It just has to be

Last week, something kind of startling happened to me.  It tripped me up a little.  A lot has been going on in my life lately and it's hard to digest, but this threw me off my emotional kilter a bit.

See, I've been trying to catch up with the old blogs I used to read, and it's felt weird – like I betrayed them or something and now I'm just coming back into the fold like nothing has changed….  But a lot has changed.  For one thing, I don't specifically remember some of the blogs and I don't remember what I know about them.  Some I do, and some I don't.  And some aren't regularly updated anymore – no surprise there.  So I feel odd and guilty and embarrassed to return to my old haunt, but I thought, hey, I might as well try to comment on some of these if I have any thoughts that come to mind.  I won't force it.  But I'll try to ease myself back into the circle.

That's been difficult because there's a community going on here, even more so than I remember, and so I feel like an awkward outsider, a stranger that is trying to interject into a personal conversation amongst good, ole friends.  And I mean, I didn't expect that my blog would suddenly be relevant again – I didn't.  I just hoped that, well, somebody would comment on what I say and share their insights with me.

Well, but anyway, I tried to comment on a blog last week.  I was so excited.  This blogger is a bit younger than me – wow, more than I realized until just now….  And she was talking about various things….  Then she mentioned something that I just had to comment about.  The topic interested me and I had experience to relate that I thought would be helpful.  All positive and encouraging things.  I won't get into specifics.  My comment had to be approved, and I thought it was, and I anxiously awaited a reply, if there was one.  I kept getting emails about new comments but none a reply to mine.  I find out that my comment isn't there at all.  How odd.

Long story short, I commented again but it never showed up among all the other comments.  My comment was vetoed twice.

I guess what I'm eventually trying to say is that this opened a crack in my heart.  And I remembered all the bad about social media.  All the hurt I had ever felt because I was ignored or whatever on social media – I had almost forgotten until that moment.

And slowly but surely, it reminded me of all the people I've met and the ones that walked away from me and the ones I walked away from… and it makes my heart sad.

I wish I could tell them all that, hey, I was just looking for a friend.  And I never meant to hurt anyone.  I did everything I could think of to do what I thought would make you happy and then, sometimes, I finally just had to walk away.  I didn't know what else I could do.  I came to college with the goal for myself to give everything I had into being a great friend, and even then I failed.  And I'd like to blame you but I can't.  It's just the way of things.  Life happens.  And I don't understand it.  But fortunately, understanding it is not required.

But it'd still be nice, I sometimes think, to say, "Hey.  I busted… certain areas of my anatomy to be the best I could be and that's the best you could do?  You have no idea how much I wanted to be the most amazing friend you had ever had."  But once the first rush of confusion and passion rushes over me and dies, I mostly just want to say, "Why."  Why did you do this thing?  I can imagine a hundred and two possibilities.  None of them are giving me closure.  But was it really necessary to break my heart like that?

Well, I'm not actually pitying myself too much.  This stuff just is, sometimes.  I was only reflecting on it.   But if social media has many positives of community, it has the negatives too.  Life has both, anyway.  And I suppose it just has to be.