Those That Got Away

Social media has allowed us to ‘get to know’ someone by scanning their profile for five minutes. We can quickly grasp political views, favorite bands, and writing proficiency. This is well and good for evaluating the people we meet as adults – we’re getting to know them for the first time and have low expectations to begin with. It’s the ingrained cynicism that comes along with growing up. It can be disappointing to learn that the hot guy you met at a bar is rooting for Michele Bachmann, but it’s not as soul-crushing as the realization that the girl who taught you how to double-dutch has become someone you wouldn’t meet for happy hour. Revisiting relationships that meant the world to us in our formative years is tempting, but it often affirms an idea that no one wants to fully commit to – the idea that people change – that we change. It scares us that we can feel such disdain or indifference toward someone we used to spend every waking hour with. It’s not just a testament to the other person becoming something else – it’s a testament to our own growth and development. We want to believe that we are concrete entities that are sound in our convictions and beliefs, that we’ve always been this way, and witnessing disparities where there used to be unbridled harmony can be unnerving. If you don’t lose a few people along the way, if every person you were fond of as a child is able to make a cameo appearance via Facebook, you run the risk of manipulating your memories. They’re no longer our first crush; they’re our first crush who is on his second child and first divorce. They’re no longer our middle school teacher; they’re our middle school teacher who types at an elementary school level. And these newly-minted impressions have the capacity to engulf our memories, they have the ability to burn them alive. I know my curiosity is unlikely to curb itself, but I’m glad that he’s unsearchable. If finding out what he’s up to involves combing through tagged photographs and scrutinizing status updates, if it means wanting to deny our moments and rejecting the way it felt to be in awe of someone, if it means reevaluating and weighing him against a digital composite of the man I met all those years ago, I don’t want it. I’m happy to keep my memories of him confined to a dive bar in Louisiana, where there was no virtual reality, just reality reality; a place where the light was always flattering.