Every once in a while, someone from my past will creep up into my mind and I will find myself scouring the internet for references to them.
Where are you working now?
Who are you loving?
The question that I always want to answer is a simple one.
Did I matter?
I find myself poring over the faces of people they have chosen in the years intervening. In the parenthetical space between knowing and unknowing. In the time it takes for a person to become emotional research rather than emotional expenditure.
There is a dusty old feeling to this motion. This knee jerk response. Something in my emotional DNA. Like whales migrating, I walk the pattern that is the cyclical absence and return of thoughts and feelings.
You come to mind.
I Google you.
I look at old pictures that show up. Sometimes I’m in them. I reflect on whatever masochism drew me to do this to myself.
I think about who I was when I was with you. I wonder who the people you are surrounded by are. What they are like. I wonder about the person you are loving the most. How they shift and change themselves to fit into the nooks and crannies of you that always need filling. How they pour themselves over the mold made of your flaws.
Do they thrill you?
Are you happy?
I worry my old loves like old wounds. Bruises that never get the chance to heal because of continual pressure. Blood that never dissipates. Scars that never lose their angry redness.
After I have looked at the last public picture. Perused the last blog entry or Facebook status, I sit back. I log out. And I let you fade.
Sometimes that makes the bruises look less angry. Sometimes the opening of old wounds relieves the tension.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
My questions never get answered, no matter the case. I want to know if I mattered. And I know it’s irrelevant. I know that, in the years that have passed between the first uttering of that question and this last riotous uprising, all the weight of whether I mattered has gone out of the question.
But I want to know.
So, when the mood strikes, I Google you. I search. And I find. And I wonder.
Modern Day Dirae 
Fabulously written and a felling that I guess many people would go through. I too once in a while go check out folks from my past on Facebook or LinkedIn and wonder what if. But then in the present I am happy and nothing is more important than that. Isn’t it?
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Sorry for the Typo – I meant ** Fabulously written and a feeling that I guess many people would go through..
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Thank you so much! I think this is something a lot of people do, regardless of whether they are happy or not. It’s a strange effect of the digital age. 🙂
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Oh my heart! I think I just lost myself in the beauty of your prose ❤ How poignantly you've sketched that feeling of yearning and yet tentatively held back on the feeling of restraint. Such delicate balancing of emotions!
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Thank you so much! I am so happy I was able to get you lost in this. ❤
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Lord save us from our curiosity and opening those old woulds and examining bruises with the Googlator. While I love social media, it sure makes healing hard when you can go back and gaze into their eyes and ponder the unknowable. Social media just seems to make it all worse. Beautiful post nonetheless. I feel your longing and ambivalence.
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I could relate to you so much it’s like I asked you to write this for me!
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Thank you! I’m so glad you feel that way! 🙂
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Such poignant and beautiful write…I think I just fell in love with you…your writing! 🙂
First time visitor and here to stay!
Aditi
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Thank you so much! ❤
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Such a poignant and beautiful write! Fell in love with this prose!
I think I’m visiting here for the first time, and you have a new follower!
Aditi
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