I have a photograph / Preserve your memories / They’re all that’s left you

–“Old Friends/Bookends,” Simon & Garfunkel

After adding a couple of co-workers, I noted that I had 1,833 friends on Facebook. Some of them are close friends, others are old classmates, and most are acquaintances from the industry I work in. A few others are relatives whom I don’t know but have the same last name as I do. Recently, I read a Tweet from my brother, who was cleaning out his Facebook list. 250 friends deleted, he typed. I thought it was a great idea, but a lot easier to do when you’re a student. In the industry I work in, where so much depends on egos, the simple act of unfriending someone can spell social disaster.

Not that it really matters. I have no problem admitting that I have only a handful of good friends; others mostly fall under the “People I’m friendly with but don’t consider true blue friends,” because I know that few relationships can stand the test of time and space. Recently, someone whom I considered one of my best friends unfriended me on Facebook because he didn’t want to see status updates and photos of me with my boyfriend. Okay, it wasn’t so funny then, but somehow, I know we’ll be hanging out and having burgers while watching How I Met Your Mother reruns before the year ends. Other friendships, however, aren’t as easy to mend.

Last year was one of the toughest periods of my life, and I went a little crazy trying to figure things out. It ended with me breaking up with my best friend/boyfriend (not the same guy mentioned above) and spending maybe half the year crying buckets of tears for all too many reasons. It also led to some good things, like starting this blog early this year and applying to grad school (and consequently getting accepted a few months later), but for the most part, a lot of things were left in ruins by the time 2009 blew out of town. And some of that included ties with old friends.

There are some ties that can easily be reconnected once you share a cup of coffee and a slice of cake on a lazy afternoon.  But some are beyond repair, like brittle crystal glasses carelessly manhandled too many times. Last year also proved to be a tough one for an old friend, someone whom I had affectionately referred to as “the tee to my hee” for many years. Due to circumstances and mistakes backed by pride and neglect, we just stopped being the good friends that we once were. I’m pretty sure it was because she felt I wasn’t honest with her about an important issue, while I felt that she was judging me. It was a vicious cycle that went on and on.

Oh, we never really fought or had a falling out. There was no single incident; we just stopped hanging out and talking. One day, I woke up and realized that I could’ve died and she wouldn’t have been one of the first to know. Information about each others’ lives was a privilege we both learned to withhold from each other; as a result, we became strangers.

So over Christmas, I was feeling a little sentimental and wrote a long letter. Poured my heart out in handwritten pages that left my hand cramped for a couple of hours after. After she read it, we sent each other a bunch of text messages that made me feel better about things, and that there was still hope.

It’s been almost half a year since we promised to fix things and have that cup of coffee. After a few Facebook messages that didn’t lead anywhere, I’ve given up. I spent months reading her status updates and “I miss you, I have so much kwento, we should hang out soon” wall posts to other friends. The folly of Facebook is that it’s open to the public, and sometimes, the things you don’t want to know are right there for you to see. But sometimes, those things you don’t want to know are the things you should know, so that’s that. She had time for everyone and everything else, and I clearly wasn’t on the priority list.

So tonight, I just got tired of trying and threw in the towel. No crying, no confrontation, just silent acceptance that sometimes, you really don’t get what you want, no matter how hard you try. I don’t know what she’ll say when she reads the note I sent her on Facebook, but somehow, the answer had already been around for months. We both knew it; maybe we just didn’t want to accept it, for fear of letting go something old and familiar.

I don’t believe in burning bridges. However, this had been something that had been bugging me for months, for the past year. It hurt to think of the way things were, and I had no closure. I was the only one holding on to the scraps of that friendship, and it somehow felt worse being on the fringes of that friend’s life rather than not being in it at all, because I could still see glimpses of what I was missing, or what I had been part of before. Maybe I’m doing her a favor; maybe I’m doing myself a favor. Right now, I really don’t know because I just want to stop feeling this way and I don’t know how else to end it. The bad thing is that I still hope, knowing that there’s very little to base that hope on.

T.S. Eliot was right: the universe ends not with a bang, but a whimper. Many friends come and go without our even realizing that they left in the first place. I suppose this is one of those times.