The Incredible Weirdness of Beings

I posted a long time ago, maybe on my now-defunct If I Had My Own World blog, about how sad it makes me when people who were once close no longer communicate, and although it doesn't make me sad exactly, I was just kinda sorta in a situation that would fall under the heading of People Who Were Once Close and No Longer Communicate, and it made me think of how weird we people are.

You'll need a little back story, so--

A Little Back Story

Twenty years ago I had a boyfriend. He was my high school boyfriend, and you know how relationships like that go: It was tumultuous; it was hectic; it was passionate; it was melodramatic; it was heart wrenching. It was an episode of Buffy come to life (if you really want an idea of what my life was like for the almost two years that I went out with this guy, check out one of the episodes of Buffy in season 2 after Angel goes bad. Passions would be good. So would I Only Have Eyes for You).

While this guy and I were together, we went through crap that some people don't go through in an entire lifetime. You'll just need a general overview, so--

A General Overview (in no particular order)

Cheating
Forbidden relationship
Institutionalization
Pregnancy attempts
Being on the lam
Institutionalization
Physical abuse
Emotional abuse
Institutionalization
Surreptitious sex
The absolute opposite of surreptitious sex
Bad Break Up (like institutionalization this one you can repeat, repeat, and repeat again)

The last time I saw or talked to this guy was when I was twenty-one or twenty-two, three or four years after we broke up for the last time, when we ran into each other at a restaurant where I was eating with my now-husband and I found him waiting for me when I left the bathroom. It's not for lack of trying, though. I've googled him on a semi-regular basis for the last few years, looked for him on myspace when that was the place to be, and now look for him on facebook whenever I don't have anything better to do. It's all been to no avail. This guy is nowhere to be found. Or so it seemed.

Because I once knew this guy as well as I did, and because people never really change, I suspected that if he was on facebook, he might be on facebook under some kind of alias. I checked around in all the usual places but for the longest time found nothing. A few days ago, though, I found a profile that I believe to be his. It's private, so I can't check for sure, but I feel pretty comfortable in my assumption. And this is the point where the weirdness of people comes in, so--

The Weirdness of People

Once I found this guy (or maybe found this guy), I didn't know what to do. I wanted to send him a message, but I felt totally uncomfortable doing it. I felt nervous and unsure and stupid and insecure. I started to message him and ended up just staring at the little message box, writing and deleting and second-guessing everything that crossed my mind.

Why is this weird? Well, it's weird because this is somebody who I once spent every possible minute with, someone who I ran away from home for and who ran away from home for me, someone who wrote me poetry, someone whose window I used to climb through in the middle of the night and whose closet I hid in, naked, for more hours than I want to think about, someone who I tried like a damn fool over and over again to have a baby with, someone who I planned out my entire life with, and now...well, now he's someone I'm afraid to initiate a conversation with.

And that is weird.

It's not just me, either. I've had several friends over the years who have been in similar situations, under varying circumstances, and they've had that same fear, that same feeling of awkwardness and the same state of being unsure. They've been in relationships with people, whether romantic or not, close relationships in which they've shared private thoughts and intimate moments with people who they've felt they know as well as they know themselves, and then one day for whatever reason, it's like they don't know them at all, and then when they're confronted with the opportunity to somehow communicate with them again, they're afraid to do it.

And when you think about it, that's weird.
And it's sad.
It's sadly weird.

At least it is to me.