What Fresh Hell is This?

I got lost in some seriously messed up rabbit hole within Facebook over the past couple of days.

It starts, as it always does, innocently enough.

Step One: Dawn Forgets about Facebook because she almost never remembers to go ON Facebook and check anything. She could be 1) walking around Montreal in fancy rainboots taking pictures; 2) reading graphic novels in the sunshine in her bed 3) figuring out other ways to avoid writing her Methodology Comp including, but not limited too: Cross Stitch, Deciding to Make a quilt out of vintage Chenille Squares and spending hours looking at these vintage chenille squares online, writing to a rug hooking expert in Nova Scotia to buy kits, perusing Etsy for hours on end bookmarking "favorite" artists that she will someday buy art from, hanging out on the "BinkyBunny" forum chatting about rabbits ( I shit you not, I do this), checking my ratio on some private torrent groups to which I belong, or last, but certainly not least...checking Perez Hilton a couple of times a day.

On Fridays, I get extra excited because a new FreakAngels issue gets published, so I always rush to read it.


Step Two: Dawn writes something on her blog that automatically gets published to her Facebook Feed. This is good as it just DOES this with no additional effort. It is also good because it allows her friends and the family members to whom she still speaks to know what is going on in the Hobbit Cave of her life.

Step Three: Friends and Family Comment! This reminds Dawn that, Holy Shit!, she has a Facebook page and maybe she should get off of her ass and respond to the people she genuinely LIKES in her life.

And here is where it goes terribly, terribly wrong.

Step Four: Dawn goes to the Facebook page and starts poking around. "Oh", she thinks,"I wonder how that person listed on my 100 friends list is doing, I should pop over and check them out". She pops over and sees a Name listed as a Friend of THAT friend and thinks, "I am pretty sure I KNOW that name....I wonder if it is who I think it is...." and clicks on over onto THAT page. At this juncture, it is safe to assume that the next Four hours are going to be spent meandering from page to page, looking at pictures in peoples albums.

Many times, it is Nice to see Friends. How they have changed, their husbands, wives, life partners, children, parents, brothers and sisters you recall from 20 years ago.

And then you click on a photo album, and there it is. A past that you were part of, but not part of. A past where you recall being friends with Many of the people pictured, but are noticeably absent from all of those pictures. Maybe your high school boyfriend appears like some kind of Dickens Ghost, replete with Chains a-rattling, before you and you feel the same surge of rejection when he dumped you after 5 years of dating, the same hurt as you had to redefine your life and most of your in-common friends seemed to choose Him. Except for the one who waited until the Boyfriend had dumped you so he could make his move to fuck you, first literally then more figuratively, of course. But That particular one, pictured in these photos, is remembered fondly by the friends. You however, remain absent.

If you are Dawn, you mope for a day. You may even chat at length with a friend who grew up in Europe to explain this tangled personal purgatory you have submerged yourself within. This friend will mock you mercilessly, and deservedly so. It is, as my daughter would say, Ree-donk-ulous for you to go wallow in a bath of 22 year old photos, feeling aggrieved and wronged.

"They didn't know you then and they sure as hell don't know you now, Dawn. Whatever recognition you are looking for can never be gotten and whatever apology you want is never going to be had, and even if it Was, they wouldn't mean it"

And here is where Dawn splits into the two. Logical Dawn KNOWS this. Logical Dawn wants to smack the ever-loving shit out of Emotional Dawn when she brings out the sack cloth and ashes and begins her self flagellation down memory lane. At the very least, Logical Dawn thinks she should just set a bottle of vodka in front of Emotional Dawn let her have a good cry and a hella hangover and be done with it. In fact, reminds Logical Dawn to Emotional Dawn, you were kind of a surly bitch during High school...Many of those people, you were not particularly NICE to. You were extremely wrapped up in your boyfriend, and when you weren't naked in his bed taking advantage of the last of the Pre-AIDS, only on the Pill dayz, you were wildly protective about who could be around the apartment. You were, in short, kinda a be-yotch. A Pretentious Be-yotch.

Emotional Dawn stares, quite balefully I assure you, at Logical Dawn.

Logical Dawn refills the glass, this time with the good dark Rum and a lime slice.

"No wandering off the fucking path.", she states.