Aidan’s Hometown Honey
Fucking social networking sites are ruinous. RUINOUS! Hours of my life I will never get back, wasted on mundane tidbits such as finding out where the guy who almost asked me to Junior prom is hanging out these days. (DC, in a hospital pretending he’s George Clooney, if you must know.)
Last month, I came across Aidan’s profile. You know, Aidan from the girl stalker series. Seeing his goofy profile pic wasn’t a punch in the gut, more of a quick shock. I noticed he listed himself as single. So he didn’t stay married to the woman who inspired the postcard I received in 2003 announcing his nuptials on the front. On the back, he carefully wrote ”sorry ladies, I’m taken.” To this day, I wonder if he just sent out a stack of identically lettered postcards to the women from his past. If so, that would be awesome.
But back to social networking, though it pains me. I glanced down through Aidan’s handful of friends and his comments. I should have anticipated that a sucker-punch to the gut was in my future. Anyone who spends more than a passing moment poking around in the past is bound to get sucker-punched in the gut. I’d completely forgotten Aidan’s on again off again long distance girlfriend. Whiny, demanding, dramatic Hannah. I never even met her, but I had seen pictures and heard plenty about her and worked way too hard to get Aidan to cheat on her with me.
So while Aidan’s profile bored me, I was dying to learn more about Hannah. Her profile was private, sadly. But her username left an easy trail to a series of blogs about her journey as a recovering alcoholic. I was absolutely ready to judge the crap out of her for using recovery as a new way to carry on her drama filled attention whoring. A series of blogs? How TACKY! Having never met the woman, I am OF COURSE an expert on her personality defects and shortcomings. And I know firsthand how tacky blogs are, after all.
Reading through her archives, I was struck by how similar we are. We’ve got a number of the same character flaws, defense mechanisms, and weaknesses. We probably would have HATED each other had we gone to college together and I can’t really articulate why. Well, there is that whole me throwing myself at her boyfriend thing, for starters. But regardless of how we might have hypothetically interacted as late adolescents, dropping into her life undetected, 11 years after the last time I ever laid eyes on Aidan was weird. It’s weird that I’m curious about her. It’s weird that I know intimate details of her life and she probably never knew that I existed. I remember leaving Aidan’s apartment one morning, long after he and Hannah broke up but long before they settled into a friendship. Just as I was saying goodbye to the last of his roommates, the phone rang. “AIDAN! IT’S HANNAH!” another roommate yelled. I perceived (or perhaps I willed myself to perceive) a touch of sheepishness from Aidan’s roommate as I left, but I wasn’t embarassed. I didn’t care about this woman who lived 6 hours away and chose her college based on their ability to board her horse. She and I would never meet. As far as I was concerned, she might as well not exist.
Today I went back to Hannah’s blog. She’s written about a book on spirituality that I recently came across and loved. In fact, she typed up a quotation from that book which I posted above my desk this morning. Weird. Scrolling back through her recent archives, I came across an entry about a friend who had visited her last month. A friend who came in from England and who was going through a divorce. A friend who spent his entire visit with her drunk and sad. “This could be Aidan, it totally sounds like Aidan,” was all I could think as I read the entry.
So I can’t unring this bell. I’m worried about Aidan, but I can’t exactly e-mail Hannah and say “Hey, you don’t know me, but I fucked your high school/college boyfriend senior year. Is he the one who was visiting from England all drunk and shit? Just curious. Oh, by the way, we have SOO much in common. TOODLES!” I’m such a gross cyberstalker.
