Internet stalking is a strange part of modern life. High School reunions are no longer mysterious, ex’s can be tangibly and visibly obsessed over, and we can find connection with people who walked out of our lives years ago.
I haven’t thought about you for a long while. But a patient in the emergency room forced me to remember somehow and I thought back to our evening car rides, long conversations, and the copious amounts of ice cream we consumed together.
My instinct was to look you up – I had my phone in my hand in a second. There are so many ways to find people these days, I knew it wouldn’t take long. I thought, that pang of remembrance and sudden sorrow at a lost past will be soothed if I can just see how you’re doing.
But then I realized, it wouldn’t make me feel better. I know without confirmation that things didn’t get better for you. All the ways I thought maybe I could help, the things I said, never broke through your surface. You chose your path and it’s been destroying you, little by little.
And I can’t bear to watch you burn.
