Ghosts From The Past

A few minutes ago, I decided to “unfriend” someone I knew when I was in high school. He sent me a friend request over a year ago. I accepted and sent him a private message to tell him that it was great to hear from him. His response was curt, not at all friendly or warm. I suspected that he had a look at my wall and realized I was one of those gays. But I didn’t really know that for sure, so ...I left it alone. He never contacted me again after that, and every time I had a look at his page, I was disturbed. I found comments on his wall that were pretty close to racist. Last summer he made a silly crack about how foolish gay people were for being surprised to learn the CEO of Chick-fil-A is against marriage equality because he’s Christian. As if we were surprised. And as if all Christians are homophobic. How stupid and uninformed can you get? He also posted a number of comments that showed his disdain for poor people and government programs designed to help them. And not long ago, he posted a comment about how it was a bad idea to cut military spending because government military contracts provide jobs. Such blatant hypocrisy.

All of this made me wonder why we were Facebook friends. We were friendly back in middle school and high school. And to be honest, I had a bit of a crush on him. But we weren’t close friends, and it seems we have very little in common now.  (As for the teenage crush… Well, it died when I saw recent photos and discovered he now looks like Gomez Addams with a hangover. He was never much of a looker really. He was just a boy who payed a little bit of attention to me, and I needed a boy to like me.) 

So far only a handful of people from high school have looked me up here on Facebook, and each time it’s been awkward and disappointing. All these encounters seem to do is remind me of how alone and isolated I felt when I was young. It opens up old wounds, and for a few minutes, I become that frightened boy again. I don’t want to ever be that scared or insecure again.