I <3 U 4-ever! (or until the next update)

I'm just about done giving a damn about a bunch of Facebook-related BS. Maybe sometimes, the past is better left in the past. I've been on Facebook for 5 years, and I've reconnected with a lot of people I probably would never have seen again if it weren't for FB. Some have been really worthwhile, some have been really horrible, and most haven't made much of a difference one way or the other. If I didn't hear from them again, I wouldn't notice at all.

A few of these FB friendships have grown into what I believed were serious relationships. They started on Facebook or at FB-related functions, and they all ended with the real-life equivalent of the PC blue-screen of death; utterly frozen with no hope of repair except for a REBOOT and complete restart (What did you lose? U should have backed your stuff up along the way fucko!)

These hyper-emotional, crazy-fast moving, and ultimately pointless affairs have all ended abruptly with one of us backing out on what appears to be a whim. It's like the spell is broken once it sinks in that there is a real-life, flesh and blood person behind the text on the screen; a human being, that can't be muted or channel-surfed away when the song that's playing gets played out, or when the story gets bogged down with too many open-ended plot-points.Things get weird when a character on your favorite show wants to know why you won't return phone-calls, or asks questions that don't have simple answers. Entertainment doesn't talk back and it never, ever gets mad at you; that's what real-life people do, not FB friends!

Eventually, each of these "relationships" have crashed without making a sound, leaving nothing behind but questions, self-doubt and emptiness. After months of intense (albeit mostly electronic) communication, what inevitably follows is complete and utter silence. Nothing meaningful at all. White noise and dead links. No substantial friendship, no real memories, not even a lousy T-shirt. Just a shit-load of bullshit smileys, posted songs and stale super-pokes. New and improved status: Game Over!

It's as if the normal rules of human relations don't apply to Facebook. Saying goodbye to a Facebook friend seems to be as simple as hitting 'delete' or in extreme cases 'block this person'. Even more unsettling is the invisible limbo of mutual polite non-friendship that exists between formerly tight FB buddies that haven't been brave enough to cut the virtual link by de-friending. I've had all of these done to me, and I've done them myself. These are virtual relationships, with none of the attachments that messy, real-life relationships carry. No need to explain, no need to apologize, no need to regret.
CTRL-ALT-DELETE.
It's that simple, and there's always a new, less compicated friend waiting for us at the click of a mouse.

I've always tried to be as real as I can be with my 'Facebook friends', and that may be my problem. We are nothing but another form of entertainment in an ocean of viewing choices, available to anyone with an internet connection and some free time on their hands. I'm afraid that I've put entirely too much time and effort into something that, in the end, is nothing more than a fancy video game and super-efficient marketing tool.

Here's what God wants me to know on this day:

If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, who would I care enough about to keep in touch with the old-fashioned way? And who would care enough to keep in touch with me?

Those are the people who matter, and I'll be sure to make that my default setting from now on.

Then again, I swear that I'm logging off for good! It wouldn't be the first time I've vowed to stop the vicious status-update cycle. Having said that, and despite my better judgement, the truth is that I'll prolly be back on tomorrow...

Hmmmm... I think I'll tweet that last part, hopefully it's not too long!

I went to a Catholic grammar school, and we used to ask the nuns all the time, "What is heaven like?"
After adjusting their habits squarely on their heads they'd say, "Imagine the best moment of your life, and times it by a million!"
I don't know exactly what they had in mind back then, but I'm pretty psyched about it now! I could swear that was EXACTLY the type of behavior that they told us led to the other place though! ;)))

Can exes ever be friends?

I'm friendly with most of my exes, but I wouldn't say we're friends. Friend is a word that's overused. Facebook friending might have something to do with it. A true friendship goes through ups and downs, it weathers storms and doesn't get deleted with a simple mouse click.

I am lucky to have some incredible friends that have stuck with me for years, through the hilarious and the horrible. They are the ones I know i can call when I'm in need of perspective, when I need some truth.

No bullshit, no games.

I don't think I could have that with an ex. There would always be the need to put a brave face on things. If a friend is someone you can tell anything that you're feeling to, then not being able to say something as important as "Sometimes I miss having you in my life" or "I don't understand what happened to us", makes being true friends nearly impossible. Silence would creep in, creating cracks which would eventually become uneasy chasms. Meeting half-way becomes an impossible feat.

I believe the stronger the passion during a relationship, the less likely that a real friendship is possible afterwards. It's as if a relationship, any relationship, has a finite supply of gunpowder. Most friendships develop over time and the store of powder is consumed slowly as the friendship grows. Even if occasionally tempers flare, they are extinguished long before the supply is gone. If not, then the friendship dies as so many do.

A passionate love affair is like a bomb, it changes everything when it detonates, and no one in the blast zone escapes unscathed. There's very little powder left once that bomb goes off. And it becomes really difficult to hear one another other from all the ringing in their ears. All that remains is to clean-up the mess, tend to wounds and hope that one day the ringing will stop, and you'll be able to hear the sweetness in each other's voices once again.

True lovers become best friends, even if only for a little while. When it's over, you tend to miss the friendship long after you stop missing the passion. The feeling that the other person knew exactly who you were and precisely what you need, is often the first and worst casualty of the big blast.

The hardest part of letting go of great love is accepting that you may never feel so sure again. After all, how many great loves are we allowed in a lifetime? Ask anyone that's been around a while, it's not a big number. The heart continues to beat, infinite in it's capacity to love... but great love is rare, and if sent away too often, it tends to keep a respectful distance. Be good to great love, I know i will.