Good ol' days...

Ever happen to have a person from your past that you would both want to see after many years and at the same time rather not see? It’s confusing, right? Especially if those people meant something to you at one point in life, a good friend, a relative, someone you loved. Especially if you parted on good terms. In fact, you just stopped seeing each other because your lives took you on different paths and SOMEONE really doesn’t have a clue how to keep in touch with people. Or see the point in doing that until it is too late.
I had a few mates in high school and college that I actually liked to hang out with. (Sort of. I am a terrible hanging out material. ) Then high school ended, college too, and I just lost them on the road, never to see them again. I admit, I met a few of my high school classmates over the years, brief encounters that can be resumed in a few questions I get asked. What have you been doing? You work at school now? What do you teach? Have you heard anything about the others? To which I answer, sincerely, Fine, yes, English, no. And that is it. Because you will not catch me ask them anything about their lives. Not that I wouldn’t want to know. Or that I don’t know it is the polite thing to do. I know most of the social norms.  I just don’t ask people things like that. I don’t even know why.
Recently, I do not recall the circumstances, I befriended a former college mate on a social network. It should have been a happy occasion. I finally got in touch with her after a while but we have never talked, I mean actually talked, apart from occasionally commenting on pictures or wishing her Happy Birthday and her thanking me. Why is that? Why am I like that? The same happened with another college mate that found me on the same social network. It is like building a house you never live in. You have a chair and probably, but not necessarily, a table in it but you never, ever go to that place. Don’t let anyone live in it either. You just have it.  Or having that drawer full of stuff you just don’t want to throw out.

I admire people who manage to keep in touch with childhood friends. Who insist on keeping the connection alive even if distance comes in their way, even if the paths they are on rarely intertwine. I suppose it is not that difficult if you are wired that way. I keep in touch with my primary and grammar school desk mate and, back then, closest friend, but only because she happens to be my neighbor and I don’t exactly have a choice, nor an excuse not to. I can tell her things I wouldn’t tell many people but there is a limit. And if I or her moved from the neighborhood to a far away place we would never speak again. Not because of her, because of me. Because this is how I am wired.

I have recently experimented, however,  keeping in touch with people. I am terrible at it because of my tiny, itsy-bitsy social awkwardness problem. It is very possible that all this is just in my imagination but I doubt it. Has it ever happen to you to feel, even if just a little bit, uncomfortable with the people you know?  And, at the same time, feel perfectly fine in the company of strangers?

As far as classmates I haven't seen in years, I prefer to remember them as they were back then. Life has a funny way of changing people, not always in better versions of them.  I guess it is a good thing  I will not have children of my own because I could never stand the transformation from the relatively innocent life of a child to that of an adult. I find it difficult to imagine my students growing up, having a family of their own and all that. It is inevitable, I know that, but it doesn’t make it less weird for me.

That is why I do not want to meet people I left in the past even if I would love to know how they are doing. From afar. After all, what is in the past must remain there. We should focus on somehow keeping the present.  And put some effort into the future.