I am finding myself a bit contemplative and retrospective today. Not quite sure exactly what it is that I am feeling, but decided to spill my guts about it anyways.
Often I do feel like the invisible person, this digital ghost in the machine.
Am I just some faceless wonder that pops up from the ether and just as quickly crawls back into her lonely existence? Always failing to connect with the people she wants to connect with the most?
I am really at an impasse at the moment.
I am beginning to feel that I spent so much time cultivating what I thought were true friendships throughout my life that I now find myself cut off and removed from everything I thought I knew. I am in need of a life raft or something because I am sinking fast.
The concept of friendship seemed so much simpler when one is young. It's the confidant that you spend hours talking on the phone with, rehashing all the minor victories or atrocities of each day. All those moment by moment by-plays that make up our lives. Friends are those that you hang out with, laughing, carrying on with - there was no pretension, no complexes. And with relatively few exceptions, no neuroses.
I think that I fostered what I thought would be "friends to the end" relationships that I failed to look at the bigger picture. And now, I am paying the price for that.
It's hard for me at the moment to even say that and I can't hardly believe that it's what's in my mind. I know people are busy. I can relate. It's just that I want someone to make some time for me in their lives too.
I find myself reaching out to people (even people that I didn't know all that well in high school, some I know could care less to hear from me - the token, quiet fat chick they barely noticed in their classes). I guess I still carry some vain hope that something will stick. I am truly in need of having someone I can call 'friend' again.
I can't tell you how many "I'd really love to reconnect with you" emails I have sent that have garnered not a single response. Do you have any idea at how sad, hurt, and yes, angry, that makes me at times?
I don't know what the answer is.
It's not that I haven't been able to reconnect with anyone, because I have. Through Myspace and/or Facebook, I have been able to reconnect with family and old dear friends. The quality of those relationships are in no way diminished by what I am feeling now. I hope noone takes it that way.
I guess I just want more. I want to be able to open my email and see messages from real people, not just spambots trying to sell me pet nail trimmers, penile enhancements, drugs from Mexico or wonder shammys. I want someone to actual respond to the emails that I write them. I think that is very little to ask for. You know, it would really be nice for someone to email me first and ask how I am doing and what's going on in my life.
Mostly it just seems that everyone is just too busy to care. I am beginning to feel like it's the whole damn word that's turning into a big 'ol blob of apathy. Am I to harden my heart and not give a damn too?
I don't think I can do that, even though everyday that it continues like this my heart aches more and more and more.
If nothing else, I hope that this post prompts you, my reader, to reach out and touch someone. Send an email. Write a letter. Give a call. Just connect with someone. As a society, I don't think that we will survive if we don't learn that connections and relationships are all that's left when we come to the end of our journey.
