The Obsession.

Well, it seems as though I have Internet access for the evening again. Which is good, I suppose. I mean, it lets me talk to you beautiful people at a bit more length, which is always super pleasant, of course, but it's beginning to feed THE OBSESSION.

The Myspace obsession, that is. I've been looking up people from high school, with a vengeance. See, I've made it no secret to anybody that high school was not my happiest period, and when I moved on, I didn't kid around. I dropped just about everybody I knew like a bad habit, and didn't look back. And now, on the whole, I'm a much happier and healthier and, basically, saner person than I was back then, and now I feel just a touch of regret for letting them all go. It's strange: in a school full of people who cared about me, I managed to convince myself I had no actual friends, that I was just the guy people put up with because they didn't have the heart to tell me to go away. I did this (and still do this, from time to time, though not nearly as often) despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, mainly by forgetting the big things, and focusing on tiny, mostly-imagined slights. I was terribly unhappy most of the time, and I had nobody to talk to about it because I didn't think anybody cared about anything I might have to say so I soldiered on with a happy face, and when school ended I decided not to keep in touch with anyone so as to save them a lot of uncomfortable moments wherein they tried to stop talking to me as quickly as possible.

It's two years later, give or take (give), and I'm not nearly the same person I was back then. I'm a lot more rational, and I figured out that a lot of those poor bastards that had to deal with me against their will were actually good friends who might have been somewhat annoyed by the way I disappeared off the face of the earth. And so, I'm finding them on Myspace, or any other way I might think of, and saying hello, if only as a prelude to saying goodbye. I hope I can keep in touch with them all a little better this time around, because there were some neat people back there in Chicago. So... obsessively seeking out people I once knew so as to clear some of the regret that's been clouding the back of my mind. It's the magic of the Internet.