Lost along the way

[Loony BoB]

Losing touch with people can be normal, but it can also be sad. I've been on a two-week adventure of getting back in touch with various people, and so far I've only really been scratching the surface. And I got thinking.

Firstly, I had family, obviously. Thankfully it's very hard to lose touch with them completely, so I still talk to them on Messenger on occasion, and sometimes elsewhere. I'm not nearly as close to many members of my family as I would like to be, and I think they also would prefer to be closer based on my last interactions with each of them, but sadly it's just not the same online as it is in person. But still, efforts are being made all the same.

Secondly, I had high school friends. I've reconnected with some and I hope to reconnect with more. I miss one in particular more than all the others, and I've reached out so I can only hope for now. I've also caught up with a couple of others to different degrees.

Then there were Eyes on Final Fantasy friends, of which some of you are still here, yippee! I've also been in touch with a number of these recently, stretching all the way back to the very first friends I made here. It's been really nice catching up, and I'm hoping that in some cases the connection continues beyond just the occasional like on Instagram. EoFF friends will cross over with a large number of the following groups, of course.

Next up was LiveJournal - this probably hit me the most. I don't think I was ever as close to people as I was during the LiveJournal era, for better or worse we were all wrapped up in each other's lives. I'd call people almost daily, we'd hear about the best and worst parts of each other's minds and we'd be there for each other. Honestly, my heart really got streteched in every possible direction while reading through that history. It was often extremely cringey but also often really touching.

I think by and large, people left LiveJournal for Facebook. Looking back, LiveJournal is everything that I want Facebook to be now. Facebook is absolutely horrible to use these days, having reactivated my account to reconnect with even more people (I had Messenger but I wanted to actually see posts by other people, and it's helped me reconnect to a few). Facebook also resulted in a crossover to the Fat Chocobos, the old (but still alive!) FC for EoFFers and friends. It was cool chatting with some of them as well.

Baz Luhrmann once quoted an entire speech by Mary Schmich about how we should wear sunscreen in the form of a 'song', and currently the line that is hitting me hardest is "Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography, in lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young." I find that all the people I have slowly drifted away from, as a result of people moving on from EoFF, from LiveJournal, from FFXIV, from Facebook (well, that one was definitely me) and just from general friendship circles... I've got very few people that I am close to now. I still have a handful of wonderful friends, don't get me wrong, but I want to be able to get nostalgic about the good times we had.

I've got new friends since then, too. Twitch ones, over three or four 'eras' of Twitch that have come and gone for me - the last one thankfully still active. These days, the people who I socialise with on a regular basis are all from Twitch rather than from EoFF or elsewhere. Love them to bits but I can't talk about old times with them as easily.

So.

With all that said, do you guys also get nostalgic? Do you miss old friendships? Do you chase them down again? I'm just very sentimental, I suppose. Would love to know how y'all managed all the transitions throughout your friendship lifetime.

[Venom65437]

I tend to keep people close to me and hold on tight so I don't know that I have a lot of people I want to reconnect with that I don't already speak to on a regular basis. It might be fun to hear from some people I was close to that I lost contact with back before the internet. That's right, kids, before the internet if you went to a different school, or someone just moved away, that was pretty much it for your relationship. I tend to keep my circle small, and that's on purpose.

The people I do miss are those who have passed away. A surprising number of people I know died in their 20s or 30s and I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to still be able to speak with them. I was thinking about one the other day who will be gone for 10 years in just 3 months. I have a few that have been gone even longer. It is truly shocking just how fast time moves and people who are gone are more or less forgotten.

I'm actually still really close to my internet friends, most I've known for 20+ years! I've even gotten together with a few which was cool. I don't really have any friends on EoFF because of my low post count, but I'm open to it if anyone is looking for a friend.

I don't blame you from drifting away from Facebook. I take an extended break from it every year after baseball season. If I didn't enjoy my Braves group on there so much, I wouldn't even be on. Facebook is truly terrible.

I do get nostalgic about how things were, when life was so much simpler than it is now, and we weren't constantly bombarded by literally everything 24/7. I do get things that allow me to go back to those times, even if temporarily. I still buy physical movies, tv shows, and music! I've even been getting cassettes again lately. I just think they're neat! I also got the rebooted Commodore 64 and a lot of Atari stuff! Talk about going back.

Anyway, that's getting off track. I do think it's normal as we get older to be nostalgic for the people and things of the past. The world changes a lot, you start to lose people, and nothing is ever quite the same again. In most cases, the world just expects you to pick up and move on quickly, and that's not easy. I lost my mom in January and there is just a little bit of business left to handle for her and that's it, she's nothing but a memory anymore. Sad.

Because I do tend to keep people close to me until I don't, I handle drifting away pretty well. I would say in most instances, it is what I want, so I'm not upset about it, but if I really thought about it, there is probably a few people I would like to run into again.

[gavrix.14]

I've reconnected with a few old friends over the years, and sometimes it felt like no time had passed at all. Other times we had simply grown into different people, and that's okay too. The friendships I miss most are often not the ones I lost touch with, but the ones that can never be revisited because the person is gone.

[Mr Gashtacular]

I occasionally think of old friendships and think about how to get back in touch, but don't really have an avenue to do so. I deleted almost all social media, specifically Facebook, because I think they're quite harmful. The side effect is that I lost a number of contact information. Add in losing a bunch of phone numbers, a geographical displacement, and some growing up, and I just don't know those people anymore. I am overall ok with it. Maybe we will bump into each other in some place somewhere and catch up, if that's the way its meant to be.