Bridges
I check my personal email infrequently. Partly, there's always so much junk in there that I don't. It just sits there. Partly, I work behind a computer all day answering email that I just don't want to answer anything else. With all this technology and ways to connect, I feel less connected and more lazy. If someone can't say it in 140 characters, I'm not going to even look at it.
I finally checked my gmail account and found a very amusing function of gmail. It saves all of the chat conversations. I could see chats I've had with people back in 2009, 2008. That feels like an eternity ago, and so much has changed since then. I have a whole new set of people I associate with. I go to different bars, have a different job (actually have a job), live in a different state, different city. It made me feel eerie, maybe a little guilty. When I Ieft Chicago, I jumped ship. Unlike a captain who stays to the end, I cowardly ran to save my own ass. It was for the better, but I did so by by setting a figurative blaze to make sure that I wouldn't or couldn't go back. I guess I've tried to erase or cherry pick the memories from Chicago, but with all this technology, I can't. It's still there, in the saved conversations in gmail, in the tagged photos on facebook. There are all the good times, charred from the blaze of a burnt bridge, and I can still see it all. It still wants me to remember the people I left. I can still fragmently lurk their pages, though I've long ago deleted them as friends. I can tell whether they're in relationships, if they've gotten married, if they have new jobs, if they've had babies, and other mundane facts. I can know all these things without ever having a conversation or trying to reconnect. Everything looks nice and glossy; I can assume they are happy, or at least happy enough to look happy on facebook (isn't that what facebook is for, to hoodwink others into believing we are happy?). It's nice for them, I guess. I've always had a vein of jealousy, so it causes discontentment in myself. I've never been very good at keeping up appearances. It's why I disappear so often, so you don't have to look at me as I struggle. Not that I want their lives, and maybe it's not actually jealousy, but guilt. Guilt that I can't cross back over the bridge without putting in a ton of work, that I can't just erase the unhappy parts and have everything be fine. It doesn't work like that.
I burnt the bridge for a reason. I can't go back, but I'm not sure how to go forward.
I finally checked my gmail account and found a very amusing function of gmail. It saves all of the chat conversations. I could see chats I've had with people back in 2009, 2008. That feels like an eternity ago, and so much has changed since then. I have a whole new set of people I associate with. I go to different bars, have a different job (actually have a job), live in a different state, different city. It made me feel eerie, maybe a little guilty. When I Ieft Chicago, I jumped ship. Unlike a captain who stays to the end, I cowardly ran to save my own ass. It was for the better, but I did so by by setting a figurative blaze to make sure that I wouldn't or couldn't go back. I guess I've tried to erase or cherry pick the memories from Chicago, but with all this technology, I can't. It's still there, in the saved conversations in gmail, in the tagged photos on facebook. There are all the good times, charred from the blaze of a burnt bridge, and I can still see it all. It still wants me to remember the people I left. I can still fragmently lurk their pages, though I've long ago deleted them as friends. I can tell whether they're in relationships, if they've gotten married, if they have new jobs, if they've had babies, and other mundane facts. I can know all these things without ever having a conversation or trying to reconnect. Everything looks nice and glossy; I can assume they are happy, or at least happy enough to look happy on facebook (isn't that what facebook is for, to hoodwink others into believing we are happy?). It's nice for them, I guess. I've always had a vein of jealousy, so it causes discontentment in myself. I've never been very good at keeping up appearances. It's why I disappear so often, so you don't have to look at me as I struggle. Not that I want their lives, and maybe it's not actually jealousy, but guilt. Guilt that I can't cross back over the bridge without putting in a ton of work, that I can't just erase the unhappy parts and have everything be fine. It doesn't work like that.
I burnt the bridge for a reason. I can't go back, but I'm not sure how to go forward.