Friending and other Facebook Phenomena

I was a reluctant newcomer to FACEBOOK back in the day, August 8, 2008. 8/8/08 -- that was not intentional, but what the bleep? One day, I realized I had over 100 friends. Somehow, that was shocking. It's been a long time since I've been "Annie Social" (in seminary). I think I've become more of an introvert over time.

One day, I looked at that list of friends and realized I was not really friends with that many people. We go to church together, we went to school together, we met at a party, or someone thought we would have a lot in common.

One day, I realized I was using FB to process too much of my inner life to have that many acquaintances looking on. I also realized I could not really say I wanted to be friends with some people who perhaps were students at some distant past time, or maybe we had known each other in college, before I knew I was a Lesbian, and this would be juicy gossip to pass around the old circle of friends. Maybe we knew each other from times past that I had left not just geographically, but also spiritually, emotionally, and the like. Some ground is just too full of roots and stones to keep breaking your plow over again.

So, I unfriended a lot of people one day. I figured maybe if someone I unfriended really wanted to be considered friends, they would miss me and get in touch. And, happy to say, one person did that.

I've had some contact from long ago acquaintances who wanted to "friend" me. I feel ambivalent about it, so I just don't respond. There's something kind of rude about blocking someone outright. Maybe if I let the invitation linger, there might be some additional correspondence later on with some additional self-disclosure, explaining more about why being friends with me would be a good or helpful or just pleasantly friendly thing to do.

Sometimes I think I learned to be too guarded in the past. For so many years, as I was coming into awareness of who I was in terms of loving a woman, and deciding how political I wanted to be about that (very much, as it turns out), I wanted control over access to my private world. Turns out, others made their incursions. I've written much earlier here about how that worked, with being outed, with people passing along rumors and lies along with some of the truth, with people of faith turning out to be extremely cruel and stupid. Yea, verily, don't cast your pearls before swine.

A time came when I relinquished that control. But, in the Facebook world, with people showing up again after eras of life have come and gone -- and with the present being so full of what it simply IS every day -- matters that once were private, like coming out, are now passé to me yet shocking to others. Now, I find that same old pearl-casting is falling into the wrong trough.

Maybe I'm too self-conscious to be comfortable on Facebook. Or, rather, maybe it's that I want too much to have my life integrated and consolidated through all of these eras and changes. I want so much for it to have a story line, a narrative, a point.

Maybe everyone goes through radical changes and interruptions in their previously settled senses of what is normal. Surely, I'm not the only one who has allowed the messy, the unexpected, the shock of death, the coming home to self that is being gay, the snags and hooks of certainty that are embedded in a certain way of having faith, and the senses of essential self and essential desires to find meaning and purpose in ways that continue to bring unexpected and unconventional quasi-, parti-, non-, semi-resolution over time. And, I really hope that essential self and those essential desires will hit home with some, to have that feeling of settling down in easy chairs by the fire to catch up and be with each other, authentically.

Apparently, many people want the same. And, I really love the here-and-now information sharing that simply moves us all, even the trivial "I'm up now and blowing my nose" posts that say we're all just getting on with our days. Somehow, that number of friends keeps creeping up over 100. Not sure today, maybe around 125? I'm just going to let it be what it is.

See, I loved and love many of these old friends who keep showing up in my inbox, my request box. I wish to say, come on in, see what has been happening all these years. See what there is to see. Stay, if you like. Move on with me. See what Love has brought to me over the years. See what Living has taken, too. Be sad with me. Rage against the injustice with me. Celebrate the whole with me. I'll try to be as forgiving as I want you to be with me. There is no time to linger, it all changes so fast.

Facebook Friend Wheel

Facebook is fun. This morning I became a fan of Guinness. Actuallly, I became a fan a long time ago, but just now on Facebook. I wish all of my friends from every era of my life would join Facebook so we can keep in touch.

One product of Facebook, the Friend Wheel, is bugging me like a little itch one of the sides of my brain. [Wait a minute: the brain is rather round, but is divided down the middle; what if mine is like a brick, with six sides?] I can't figure out which side, but the itch is real. The Friend Wheel is cool, showing the connections among all of my friends.

If I think about my life in terms of eras, I actually have several. First is the Athens, AL, era, from age 0 to roughly 18 [Era I]. Then, there is the UNA era, ages 18-21 [Era II]; the Asbury era, 21-24 [Era III]; Hattiesburg, MS, Main Street UMC, 25-30 [Era IV]; Hattiesburg, MS, USM Wesley Foundation, 30-35 [Era V]; Vanderbilt/Nashville, 35-43 [Era VI]; Jackson, MS, 37-41 [Era VII]; Dayton, OH, 43-50 [Era VIII]; Indianapolis, IN, 50-present [Era IX].

That's a lot of change in a lifetime -- 9 eras -- but not extraordinary. However, as I look at this Friend Wheel, I see very little crossover among these eras of my life.

I think this would be a very interesting ethnographic tool of study. So far, my social network shows that no friends from my Athens era have come forward with me into subsequent eras. In the Athens era, roughly 1957 t0 1975, I can think of no friends now who picked up on the use of email and internet to stay connected. My brother uses email when he can get to the public library, but so far, he is not an internet user to the extent of joining Facebook.

The presence of a person on Facebook does not appear until the fourth era, roughly 1982-1992. This person has no connection to any other era. Another individual shows up from the Jackson, MS era [VII], and he also would fit into the Nashville/Vanderbilt era [VI], but so far, there are no friends on Facebook to link between him and me.

One crossover is visible to me. Two people link the two Hattiesburg eras, and one of those links to the present era.

Why should I expect any crossover at all between my life's eras? Taking into account that Facebook is new, and most of my current online contacts are not using Facebook, the friends I do have on Facebook are in distinct categories. My life's eras are also so divided geographically, that I have made a new start in a strange location, by myself, 8 times.

Some of the transitions between eras have been normal developmental transitions: leave home to go to college; leave college to go to graduate school; leave graduate school to a job; leave a job to go to another job or more graduate school. A couple of transitions have been traumatic: death of my spouse and radical change to a new place, job, new friends, loss of ties to the past; leave a miserable job situation to start over again, find love, move to a new home.

I guess this Friend Wheel is a bittersweet visual reminder that life has taken unforeseen twists and turns. It also reminds me that I am pretty resilient. I do wish for more connection among these eras of my life, to be able to share all of my collection of freinds with each other. There is also a wish that probably is not realistic, that life can look like a journey of continuity with roots in the past and wings toward a fullness of presence. The reality is more like a journey with departures, lengthy sojourns in strange lands, flights away into places of survival, and a lot of traveling without a map.

I have some pain in realizing that not all of my friends have come along with me, and that I have let some friends go, perhaps knowing that they belonged to an era, not to me, and that I belonged to an era or reason for them. A student once told me that we have friends for reasons and friends for seasons, but very few friends for life. The recognition of the reasons and seasons friends sometimes comes late, bringing a lot of pain. Trying to hold on to some friends who will not come forward with me pulls on something deep, unconscious, a longing for something of the self that will not be fulfilled.

Not everyone I love and value appears on the Friend Wheel; some appear on the Friend Wheel for different reasons. This way of staying connected is not necessarily "electronic", and therefore "shallow" and "artificial." Facebook and other social networking is something new, leading who knows where.

Arriving where I am now has nothing of the inevitable about it, except to know that I have learned to trust my heart. I love my home, and this huge collection of friends that now is visible in my Friend Wheel.