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Tag Archives: Friends

Confessions of a Facebook “Creeper”

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Heather Irwin in Seeking Life Now

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Art, Childhood, Depression, Experience, Facebook, Forgiveness, Friends, Friendship, Growth, Healing, High sc, Invisible, Journey, life, Life Lessons, Memories, Memory, Nostalgia, Progress, Reflection, Reflections, Regret, School, Teachers

I admit it. I search for people all the time who aren’t my friends on Facebook. Usually, this happens during bouts of nostalgia when I find myself thinking about the people with whom I grew-up and wondering where they are, what they are doing, what they look like and how happy they appear.

I want to compare where I am, what I’m doing, what I look like and how happy I am with my childhood friends. I am always relieved and slightly joyous when I see that there has been weight gain, wrinkles, weariness…good. It’s not just me.

There are many people with whom I wish I had kept more regular contact. People with whom I am no longer “friends” – not even on Facebook. Sometimes I creep these people to see what life is like for them. I did this yesterday and spent a considerable amount of time looking at a few childhood friends and I was genuinely glad to see how happy they appeared. I was pleased that they had experienced adventures, travel, fun, love and beauty.

I considered sending a few friend requests, but got lost in thoughts of how it would be perceived by these people. I suffered from depression for most of my time in high school. This was before depression was really understood, talked about or treated. But, the biggest casualty of my depression was my social life. I withdrew from all of my friends and lost most of those relationships. One of the biggest hangers-on of this time period is embarrassment. I feel embarrassed all the time about how I was and I assume that people remember me in a negative light.

I was moody, judgmental, shy, confused, lonely and lost.

During these years my FB posts would have be the kind that you just get tired of seeing so you block the person so you don’t get the constant drone of negative status updates in your feed.

When I think about these years I am always overwhelmed with sadness for the many memories I have about stupid things I did as a result of my state of mind. I’ve been working on forgiving myself, and giving that girl a chance to heal and find acceptance; strangely, creeping on Facebook kind of helps with this. I’ve managed to ‘rekindle’ a few of these lost relationships and they have been extremely meaningful to me. Every time I send a request to a long, lost, friend and then we message back and forth a bit, and eventually just start to share life through the regular news feed, it helps normalize what feels like an extremely polarizing time for me.

I wish I could sit down with all of my old friends and have an open discussion about those years, explain what was going on in my world, express my regret for how I may have treated them, share my sorrow for all the lost time and then make-up for some of that time and move-forward as friends again.

My mind is full of many happy memories with them. I remember hours and hours of time spent together, laughing, talking about boys, playing stupid games, sleepovers, doing makeup, playing sports, passing notes in school…I see snapshots in my mind of us together on hammocks, acting cool at school dances, playing flag football, flirting and silly things like stuffing our shirts with balloons. The memories are full and rich.

But, then there are years where the memories are filled with pictures of school dances, football games, pep rallies and lunches filled with all these faces growing and enjoying life—but mine is not with them. These memories haunt me like shadows. Life was happening all around me, but I wasn’t in it.

So, I creep on facebook. I try to fill-in some of the gaps. I reach-out. I rekindle. I make progress.

I am so thankful for those friends with whom I’ve managed to reconnect because, the truth is, the folks with whom I grew-up really do mean a lot to me. They were the people that helped shape me into who I am today. They were my original cheerleaders, challengers and role-models. They were my squad, my family, my community. They exist in my memory as a deep and vast resource of life, joy, sorrow, lessons-learned, new experiences, comfort and friendship and I am so thankful for the ability to creep into their lives now and get a little piece of what once was.

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The Power of Friendship

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by Heather Irwin in Seeking Health Now, Seeking Life Now, Uncategorized

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Tags

Friends, Healthy Eating, Mindfulness, Positive, Self-Talk, Weight Loss

Every once and awhile I get a message either on my blog, or sent to me from a friend via a private message, that lets me know that people appreciate me sharing my story, my struggles, my triumphs and my thoughts.

These messages mean the world to me and I know that I need to do better at keeping up with it.

However, in the spirit of my burgeoning philosophy of self-love and self-care, I acknowledge that it is an area in which I need to do better, but I’m not beating myself up for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I am totally tempted to beat myself up for being so slack, lazy, lame, selfish and not getting up and putting the effort in…(see how easily all those words came to me…) BUT….I’m turning it around and telling myself exactly what I would tell someone else: ‘It’s ok. You’ve been going through a lot and you’ve been doing your best. Don’t be so hard on yourself. One step at a time.”

In fact, that’s another life lesson I am finally beginning to understand. All my life I have been able to give others greater support, encouragement, advice and patience than I give to myself. So, I’ve been practicing this thing where, when I notice negative self-thoughts arising, I pretend that it’s a friend talking to me and I tell myself what I would say to them. And, when I say that, I don’t mean just the pleasant, fluffy, things, but the difficult things as well.

I have a close friend who has also said some pretty tough things to me when I needed to hear them. Having friends who can speak the truth to you, in love, when you need to hear it is important as well.

I have had a difficult time making new friends since we moved countries and I am only just beginning to understand how important good friendships have been in my life. Good friends accept us for who we are while not letting us remain who we are. Marriage does the same, as does being a parent, but the problem with familial relationships is that they become too personal. There’s more baggage that comes-along with it all. When a friend talks it just feels less…complicated.

And so, I am learning to be a friend to myself. Also, to really try to embrace the friendships that I have and reach-out to them more. That’s why I write. 

Thus, as I am sitting here, writing, eating a bowl of chips and a jersey milk chocolate bar, my friend is saying to me: ‘Ok, you did that. Now, move on. The next time you put something in your mouth, be sure it’s something that really feeds your body and makes you feel good about yourself. You deserve that.” (Btw…it’s also a reminder I received from a friend today, so THANK YOU!).

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