I reconnected with an old friend today. Specifically, someone I dated very briefly. It ended poorly, as she and I had very different ideas as to what it meant to be friends or to date.
Long-story short, our meeting was a list of grievances on her part, implying I’m a worse person than I think I am, and suggesting how other people felt the same way. I took it all in stride, because it wasn’t exactly a conversation I wanted to prolong.
But it struck me just how different our versions of the same events, not to mention each other, were. At one point, we really liked each other. Now, it seems like she thinks I’m a cartoon villain. I probably also have a worse impression of her than I did at the time.
Memories matter to me. I have a decades-long journal that has my thoughts on many key events in my life. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if distance and time make caricatures of complex situations in our memories. Flanderization.
The good times weren’t that good and the bad times weren’t that bad. The ones that got away had flaws and the villains of our lives were complex.
But maybe that means that there are some reconnections that are bound to be doomed. If one person felt wronged when things ended, they’ll villainize the other in their memory, whereas the other might even lionize them.
I think the world of certain people I’ve lost touch with. The ones that ended poorly, in particular, stand out in my mind. But if reconnecting with someone that I didn’t speak to for five months went this poorly, what kind of awfulness would reconnecting with the ex-love-of-my-life bring?
Now I’m not sure I ever want to find out. 🙁
