Song of the day: Social Studies, Terracur http://vimeo.com/51597619
So I have a pattern when it comes to dating.
I basically online stalk, I will fully disclose this.
Though, in my defense, I have been a catfish victim (aka fallen for a false identity online). And once you see what is really behind the Oz curtain, you end up becoming an obsessive information gatherer, worried that the person you are communicating with is just another illusion. Plus in this day and age, with Facebook and Instagram, it makes it incredibly easy to view into the looking glass. Although, while this can inundate one with the overwhelming world of candid polaroid like photos that make everyone seem like a darling at heart (or a derelict, depending on how many booze shots one comes across), it can also open the nasty world of conjecture.
One of the things, that seems to keep popping up in this magical place of I-probably-shouldn't-know-about-this, are ex photos. Those glorious old photos that remain of the once burned out loves, beholden in all their I-once-loved-this-person-with-my-whole-being-eyes still shining through the photos. To say the least, they are incredibly uncomfortable things to stumble upon. They remind me of the Native American's that use to frequent my bookstore who would pretend to click a camera in my direction and joke they were stealing my soul. Of course I was 8, and believed anything that came out of their mouths. But seeing these photos, I am thoroughly convinced as an adult, that this is true.
Love stolen, for a moment, within a shutter click, and the remains littered over social media.
And with the litter comes the mind burning questions. Why did they break up? Where were they in that photo? Was she the one? Who broke up with whom? etc etc etc....and of course my imaginative mind, just runs amok at this point.
Now see, when I break up with someone, I go through this purging process. No, it's not like I am outside burning the remains in a metal trashcan. Though, sometimes these thoughts do go through my head. Ha. No. This is the 21st online century, I simply, delete them. I delete their phone numbers, I delete their emails, I unfriend, and unfollow, and so on and so forth. And if there is something that made it into the real world scenario, I simply collect every single scrap, and return it to them, most graciously mind you, so that I have nothing left.
My girlfriends often say I am crazy, that they like holding on to the paraphernalia. That they like to reminisce over the things that once were, or could have been, if only (dot dot dot). So they hold on to that teddy bear, those pair of earrings, that postcard, the seashell found, or the shirt that still smells like the ex. I, on the other hand, don't want to remember any of these things. Though, truth be told, I did hold on to some love letters from a Frenchman who use to hand sew me letters about his day...but he was French...and thus allowed to be a romantic AND a cad; and those letters are more of a cry of what I still expect, even if that sets up future men to fail, I still long for the day of chivalry and romance (and ok, a dash of cad). But this is not why a majority of females hold on to things from their exes, they hold on to them in the hopes that perhaps, perhaps, perhaps there will be some gloriously amorous resolution. It's a revelation that at one point, someone loved them. We have all seen the "Notebook", and now everyone wants the goddamn"Notebook" (or "Shades of Gray", but that is a whole other level of frackery).
In some way it seems men also hold on to these digital memories, by playing the, "I haven't gotten around to deleting it" card, because they too are like my girlfriends....I guess in the online world, both sexes still hold on to the idea of make believe. Regardless, for the new person in the equation, it just becomes fodder for an overactive imagination.
