I signed up for Facebook yesterday.
I was just perusing Jaime's account and wanted to check up on the Indian Brook summer camp 70th reunion. It's the camp that I went to as a child and then worked at for 14 years. It's the place that made so much of 'me' who I am. especially the parts that I really like.
There were all these posts of people that were talking about their time there and coming back for the reunion. I must have recognized or known at least 80% of the folk on there and those that I didn't were talking about things that I knew and loved. I got all twitchy and energized remembering that time in my life and the importance that place held.
There were fellow campers, fellow staff members, women that I had mentored, women that had mentored me, even a few ex-girlfriends on there as well.
I wanted to connect to that.
Without even thinking about it I opened up an account.
It was so easy. And then it started. I had friend requests and joined groups and was getting email notifications. They were mostly from people that I'm in touch with regularly now anyway but then there started to be friend requests from folks that I haven't talked to in months or even years.
I'm not talking about hundreds but more than 30 and then it hit me.
I'm different.
I'm so different and I don't even know where to start telling people that.
I tell myself this story of how Facebook connections go and it's either just checking in, or, the random exclamations of the mundane or even remarkable,
AND
"wow, so great to hear from you. What have you been up to?"
I can't handle either right now.
And while I'm not deactivating my account right away, I can't do it. I don't live there anymore.
There's very little that's mundane in my day to day. There are regular occurrences for sure but each one is directly attached to my different life.
Our school program is an 'early intervention program'. Each meal is... well, a tube feeding not a meal. Each spit up, each barf, each runny nose, they're all attached to Simon's condition. His heart failure. Cardiomyopathy.
How do I let folks know that? That I am attached. I am umbilically corded to Simon and his heart that is still working too hard/dependent on drugs to keep him the happy good looking kid that you see in pictures.
How do I let folks that I'm reconnecting with know in a short sentence/ paragraph that my life is one of the lives that doesn't even enter in their thinking when they wonder "Oooh, I wonder what she's been up to?"
Do they even wonder at all? Maybe that's just another story I tell myself right now.
In general it's not a good time to dip my toes into a pool that I can't swim in but certainly not this week. Simon's been sick with some kinda crazy post-nasal drip. For most of us it's no fun, for Simon it's even worse given that he's a boy that doesn't swallow much more than saliva anyway. For that last 48+ hours he's been spontaneously gagging and retching to the point of his eyes watering and face turning purple. This is alternated with some wicked coughing fits that are accompanied by a cry that can only be translated as "What?! What is this shit?! You cruel cruel world!!"
All day.
All night.
At least once every two hours but more like every 15 minutes. Sucks.
Simple math:
Very rough days and nights with Simon + reconnecting to a past and people from a million lifetimes ago= a truly messed up head/heart for Laura Fitch.
Jaime got the brunt of it last night when Simon was having a fit and I couldn't even be in the same room as him. I did have a good cry on the couch though.
So where to go from here. I want to be connected to all those people and that place AND I don't think I could feel farther away from the person I was when I was last in touch.
AND I can't even imagine how to start sharing who I am now....especially on Facebook where it feels like for the most part, it's so surface. Not really surface I guess but something so much faster and impersonal than what I think I can handle right now, with so many people. So very many.
How ironic from someone that used to stand up in front of hundreds of people leading camp songs/ workshops/and assemblies and now spends so much time solo (mit the little man) and wants connection.
Am I a wuss? I kinda feel like one. "Yeah, Laura Fitch was on Facebook for like a minute but she couldn't handle it."
Still, there's this guy to spend time with:
"Moms, I'm starting my own secret society"
"First order of business...more time with men for me!" (please see next set of photos)
Somewhere there is a fundamentalist having a heart attack
"Sure I love Texas G'Pa, you eat alligators there right?"
"It's a Grandpa and PopPop Sandwich,
who wouldn't be happy to be the filling in that?"
