Connections

It’s pretty cool how this blog has somehow brought people back into my life from my past. I’m very big on maintaining connections with my past, my childhood … I mean, my crowd of best friends (one of the crowds, anyway) are from childhood and adolescence. We’re still best buds. And … you know, sometimes I do take it for granted, because that’s what you do with lifelong friendships … but I don’t ALWAYS take it for granted. I look at Beth, Mere, and Betsy and honestly think: What the hell would I do without those women?? Betsy and I met when we were 10. Beth and Mere I met at age 12. These people are forever people. But here we are, grown women, our lives are different, so much has changed … but the friendships remain. I feel LUCKY, man. (We’re having a pool party at Beth’s on Saturday night … I can’t wait. Now we can sit around and gossip like crazy about our high school reunion.)

But anyway. In the last 6 months or so – a bunch of people from my past have “found” me, through my blog. I’m not sure why … maybe my posts are higher up on the Google search terms list than they used to be – I don’t know.

What is doubly awesome about all of this is that … I’ve written some stuff about some of these people. All complimentary. I don’t bitch about people on my blog, and if I do, I change the names. I want my blog to be a positive place. I want to have FUN here. Anyway, I enjoy writing these posts of acknowledgement about people I used to know. The story about the spitball valentine is the most obvious example. It’s one of my favorite little stories … and I had so much fun writing about it. It was a way to sort of connect the dots in my own life. To carry around the memory with me – not like an anvil around my neck, but to re-claim it. The sweetness of Andrew in that moment, and how much his gesture meant to me. Still means to me.

Anyway. Andrew found himself through that post. I didn’t write it thinking he would ever read it … but suddenly … I’m back in touch with Andrew again.

Then there’s my “favorite ex” (that phrase should be copyrighted by jess!) … I’m on some kind of promotional mailing list of his – I haven’t seen him in years. Since 2002 maybe. So I get an announcement about his DVD coming out. Which then prompted me, in a flurry, to write this post . All emotion and adrenaline, trying to express why he is my ‘favorite’. It’s just my way of acknowledging him. Who he was to me, what he meant to me. I didn’t forward it on to him, or try to track him down to say: “I wrote this about you!” No. I just needed to get it OUT, and so I blogged about it. Because I mentioned his first and last name, he ended up finding himself a couple days later. There’s really not much to say after reading a post like that … I mean, if I found out that one of my ex-boyfriends had written such a post about me … and acknowledging me … and writing about me with such heart and fond memories … I would just be floored. Which is what has happened.

All of this has been a side-effect of this blog. I didn’t start it up expecting that people from my life would end up finding me. There are many more examples – and actually, I owe a couple of people emails. People I was in shows with, people from my childhood neighborhood, people from all throughout the timeline of my life. It’s amazing.

It makes my heart feel all warm and happy … to exchange emails with spitball Andrew, to be able to really tell “favorite ex” how I feel about him, to have Keith M. know the impact he had on me …

The last couple of months have been all about that. People emailing me, out of the blue: “Hi, old friend!” “Do you remember me?” “How ’bout that time we …”

Connections made with the past. Fragments being re-claimed. And also, most importantly (at least for me) – being in a place now where I can just come right out and tell these characters in my life what they meant to me. It feels GOOD, man. It’s very cathartic.

All of this is in the foreground because of my trip to Chicago, my time with the magnet, and also – the general “memory lane” vibe I get every time I return to the Windy City. Just thinking about how … even though we do lose things along the way in life, even though hearts do get broken, we do get older and we lose some of our illusions … some things remain eternal. Like I wrote about the magnet. Our lives have diverged. The magnet is strong as ever. Weird. His face, his voice … also, how we talk to each other … our shorthand … It’s still there. After YEARS. This used to send me into a tailspin of tragedy and sadness – why do we still have shorthand?? Why won’t that connection just DIE so I can move on??? But now it seems perfectly all right. I like knowing that I have these thin silver threads of connection with people from my past. I like knowing that the threads are not torn. They still exist.

Emailing with Andrew, with Keith M., with favorite ex … and yes, with magnet too.

Also, this past weekend, I had a brief phone conversation with Keith M. We were laughing, reminiscing about the reunion, talking about other things … but mostly we just laughed about how … sure, a lot has changed since we were 10. We’re men and women now. But … you look at somebody, you look into their eyes … and for the most part, you can still see THEM in there. It’s strangely comforting, in this world of flux and change. To know that someone’s ESSENCE remains unchanged.

But even more comforting than the essence thing … is this overwhelming sensation (with all of these people I’m reconnecting with) that they remember me with as much fondness as I do them. I am not ALONE with fond memories of “favorite ex”, or magnet, or whoever. They share that fondness. They might not have written a big essay about it … but they feel the same way, and they remember me with the same sense of warmth, love, and need.

I find that unbelievably comforting. Nothing worse than having some intense memory of somebody, and you think you guys were really close, and then you run into that person years later and they don’t even know your name. OUCH.

I found this old picture of Keith M. and me. At the height of our grade school friendship. I can’t say why this picture just captures exactly our essence as friends, but it does. It says it all. That’s his hat I am wearing. We must be about 10 or 11 here.

Love it! And talking with him on the phone recently … listening to his voice, which is still – somehow – the same – even though it’s deeper – I got this strange feeling of: “Yup. He’s a man now. But he’s the same person as the grinning boy in that old photo.”

The eternal-ness of personality.