I WILL NEVER SEE YOU IN REAL LIFE

We Weren’t Friends Until Facebook

50 things that brought me to you

Dear Facebook friend,

If you had asked me in high school if I’d ever feel this close to you, I would have said “No way!”

1. I didn’t like you in high school.
2. You were too blond, too perky.
3. It wasn’t the blondness on its own that repelled me.
4. In high school, one of my best friends looked like that blond from Clueless and my other best friend looked like Olivia Newton-John in Grease.
5. My Olivia Newton-John friend smiled with her big teeth all the time, like you did— but she saw people as gutted, so I trusted her.
6. You seemed deceitful. We were teenagers. Where was your angst, self-loathing, and scowl?
7. You appeared untethered to melancholy, unable to see the world as broken. How did a seagull not pluck you up and drop you on a windowsill? You were as light as a Cheeto.
8. Your lack of complexity forced me to wonder if I was overthinking my existence. Was there a less murky path?
9. Had High School Musical been a movie back then, and I’d been a casting director, I would have cast you as a bubbly-headed cheerleader. Not because I hated cheerleaders.
10. One of my best friends was a cheerleader for the L.A. Rams. The Rams cheerleaders had a nickname. What was it again? It couldn’t have been Ram Girls, could it have? That would be obscene.
11. I wasn’t going to accept your friend request on Facebook at first — but your tell-all posts were as irresistible as a People magazine at a gas station before a road trip.
12. As a teenager, you were overly polished, but as a grown woman, you were devastatingly vulnerable.
13. It hadn’t initially occurred to me you might have an opinion about me too.
14. I was in a constant state of disequilibrium in high school.
15. You probably looked at me and thought “She doesn't do her homework.”
16. You would have been right, had you wasted your time on a thought like that.
17. I could tell you completed your homework to perfection, checked and rechecked your answers, that you probably owned a pencil with a pom pom where an eraser went.
18. You were like this stupid beautiful robot, but not actually stupid and not unanimously beautiful — just all the right parts with a shimmery dusting.
19. You looked the same every day like you rolled out of a cupcake pan. How did you do that? Every morning, I had to reattach myself to myself, like Ms. Potato Head.
20. As an adult, you looked like you’d been exposed to the elements. I’d learned to conceal the elements I’d been exposed to by then.
21. You posted your dating life in detail, revealing heartaches, disappointments, and failings.
22. I wondered if your being so perfect when you were young stopped you from learning how to disguise your vulnerabilities. People had smiled at you too frequently. You didn’t know you were naked.
23. You posted personal information about your children and I judged you.
24. I became addicted to your posts.
25. At first, I only dabbled, pacing myself. Twice a week, at most.
26. You posted Jerry McQuire-length testimonials about your children, your health, your work, your love life. I thought, damn man, she’s unhinged.
27. I wondered if this was how normal people went crazy. Without warning, like cars that fly off cliffs leaving no skid marks.
28. I couldn’t look away. In my defense, once, for no reason, I chased an ambulance down the street in San Francisco.
29. After a year, I finally engaged with you.
30. I clicked like on the meals you cooked.
31. I clicked love by the picture of you and your sons kayaking.
32. You started liking my posts too, which were primarily sunsets and water. Nothing personal.
33. I had learned to hide anything revelatory.
34. Part of me fantasized about putting myself out there like you did, but the stakes seemed too monumental.
35. I became concerned your children would become angry with you later for posting their lives in such vivid detail.
36. I almost privately messaged you. I wanted to let you know you were making a mistake. It was okay to post your own foibles, but leave the children out of it.
37. I remembered we’d never really talked in high school, so if I messaged you advice out of the blue, I would look like a guy in a basement.
38. You briefly dated one of my friends in high school, but you were younger than us. We didn’t take you seriously.
39. Sorry about that.
40. You were his furry new pet who trailed behind us, not a human girl. Again, I apologize.
41. On Facebook, I could tell you and I were starting to feel the same way about each other. The question was which one of us would break the fourth wall. Cross over from Facebook to IRL?
42. When I clicked your About Me section, I noticed you lived far away, somewhere I never visited. I felt relieved.
43. There was no risk of bumping into each other.
44. If I saw you on the street, in our hometown one day, I could pretend I didn’t recognize you.
45. I had become accustomed to your older face because you were always posting it. I only posted sunsets. That was my witness protection protection program. I marked myself safe from being recognized.
46. It had been 35 years. I could walk right past you.
47. Later, when we both posted we had just visited our shared hometown, I could fake shock we hadn’t crossed paths.
48. “Next time,” one of us could post, “we should have coffee.”
49. “Let me know if you ever go back,” one of us could say. “Definitely” the other of us would answer.
50. On Facebook, we’ve gotten so close. That would have shocked the hell out of my high school self, who couldn’t have fathomed us. Or Facebook.

Thanks to Debra G. Harman, MEd. for getting me.