I must warn you before I start that with this post you could say I am rather being cowardly. I’m hoping very few people read this blog though so it’ll be ignored by many people I know. If you are the person/people involved and you’re reading this, I am very sorry for not being straight with you in the first place.
As you may know I’m a bit lacking in the social skills department. Yes, things are improving very slowly over time but I still have my quirks. Seeing as I do naff all with my life at the minute I never thought I’d use a social network like Facebook. There’s not really much for me to post and while I know what it’s there for, I’m not sure what contribution I could make other than the odd “hello” and “how are you doing?”. I did join it eventually as I’ve made some friends through RLLMUK and the meets. I did originally have great apprehension about joining Facebook as I thought I might be found by someone from my school days. Why? Well I dropped off the radar to everyone who knew me and with good reason. Well, a good reason for me anyway, I didn’t want to admit I was a complete failure and that the anxiety and following depression had taken things over so much. I didn’t want to see the smirks on certain people’s faces as I told them what had become of me. I didn’t want those who really hated me enough to be able to get to me. I never felt like I had friends so I thought no one wanted anything to do with me. It was the reason I rarely left the house on my own, so I could avoid bumping into everyone I knew. OK, I left the house on my own to go into Sheffield for college and other stuff but my home town was off limits.
I had been on Facebook since November and I hadn’t had friend request from anyone I knew. At the beginning of June though, someone found me and at first I was shitting bricks. Yes, I know all about blocking people, yet I didn’t feel like I could. I felt, seeing as someone was interested and went out of the way to find me, that I should reply. I was also thinking this could be the stupidest thing I’d done online. I was potentially opening the floodgates for others and I’d be exposed to attack. Why would anyone want to contact me after so long and why now? Is there an ulterior motive to wanting to contact me? I didn’t see myself as someone that anyone who knew me would want to know anymore. In the end I did accept, answered the initial question of what I’d been doing and passed off a vague line about what I was doing as work. I don’t want to lie, so I neither told the whole truth, but I didn’t lie either. No catastrophe happened and life goes on as normal.
There is this strange, niggling feeling I’m getting though. As I said, I had now opened the gate to allow for anyone who knows this person to see me on their list and remind them I exist. Yet, I find myself not being relieved at the complete lack of others trying to contact me. I find myself feeling quite sad that they aren’t. I’ve searched this person’s friends list and looked at the profiles that I can, reminding myself of those I knew. I also find myself edging towards the “Add ### as a friend” button for some of them that I didn’t have bad memories of. Yet, I just don’t know what to say to them, I can’t think of how to start it and I’m still afraid of the responses. It’s been so long ago now that I just don’t know what’s going to happen and as you know I don’t like the unknown.
Is there some kind of bizarre longing of acceptance that I’m wanting from those that knew me from the past? Am I really wanting there to be someone out there that wants to know me from my past? I wanted to be left alone and now I don’t, what is going on in my head?
A few things have occurred to me since posting:
I may not have realised that most other people on Facebook don’t know what to say to old school friends either. Yes, there is an air of self-focus here and that is part of my problem. Not wanting to be the centre of attention yet being upset is a bizarre contradiction of what I’m like. I can see that it may look like expect the attention to be on me by everyone suddenly sending friends requests as soon as they see my name flash up on another person’s profile.