what good old days?

I'm sitting on my couch, aching from a jolt I suffered during yesterday's period of seemingly determined self-destruction, watching the mesmerising Russian Ark (a must see for fans of cinematic craft). Funny how the mind wanders. Instead of being lulled by the film as I normally am, I am perturbed. Disturbed. No, not disturbed. Occupied. This whole online life, it's a funny thing. The online presence I have is a funny thing. It's united me with friends and enemies, it's reunited me with old friends and it allows me to keep the old friends close, not to mention my family. What a great thing technology is. Happy days.

And then comes the day when people start finding you. The people you yourself wouldn't have gone looking for. The ones over whom you felt no pangs of regret having lost in the first place. People who you might even have fallen out with face to face. They come every now and then by email, like no time has passed, like we're all grown up now and should get on like adults. And I'm willing, in most cases. But I find myself annoyed by some; the ones who tell me they live in the same place and they do what their parents did and they have been as predictable as... as... the weather forecast in January (rainy, windy). I choose sometimes not to engage. And I begin to feel like a bit of a bitch by choosing not to respond.

What am I supposed to say? I'm decidedly not nostalgic for the good old days. There are parts of my past that I have reckoned with and don't wish to revisit for old-time sake. I find no warmth or refuge in the past. I don't long for the past. I am not the same person I was in primary school, in middle school, in high school, in university. I find intense disinterest in people who aim to drag me back to any of those days and relate to me as if I were still the foolish girl I once was. I was a foolish, foolish girl. I want nothing to do with her, or her friends (and those exceptions worth holding on to know who you are).

So I don't respond, but it doesn't keep me from wondering why some people think I should be delighted that an old acquaintance should suddenly appear and call themselves by the old familiar terms they used to be known as, as if they never grew up, never evolved and saw the world in a different light. I hate these static people, for some reason, and I feel resentful that they come looking for me.

Funny, huh?