.
Yesterday I realized that she turned 21 at the beginning of July and I creeped her Facebook profile and saw her with her boyfriend and I saw that she had gotten a sleeve tattoo. I don't know what it was about seeing that tattoo but for some reason it made me think a great deal about the passage of time and changes that come with growing up.
I used to hear people say that once you got out of highschool you'd find out who your real friends were. For me, it wasn't the end of highschool but the removal of the constant presence of parents. Since moving out three years ago I've had a couple close relationships fail and I have found that exploring these waters of adult relationships (not meaning sexual here, by the way) has been almost more tricky than anything that I dealt with in the mess of junior high. There are no safeguarding parents that can step in when the going gets too rough, there is no guidebook on how best to proceed when things go in a way you never expected.
As my Dad used to tell me, the only constant thing is change and as I explore change and do things like not invite old friends to my wedding I learn about the definitiveness of consequences. Though I do have Facebook tracking some of my progress (I do try to keep the most incriminating stuff off of it) and in a few years I can use it once again as blog posting fodder to reminisce about where I have come from.
