Ghosts that haunt me now

People my age (turning 31 this year) have a strange perspective. We became adults as the Internet became very, very real. That means, we’re old enough to remember when people weren’t so easy to keep track of but young enough to understand just how much technology has enhanced our interconnectedness.

I have been haunted lately by people I will never see again. People who drifted out of my life before Friendster accounts and blogs gave us a permanent way to find each other through an eternal on-line address. It’s surreal, because I know that if I met them a little later in life, I never would have lost track of them. I met them too soon, though. I can’t even remember some of their names.

There’s the woman I was friends with in my Women’s Studies class my Senior year of college. She was a non-traditional student. Jocky. Intense. Totally devoted to theater tech. We hung out a lot. Then we didn’t.

There’s the crazy Christian girl from my Freshman year. We met up again during one of my low points later in college and used to go grocery shopping together. I remember walking her back to her all women’s dorm and telling her that her high-powered executive dad was robbing money from his workers just because his contacts were scarce and the workers easily replaceable — not because he added more value. She said she was going to be a doctor working in Africa by now, but I guess I’ll never know.

Another, Andrea, was an erotica writer I met over email and hung out once in Florida. We were penpals and phonepals for a while and then it tapered off — for good.

I will never forget the time I went on a first (and last) date with this woman who used to sing and dance professionally on-board cruise ships. I wore sandals because I didn’t have a good pair of brown shoes. I will never stop being embarrassed about this until I have a chance to laugh about it with her, but I probably wouldn’t even recognize her if I saw her on the street.

There have been others. People I remember. People I drove away or disappeared on or just lost track of. Nostalgia has always been a sort of drug to me, but I’ve been using it lately. Some of these people are getting reborn in stories I’m writing. I’d almost like to show them how I see them as I turn them into characters, but how?

Here’s a haunting image: let’s imagine one of them finds one of my stories later, published in some random magazine or journal. She reads it and mulls it over and (because she only vaguely recalls me as well — she doesn’t recognize my name) feels an odd affinity for the character she inspired, without realizing that she is reading about herself.