Tactile Friends

Old friends, new, they are all in my heart. I love Facebook sometimes; I catch glimpses of folks years later, and all I feel is love for folks from my past. I don’t get to touch or hear them; occasionally I feel their love in the small form of a ‘like’. We are more connected in the world that we have ever been, but is this screen that we are all glued to superficial, or it is authentic? I am able to visit close friends intermittently in Seattle, and give them the embrace that I so long to give. But there are far too many friends out there that I never will get to hold again. We have to embrace that we all continue with our lives, we send each other off into the world. I have yet to connect with a ‘friend’, of which I think of as real friends, not just digital companions, from my way distant past, and embrace their ageing bodies, hear their voice, connect with them one on one, truly. I will say that Facebook has served me in ways that seem intangible. I pulled a good friend from Georgia, inviting him to my RV for a place to stay, of which he has for two years now and has become a true brother. I am grateful and happy to feel virtually connected to my friends in the past, I just wish that is was all the more real.

I fell from the cliff of reality years ago; I was cut off drastically from all of my friends. Be it intentional on their or my part is unknown, but I was isolated, mentally ill, cast out, searching, swimming, surviving. I met my companion of 17 years and he has been the rock that sustained me. I have surfaced as a coherent and stable individual in the last seven years, I have built Facebook friends in wealth and numbers, and I can look into the vortex of blue screens that we all tap into, and actually imagine connecting with folks that I miss, missed, fell from their life without more than an absence of presence for years and years on end. I heard on the radio of a man who is having coffee with all of his Facebook friends one by one, checking them off of his list and traveling the country. Doors are opening for him, he is learning things he never thought possible, experiencing life to its fullest. I can only hope that one day this feeling of connection that we try to achieve with our computer dominated communication will become tangible on a level that we can feel and appreciate in our sensual and tactile world. Thank you friends; I hope to see you soon.