A girl I used to think of as a friend sent me a friend request on Facebook the week before last and it really pissed me off. This girl was someone I worked with over two years ago who I helped extensively at work despite her annoying tendency to literally break down in tears about anything that frustrated her. Despite that, I felt we were becoming friends. We’d often have lunch together and we both wanted to lose weight so we’d go on walks during our lunch breaks as well. After she was fired she only replied to my email/texts twice before completely dropping all communication with me. Now, two years later, she thinks I want anything to do with her? Screw that! I don’t need “friends” like her.
Maybe it was because I was already feeling rather cranky that particular day, but her popping up like that made me evaluate all my friendships and question why I still had certain people in my life. Nostalgia maybe? I had a friend from high school who disappeared years ago who I had friended on Facebook last year. I thought she’d be excited as I was to be in contact again, but she never replied to my message asking to catch up, nor did she interact with me in any way. Why she even added me as a friend is beyond me.
I feel like for some people social media is just a way to “collect” people they really have no interest in. Maybe it shouldn’t bother me to have people on my friend list who never say two words to me, but it does, so I decided to do something about it. I deleted 14 people from my friend list (which is a lot since my friend list tends to hover around 100 people) and I deleted about half of the contacts on my phone. I would have deleted more, but I didn’t want to cause issues over deleting family members so I stuck to so-called friends. These people are clearly not interested in communicating with me and seeing them on FB or in my phone was causing needless hurt feelings on my end, so I decided to let the past go and delete them from my life. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
I had contemplated this purging many times in the past, but my curious nature prevented me from letting people go because I liked knowing what they were up to, or so I thought. But I realized that spending that much time keeping tabs on people who want nothing to do with me was wrecking havoc on my own mental health. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction for me emotionally. It probably doesn’t hurt that lately I feel like I’ve got more true friends in my life so the need to hang onto the past has lessened.