I finally heard back from a friend I knew in high school. We were actually really good friends in high school, we hung out a lot. I’ve found her at various places around the web in the past, and I’ve tried to send out messages to try to reconnect. I’m not best friends with anybody from high school, but I am in contact with several people, and I went to the reunion and all that. While running the ol’ “find and follow” on Twitter, I came across her again, so I started following her. Reading her tweets made me really want to reconnect, so I went a little crazy and stalker-ish and tried to get in touch. And I never heard back. Over about a year, I tried to contact her by email, AIM, and various other ways. I never heard anything. Tonight I sent her an AIM message; she promptly logged off. So I sent her a Flickr message saying that if she didn’t want to talk to me, just say so, and I’d leave her alone.
Well, she said so, in a loud and forceful way. Apparently she finds it creepy that I have found so much information about her – “even ways she didn’t announce like Twitter” (hello, find and follow, ever heard of it? make your feed private if you care who reads you) – and she really wants me to fuck off and leave her alone. (She didn’t use profanity, but the sum of her words was the equivalent of “fuck off.”) What gets me is that she says she “thought it would be abundantly clear” that she didn’t want to talk to me, but I “keep pressing the point” so she had to say something. Am I weird for not picking up on that? I mean, I know I’m socially inept, but I didn’t equate ignoring me to not wanting to talk to me. I thought it was, well, ignoring me. And that’s what I wanted to know why. She says she hasn’t talked to anybody from high school for 7 years and she has “moved on from high school”. (Which is weird if you ask me…how can you “move on” from something that took 4 of your own formative years?)
I just feel so stung right now. I’m not crying, but my face is hot, and I’m kind of shocked. I don’t know why. Was it her very sharp tone of voice? Is it that I didn’t figure out that ignoring meant not interested? (I know I’m a literal person and need everything spelled out, is it bad that I needed to hear the actual words and didn’t pick up on the apparent subtext of ignoring?) Is it that I feel bad for stalking her when really I just wanted to know what’s going on? Is it that she doesn’t want to get together? I don’t think it’s the last one, I mean I can handle that, fine, she doesn’t want to get together. It’s just that…why didn’t she say so sooner? In fact I asked her a long time ago, I said if she didn’t want to be in touch with me just let me know. Why wasn’t “hey I’m not interested, have a nice life” sufficient 6 months ago?
I think what I feel worst about is that I didn’t know, and I made her mad because of it. She also said “don’t even reply to this message” so I can’t even say the one word “sorry”. I can respect her desire to be left alone, I’ve defriended her on Twitter and Flickr, and I’ll respect that she doesn’t want me to reply to her message. I’m going to respect that she wants me to leave her alone, but I just wish I could say sorry for being too stupid to figure it out sooner. Sorry for creeping you out. Sorry for creeping myself out. I’m just sorry. I don’t like knowing that there are people in the world who are mad at me. I’m really sorry, and it makes me sad.
I was going to lock this post so she wouldn’t have to see it, but I realized I don’t care…if she sees it, she’s the one who was looking. Sigh.
Ouch.
You’re right — that could have been handled a little nicer on her part. A simple “Sorry, not interested” would have sufficed. =(
Hi Meredith,
Sorry you had to go through that, rejection can suck!
I wouldn’t take it too personally. High School is a funny place for many people. It could be this person had some horrible experiences in HS that you don’t know about and when she hears anything from anyone she went to school with, it brings up those memories which she wants to avoid because they are painful.
Regarding someone ignoring you or “pressing the point” I can comiserate as well. A friend of mine drove me to grad school my first year and I somehow got the idea that it would be fine to ask him to do it again. The next year I asked him and he kept saying he wasn’t sure if he could do it or not. I don’t know how many times I asked, but it was probably at least several over a couple of months. Finally it was within a week or two of the date I had to go and so I finally pressed him for an answer and he finally said that I should have gotten the message by then that he didn’t want to do it. It effectively ended our friendship. It’s unfortunate, but some people, like you and me, can be a little dense
The problem is that the person who does not want to be contacted instead of stating directly their wish, they ignore or whatever because they don’t want to be rude, cause a confrontation, etc. They don’t want to hurt the other party. Unfortunately, their style has an equally negative effect, I believe, because it leaves the other person without a clear answer. I’ve learned that when I don’t hear from someone after contacting them in several ways (just to be sure they received my message), that I just let it go. If they don’t respond, they are either a) not interested in talking with me, or b) they are too busy. Being a busy parent myself I can now comiserate with b), but in either case, I try not to take it personally. If they aren’t interested in a relationship, that’s their right, and better that I don’t keep looking for one when it’s not going to happen.
As far as the whole twitter thing, it is odd, but I also think some people believe that even though they have a public persona on the web, they don’t understand that people can actually look all this info up. For some reason it’s “creapy” if you didn’t already tell someone about where to find this info, as if doing a search for your name that pulls up additional information you’ve made public is somehow an invasion of your privacy. This is simply misunderstanding the technology.
I’ve dealt with the same thing before, Meredith. I wouldn’t worry about it. Anyone that would treat a sweet and nice person like you like that, doesn’t deserve your friendship.
I am doing some blog catch up and just read this. I am sorry she made you feel this way, but don’t worry about it. I had a friend from college do that once. I guess I always assumed no one could have too many friends…but I was wrong. Poo on them!