There are times I am simply amazed at how caught off guard I can be, and how instantaneously I can recognize someone completely out of the blue!
I was on Facebook when on a whim, I thought to search out a name.* Many, many years ago this individual and I were friends. We met in 1968, and the last time we saw each other was in 1979. He was also in the circle of friends that included one particular person, but at the time I had found his account on Facebook, this had completely slipped my mind.
Curious to see what he nowadays looked liked, I clicked on a video. As he was addressing the camera being pointed at him, I would also have a chance to hear the sound of his voice once again. The occasion was the holidays, his interviewer was dressed as Santa Claus. Playfully, my old friend disavowed any responsibility for the video when the person holding the camera decided to pan the room.
Inexperienced at video, the pan was simply too fast, smearing the faces of the gathered guests asked as a group to say "Hi".
The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end! That motion blur, the camera went past, was none other than "She"! Despite the speed of the camera motion, the recognition was almost feral in its instinctive spontaneity! The alarms went off like fireworks within me - all at once! How could I have been so clueless?!
She was seated next to her husband with her son (I'm guessing) sitting beside her, on the floor.
Reality, with its iron boot, had just kicked me in the teeth! It only took less than half a second for my confidence to go splat!
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| The motion blur was increased for this freeze frame. |
A glutton for punishment, I had to replay the pan and freeze frame as best I could on the moment she swished past the lens, thus removing all doubt, as to my significance to her. I mattered nothing to this person's happiness. I was looking at a woman, resolutely content in her life, with absolutely no thought to or of me.
The pain was cold. It was hard. What little emotional armor or protection my feelings and frail inner ego had managed to built up over the years, came crashing down. My shields, each and every last one of them, were down, and suddenly defenseless, there was nowhere to hide and nothing to soften the blow.
Like that, I had no ego - evaporating in an instant with all my sense of self! A hollow of myself or a husk of myself would have best described me had the armor held, but with it gone, I was too! I simply vanished. Out of sight, out of mind, that was the naked truth of me, staring right back.
For a second time in a panic, I got out of the video soon after confirming my fear. Part a knee jerk response; part disbelief, and just as quickly as I could. Well, that's one Facebook Friendship I cannot entertain, I remarked to myself, much as I like this gentleman.
What a dolt I was, not to have seen that scenario coming! I thought I was more likely to stumble across this woman on Facebook, when I befriended her best friend or when I also friended her husband's first cousin. As I did not, something in my head thoughtlessly let down my guard.
An yet, despite the clear dangerousness of the situation I had just faced, I was also drawn to capture the video, yes, to return to the danger and record her image. Why? It is because of my other overriding instinct in wanting to hold on to whatever imagery there is of her, however happenstantial; however fraught with pain.
In that way, I'm hopeless, I guess, and helpless.
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However laudable I think my motive, however commendable I consider my rationale, the truth has just kicked me squarely in the teeth again. Fact is she's completely free of me no matter what I proffer to do or not to do for her. I'm just full of my own self importance because she could care the fuck less. I cease to exist long, long, long ago. I'm not saying that she's heartless, far from it, I'm just saying that I could never ever get it through my thick skull, that I simply didn't register at all to her. There just wasn't any feeling there. I was a total washout from the first - a no go.
*I am still in a moral quandary as to whether to disclose or tag any names, all of whom I know. My fear that doing so might make them discoverable to online searches. Yet at the same time I wish I could catalogue them for my own future memory and reference. On the one hand, I do not wish not have I the permission to betray their privacy, but at the same time their names mattered to me. They belonged to those who most counted in my life. These people were my friends and intimates. They were not blank nameless ciphers. The had impact, weight, and importance.
Maybe, I will run the risk. If there is a way in the settings to do so, I will try disable their search visiblity. We shall, forgive the unintended pun, see.
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