Heavy Lifting

“Hey-- how are you stranger? Been thinking about you lately and wondering how you are doing. Facebook is strange. For some reason you haven't been showing up in my feed for the past few years. I hope all is well.”

This is the message I got from an old friend out of the blue last week. We haven’t said a word to each other since NYE 2015/2016. I vacillate between letting silence be my reply and trying to craft a delicate response to tell her that I unfriended her almost a year and a half ago. Apparently she still hasn’t noticed. 

I've unfriended people for a variety of reasons over the years. Mostly it's just because we never talked. I have a similar philosophy throughout all areas my life. Come the New Year, I usually clean house; clothes and belongings I didn't need, want, or use in the previous year go to people who obviously need them more than me. My friend list gets edited, usually shedding a half-dozen or so for similar reasons. I mean, I’m not taking attendance here, I don’t need (or want) a minute by minute recounting of anyone’s life, but if we go a year without a comment, a PM—something—what are we clinging to?

One guy, David, got axed for the one-sided nature of our friendship, as I tired of doing all the heavy lifting and then getting blown-off on the thrice-annual occasions that I suggest getting a beer. We worked together for three years at the same company, got laid off from there on the same day, and started our own construction companies within weeks of each other. I even hired him to come work for me when his folded up. All in all, we’d known and worked with each other for nine years, and over that time I’d loaned him tools and money to keep his business and household afloat, empathizing with the struggles of a business owner trying to make his way in the brutal world of construction contracting.

One day in 2016, about four months after I’d started with the University, David called me up to get some help filling out an application for the local school district that had some essay questions on it. I essentially dictated the answer to him over the phone, as I’d had a similar question when I was applying at the University, typical diversity stuff. Later that same day, a contractor whose work I supervised at the University called me up to get a professional reference for an entirely different application that David had in the pipeline. I gave a strong recommendation that landed him the job. On the phone, the contractor even said that he had David in the ‘maybe’ pile until he talked to me. 

Forty-five minutes later—not knowing that the contractor had called me or what I’d said to get him the job—David cancelled our planned get-together for that mythical beer just twenty minutes before we were to meet at a dive called The West End. He lobbed some lame platitudes about “next time” at me, to which I offered no objection. Unbeknownst to him, I kept that meeting at The West End and proceeded to delete/block him on every conceivable communications platform as I enjoyed a shot of Jaeger and a Twisted Meniscus beer in the warm sunshine. What was I clinging to? 

I just got a request for a professional reference and skills endorsement from him recently. It turns out I forgot to block him on LinkedIn, so I had to push yet another virtual button to finish excising him from my life. Oh, the humanity! 

Aside from my yearly Fb housecleaning, I mostly I just unfollow people, rather than unfriending them. I don’t want to lose track of them, I’d still like to be able to check in, wish them happy birthday, drop them a line from time to time. After all, I don’t dislike them, it’s just that the one-note song they're playing gets tiresome. Often, I actually agree with them, but can't stand the monotony of the subject matter or the hysterical shrieking of the opinion. There are volumes on the knob other than 11. Maybe we could use our inside voices?

Of course, Fb doesn't alert you when someone unfriends/unfollows you, which I think is for the best. If you don't notice their absence, how close were you to begin with? Whereas if you got the rejection notice you might actually mistake hurt feelings for giving a damn in the first place. I’m sure a few people have unfriended me over the years, unbeknownst to me. I only know of one, and when I discovered her reasoning I was glad to be shut of her. I don’t need that kind of crazy in my orbit.  

When it comes to actually unfriending someone important to you—not just an acquaintance or workplace proximity associate, as the inimitable Ron Swanson would put it —it’s a bit trickier. The unfriended friend that reached out to me this past week, thinking it odd that she hadn’t seen me much on Fb in the past few years, still hasn’t noticed that we aren’t friends. I didn’t block her like I did David. I just unfriended her, because doing so represented something more consequential to me than shedding a fairweather friend. This was someone that mattered to me once. 

But there are certain events in every person’s life that demand a response from your friends. A marriage, birth of a child, death of a loved one. Hell, even a new job should be worth a nod. After one such event came and went for me last Spring without a word from her, I was disheartened. Such that I turned a dispassionate eye to the years of our interactions and correspondence and finally saw what I hadn’t wanted to.

 

Although we’d spent a number of years commiserating about everything from moving, having kids vs. not having them, and the onset of our Autumn years, it was obvious that I was doing all the heavy lifting. Every few months I would initiate a conversation and then wait days or weeks for a response. I sent a birthday greeting in 2014 and another in 2015, and literally heard nothing in between. If it was to be, it was up to me, and that’s no way to live. So what was I clinging to?  

The answer was, of course, that I was holding fast to cherished memories of youth. But that seemed to be all that was left to us, and I decided that I'd rather hold those memories inviolate than see them diminish under the weight of neglect. If there's to be no contact, I prefer it to be for lack of connection than a lack of interest. I bear no ill will—God knows I haven’t the right. Things just are what they are. 

This is what I’ve got so far:

“Dear So-and-So

The reason you haven’t been seeing me on Facebook is that I unfriended you almost a year and a half ago. I suppose the fact that it’s just now come to your attention says as much about the reasons why as anything could.”

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Maybe that’s enough.