Try As One Might

    Forty six years ago... (I'm always writing about my past. So be it. The past continues in me.) ...I began in earnest to keep my pledge to someone, to set them as free as my heart was capable of doing, and to never cross their path. That rule was only bent on four occasions (three at the insistence of my psychologist, and the last one totally by accidental happenstance). Save for those four exceptions, this individual's life and mine have never crossed.

    I have tried my best, never to darken their day, but now and then our worlds indirectly touch. A few years ago (I may do a backdated post) I stumbled on a Facebook video clip taken in 2017 where the camera swished past this unexpected someone in a pan. Its motion blur did not prevent me from instantly recognizing them. Bump!

    Now, tonight Facebook strikes again!

Redacted to guarantee privacy.

    You see, apart as we two are to each other, she and I still sporadically share many of the same long-time acquaintances. 

    This makes befriending old colleagues online difficult, as I never know who actively, to this day, keeps in touch with with the woman I am doing my best to avoid. The one I call "She". This was the case in the 2017 video incident, wherein I was considering sending a Facebook Friend Request to a past acquaintance having completely overlooked the probability of her own ongoing friendship with him. 

    Surprise, surprise, smack in the video of his I was naively checking out, there she was, front and center, among the videotaped group of guests gathered at his house to celebrate Christmas! Although I should have, I did not see that coming. Talk about a blindside! I still recall the hair-raising shock I experienced!

     Alas as an unintended result of my promise to her, I subsequently had to pass on requesting my former acquaintance's friendship, seeing as she was still involved in his life. Not to have done so would have violated the conditions of my self-imposed exile.

    This time however, it was the algorithm at work, and not my slip-up that bumped our worlds for the present.once again.

    Currently, I have a longtime Facebook Friendship with, my former roommate and mentor from the past. We met fifty four years ago and have always remained in touch. Later on, after he married, he also became a family friend of "She" - her children and his were fast, San Francisco playmates back in the day. (This by the way, was the basis of my near run-in with her at his house in 1991 - the last occasion where my standing rule was bent, albeit by accident. Unawares, I had come to visit his daughters; unaware, she had come to drop off her sons.) 

   His daughters are also Facebook Friends of mine; one of them, very recently.

   Well, it didn't take long then, for the social media site to put things together, and shortly make a friend suggestion on and of its own:

    Tonight, I was just asked if I would perhaps know and like to connect with the son of "She', the younger of her two boys and middle child of three. The younger daughter of my former roommate was his childhood playmate. Again, I should not have been surprised. 

    Yikes!

    Be assured, I will not request to befriend him, I will keep clear, nor use him or his account to learn anything about "She". I will not ingratiate myself nor will I drop my current associations - all these people are innocent - but I will conduct myself with a measured amount of caution and prudence, from this time forward.

    If this female significant and I ever are to run into each other, it must be by accident, or by herr wish and instigation, and not through any machination on my part.

    So much folderol some would say, but then again, she's been able to build and live a life completely free and clear of me. 

    I keep my word.

     Solemnly.