Friends Reunited

"Friends Reunited.com

It was the day after my 31st Birthday, that I got shook by one of those earth shattering and reality piercing moments ' as I cruised and surfed through the HTML code of the "Friends Re-united website. I browsed through looking for familiar place names of old schools, people, places and faces ' but my own sense of self was in turmoil, in limbo and in crisis.

I patted out the keystrokes for 'Perryfields High', 'Lightwoods Junior School' and 'Brandhall Infants', feeling both a sense of deep excitement and simultaneous trepidation as the names of my then peers, contemporaries and there respective places and achievements in this life, this world were detailed upon the screens. It was startling and surprising; names that I'd almost forgotten I'd not heard of or seen for so many years came up under the lists of schools, workplaces and universities. Babies had been born, marriages and divorces, things in essence so simplistic but so essential to fundamental humanity were all listed, so much had changed, but I felt jealous of the stability and normality of it all as I evidently compared my own life over the last 15 or so many years.

The things I suppose others may take for granted, the lives, the careers, the kids, family life, these thing so important and essential ' I'd missed out as since the age of sixteen my life it seems has been sucked into the blotter papers of chemical oblivion, of drink and of all the drugs that have discoloured and warped my own sense of who I am, and have taken me away from simple life, with it's pain, it's joys and it's beauty.

With some misshapen bravado of course I typed in a brief paragraph or two about myself, linking into the colleges, work spots and schools and the University of Nottingham where I had undertaken the History degree I was never to complete, way back in 1993, where my dablling with drugs became habitual and the colour and memories of life began to fade. I hid this all with the idiotic smokescreen bluster of the identity that being an addict to Crack Cocaine and Heroin has given me. My true feeling are of shame, waste and disgust as to how I have spent my days. To be honest I could feel envy and jealousy wishing so much that things had been different and it was me with a family, or had achieved something that so many of my friends from this time now had.

'Nathasha Darby' ' gave birth to baby Peter in June '99, or Simon Harrison and Mandy Downs (married late August), some with pictures, smiling happy families, holidays abroad, etc, etc. Some of the entries were quite bare ' but I suppose that's for the sake of using the contact facilities on where the clever bloke or lass who invented this site no makes there thousands of pounds profits. As I surveyed further, and as I looked to people that I'd gone to Halesowen College with or at University itself ' there were the obvious crew that had taken distinct career paths, others who had now I know achieved some of their ambitions, some with all that goes with it the trappings, the wealth and the material success.

I emotionally stumbled, feeling the ground sliding underneath me a few times when I looked up the name of an ex-partner or two! As I clicked away I was both incredibly intrigued but at the same time mortified of what or who I might find. Thankfully not one of the people listed in this category had left that much information behind, phew! It could have been a feeding frenzy of the could've beens, the what abouts ? and what ifs? Of the past speeding through my brain and submerging me and amplifying mt propensity to wallow. I did feel happy for just about everyone who had left information on this site, the positive things they had achieved and the fact that so many had brought new life themselves to this world. But, it was my own sadness, my own loss ' the fact that I'd wasted so much time, so much opportunity, so much potential that struck me like a full on blow. As a substance abuser I'd effectively opted out of life, perhaps in doing so avoided some of the pain, some of the toil and hard work, some of the sweat, the tears, the biting ferocity of reality. As my entry sadly ended, "Looking forward to spend his second Christmas outside a rehabilitation centre in the last five years¦¦¦¦ Like Bartleby the Scrivener in Melville's tale I'd preferred not to¦.I'd not engaged properly in this life though, I'd not had the time or emotional capacity to have loved or lost and this was where the tragedy bit me.

I suppose reflecting too much on the past is bad, especially for someone like me, so I'm gonna quit and move forward from these feelings in the right direction. I'm not going to wallow anymore, I'm going to live my life from now on. Perhaps then aged 32 in a years time I won't be writing such a sad story, my own story about 'Friends Re-united.' Happy endings are a choice, that choice is mine and just for today I'm opting in¦¦¦.

Steve Thomas
November 19th, Birmingham New Street Station.