The Cat's FB Page

Calypso

So there I was, trying to get into Calypso’s FB page to delete it.  Why does my cat have a FB page?  Exactly.  Why does my cat have a FB page?  

Anyway, I couldn’t remember the password, so requested a new one, but Yahoo told me Calypso’s email account didn’t exist.  Sensible folk.

That seemed the end of the matter, except that a FB log-in page popped up.  Ever the fat, dumb and happy soul that I am, I hit ‘enter’ and expected to be inside Calypso’s page.

Wow, FB!

Instead, there it was, my deactivated human FB account with a Christmas profile photo.  In reality, I’d logged onto a website, but psychologically, I’d opened a door that’d been closed for three months.  I was alone in a secret place without anyone knowing it.  

I walked round the virtual room, picked up dusty objects, read letters from people who’d been daily present in my life until I shut this door, a door they’d disappeared behind .  I looked through my friends list.  All good people.  Very few who were still active in my life. 

Real friends.

And so I defriended at will, leaving only people who’d stuck with me outside FB, plus a few I couldn’t quite let go of yet, until only thirteen friends stayed. 

Nev, on Catfish, says if a profile doesn’t have 100 followers, it’s not real.  But that’s not what I felt when I looked at those 13 names, my friendly coven.  That list seemed very real to me.  These were people to whom I mattered, or who at the very least, mattered to me. 

Giving w/o reciprocity.

It’s taken a long time to understand that people I admire and enjoy but who don’t reciprocate, aren’t really my friends, regardless how much they accept of what I offer them.  And obviously, based on the fact that among those 13 names are people who stayed behind the FB door, I haven’t fully learned that lesson.  But 13 names is a start.

In terms of society, that’s a 20^th century lesson, one that maybe won’t survive the 21^st century.  There’s no qualitative message in that.  People adapt, connect, make reality out of new things, discard the reality of the past.  Me, I’m definitely a 20^th century realist.  An anachronism?  Perhaps.  But life only works when you pay attention to what’s true for you.

Holding onto what's true.