This is How I Remember You
A Social (Media) Commentary
A while back, I posted a picture on my Facebook timeline. In the photograph, my official yearbook shot for 1988, a girl with rounded cheeks and poofy orange hair smirked at the camera. She wore cheap pink lipstick outside the lines and rainbow-hued eyeshadow striped vertically up her lids. Her disgruntled face said everything I remember thinking.
Several people commented or messaged me.
“Look how young you were!”
“Is that Sun-in?”
“How do you say you’re Gen X without saying it?”
“One of your less than stellar periods.”
All fair. I was indeed young then, a proud member of Gen X before I knew it had a name. I was also a sullen teenager who abused cheap hair dye and had a pretty high-level attitude problem. I couldn’t disagree with any of the comments until I read the last one.
“This!” it read. “This is exactly how I remember you.”
I cringed, then reread it. I clicked back to my image. I looked at the most recent photo of the person who sent the message. I laughed out loud, followed by a deep frown. Shit! Is this who I am to people? Geezus, I hope not.
Gazing at the most recent photo of this long-lost acquaintance, I could see they were a little rounder (who isn’t) and 35 years older. They’d had kids; their kids have had kids. All of our classmates have long since gone away to school or stayed home to learn a trade. They’ve gotten married and/or divorced, some many times over. We’ve succeeded and/or failed in our careers and home lives, our social media profiles peppered with family candid shots from fancy vacations or maybe barefoot hordes of juveniles splashing in a muddy pasture. Some are just a confusing mix of cat videos and random game ads for something called “Treasure Trove.” We are lightyears from the snarky teenagers who attended junior high in a tiny rural town now known as ground zero for affluent city slickers. We are all phantoms of what we thought we’d become, snapshots of what might have been.
I shook off the weird feeling, some mix of nostalgia and discomfiture, and carried the laundry upstairs to fold. In the last few years, I’ve become convinced middle age is a kind of purgatory haunted by things you’ve done and things you want to do before your hourglass runs out. I’m a domestic goddess in an oversized sweatshirt and yoga pants, haunted by bad knees and frizzy hair, each courtesy of once-brilliant decisions.
“This is how I remember you…”
I mentally gagged, imagining myself frozen in time as the poorly coiffed queen of put-downs, bored out of her skull, her naughty behavior a reflection of her unchallenged mind. I was a jerk in 1988. (Also in 1989, 1990, etc.) I didn’t mean to be cruel or hateful; I was Jessamyn West’s epitome of a teenager–lost, fearless, and dramatic. I did terrible things in the quest for some shocking truth I was convinced existed just outside our moral high ground. I believed I was destined for some grandiose existence that required bravery and “sticking it to the man” for admission. In hindsight, I can admit I knew nothing. I barely knew myself and had a lot of growing up to do.
This realization compounded the question. How do I fix this mistaken optic? Should I even try? In writing, we attempt to capture the self-image we believe people will most relate to. For me, that has always been the struggle of being a woman, daughter, wife, and mother, all the while seeking individuality through my writing. I seek bonds with my sisters, known and unknown, and those androgynous spirits across the internet who find something of themselves in my articulated pain. I even go so far as not including photos of myself so that my work speaks to anyone who needs to hear it without the bias of my physical characteristics. (And one reader’s comment: I wouldn’t read a book by you if I saw your photo. What?!)
Ignoring the unfolded towels, I snatched my phone out of my pocket, scrolling through my list of Facebook friends. Which of them knew me? Which of them did I truly know? A random list of names appeared.
A lady I met once, twenty years ago while on vacation, but bonded with over parallel losses.
A boy with whom I attended junior high and wouldn’t have remembered at all had he not posted last week.
A couple of my kids’ friends that I still follow; and kids of my friends who post often enough to ensure I will know if something happens to their parents.
My best friends who know me, and can probably think of even more unflattering images than the one in question, but love me anyway.
These are the folks with whom I share snapshots of my life, the life I live after years of building up and tearing down the me I would become–correction: that I am becoming. There are several notably absent friends, the ones who failed the initiative assigned to us all: grow up. In my mind, they were frozen in time because they never tried to be more than they were at 14, 17, or 25. To believe this was how someone remembered me was the crux of my discontent.
I’ve said it many times: People on Facebook are overly-detailed highlight reels. They serve as two-dimensional representations of their best days, and occasionally their worst. My feed is full of folks I barely know, yet I’m aware of their favorite aunt’s death, their sister’s problems conceiving, and the progress of their garden. Could a picture of tulips represent an entire human life in my mind? Possibly. This is the thought that makes me want to delete all the photos, comments, birthday wishes, and random observations from my page. I started on social media to find lost connections and follow my then-young kids’ digital misadventures. Then, technology permanently altered the way people socialize and do business. The repercussions of COVID, people moving and traveling farther than before, and the birth of the influencer make living off-grid social and professional suicide.
The trade-off? A brutal honesty most of us don’t want. From the middle-aged married man who felt the need to inform me he had a crush on me in eighth grade, to the coworker who once outed her crossdressing husband on MySpace, to the news that my local Planet Fitness has an active peeping tom, I have learned that everything everywhere at our fingertips is a double-edged sword. I balance on a beam teetering between needing to know it all and not giving a damn what happens outside my own backyard.
Literary agents urge writers to have more followers, to share more of themselves. They suggest examples of folks who live their lives, good or bad, in the public eye. Look up a few of them and you’ll discover a lesson in oversharing and its consequences. Fellow artists urge you to live your truth without concern about others’ influences or satisfying popular opinions. Their profiles have taught me everything I need to know about cancel culture. That girl from high school still thumbs up every article I write but never comments. I imagine her giggling at anything that leaves me vulnerable and embarrassed. My husband, who doesn’t give a crap about social media, was told by a potential employer that it was akin to credit: having no presence is worse than having a bad one. What’s a girl to do?
My thoughts go back to the agent who said they loved my story but that I needed to a build a platform to succeed. “Interact, engage, entertain,” she said. My mother’s voice reminds me it is rude not to reply to others. My inner Pollyanna screams “be yourself and you’ll never go wrong.”
I opened a DM to the person who sent me on this mental wild goose chase. I had no idea how to reply so I just started typing. “Listen, friend, it’s good to hear from you. You’ll be glad to know I learned the lesson about Sun-in when my hair got so crispy it fell out on my pillow. I now try to filter my words through kindness and objectivity before I open my mouth, which is no longer caked in cheap lipstick. I no longer dress like a serial killer and I, too, remember you only as a pre-teen full of angst and snarky catchphrases. Most of all, I hope you’re doing well and have grown out of that awkward side-ponytail phase. Cute kids.”
I read it, then deleted it with a groan. This person remembered me as I looked the last time they saw me. There was likely no malice or judgment in their statement; that was my transference. My sarcasm seemed unnecessary and could be misconstrued as badly as their original message. I returned to the keys and began to type with a better-censored version of my still characteristic brutal honesty.
“Hi there. Thanks for your message. I’m now a married mother of two grown kids and I have normal-colored hair. I hate crowds and wine gives me migraines, both preventing me from the ‘Sex and the City’ life we all expected of me. I briefly worked in marketing though which led to becoming a writer as forecasted, thanks for asking. I appreciate you wanting to check out my work, but fair warning, it’s sort of heavy material because I’m still a heavy, unyielding thinker. I think you once called me “kind of a downer.” Guilty! I guess 13-year-old me was right about a lot of things, but someone should have taught her to have a better poker face. How are you these days?”
I paused then added: “Cute kids. Stay cool 4ever.”
Four months have passed and I’ve gotten no reply. Maybe 1988 me was more their speed. Perhaps I should have let sleeping teens lie.
