We don't know people

I am not a sentimental person at all, but I have realized today that I think I have allowed some form of sentimentality to dupe me. 

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has done this. I think it is probably a human trait that many people share, and it is the idea that if you once knew someone, you know them still. 

The truth is that I don't know anyone completely, not even myself. 

Even though I think I know my husband (whom I've known for 25 years), I don't. Not completely. I make an assumption that I know what he would do and how he would act based on my experience with him and how he has acted in the past. 

But people change, don't they?

And often people do not change. 

It dawned on me today that someone I have known for many years in a cursory way but who I used to be good friends with three decades ago is both very different from what I remember and also not different at all. 

With social media and our insistence on calling people "friends" who really aren't friends, I forget that very few people I'm "friends" with are deep friends. They may be people I know or have worked with. They may even be people I really, really like. They are friends "lite." 

[I'm having a mother memory here whereby I recall my mother lecturing me on the difference between acquaintances and friends, and I think I rolled my eyes a lot, and yet...here I am.]

And having these friends "lite" is not a bad thing. These people make up a community, and there can be fun and support there.  These people can be a network of advice, connections, business opportunities, education. I am in no way suggesting the camaraderie isn't real or important. 

But the downside is that we can feel betrayed or angered or astounded when friends "lite" seem different from how we knew them or what our perception of them was because they are part of our community. 

Social media makes us feel compelled to sound our barbaric yawps (present company included). And when someone yawps in a way we didn't expect, we feel confused at best. Betrayed at worst. 

My memory had sentimentalized my friendship with this person and smoothed its edges with nostalgia.

But what I remembered today is that my friendship with this person ended because of a poor judgment this person made that could have put my life in danger (drunk driving in high school). 

And then I remembered that this person recently made another judgment that ended up in a very public and embarrassing loss of her career. 

And now this person is trafficking in conspiracy theories. 

I say now, but maybe I should not be surprised. Maybe this is a pattern of poor judgment that has only now become apparent to me. 

Maybe this person has changed?

Or maybe this person hasn't?

Maybe I have defined this person based on simply having "known" her (or maybe more correctly, known of her) since I was a young teenager. A long lens facing backward is sometimes fuzzy. 

I generally try not to hold people's stupid teenage decisions against them as adults because I made MANY stupid teenage decisions. I did many things that were idiotic or cruel, and it saddens me sometimes to think that somewhere people may have an idea of me as being idiotic or cruel because I try very hard not to be either now. 

But even if I were to eliminate the teenage poor judgment event, I still have two poor judgment events in the past six months that make me realize I don't know this person and shouldn't be surprised by anything simply because she is part of my social media community. 

Perhaps the only thing we share is that we are each people on the periphery of each other's social media community. 

And momma, I'm sorry for rolling my eyes. You were right. You were right.