It only took me forever, but I’ve finally joined Facebook. I was avoiding it. MySpace sucks, imho, but I finally thought I’d give Facebook a go after I read a couple interesting news stories on it. Me likey.

But it’s kind of troubling. So troubling I’m having trouble popping a good metaphor. Ooh, troubling. You don’t know the half of it.

It’s the gelcap equivalent of a time capsule or something. See? Bad metaphors. Nonetheless, you get the gist. Or you likely don’t.

It’s like high school, man. You know what high school was for me? I’ll tell ya: It was a Jesus & The Mary Chain song. Ever heard “I’m in With the Out Crowd”? Okay, well, absolutely none of the lyrics apply to me ‘cept the title. [One of those, “Dude, you faked me out with the title!” tracks you totally thought was about something else, so what the fuck, songs.]

It’s as if you spend your life trying to change who you are, only to find out that who you were wasn’t such a bad person in the first place… but what the hell was that in the water anyhow?

So I’ve joined Facebook.

Many years have passed since The Time Back Then, back when I was one of those kids that everyone knew for one reason or the other. I had a lot of friends. I sometimes wonder how I managed it, too, given the mountain of insecurities and fears I lived under. Somehow I projected something better than that, but I just never recognized my own appeal. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way, ‘cos I know how much I lack appeal to some folks. But if you like people who are completely blunt yet possessing of social graces, who are honest to a fault, well, that’s the breed I am. This persona comes with reality Steff, too, and it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. But those whose tea I ain’t, they tend to come around after a while. 😉 Or they stay the path. Whatever gets yer rocks off.

And I guess I was the live-out-loud type that some kids tend to gravitate towards.

Then I dropped out of life when things got tough for a while. I spent the majority of my 20s in a pretty deep depression. Being anti-social was a whole lot easier than trying to fake a mask for public consumption, y’know?

One day the fog cleared and I really started to notice the difference in my social horizons from way back when and now. It’s like I forgot how to be natural for a crowd in all that absence. My new job puts me front and center, and I’m getting my gift of the gab back again after many a hiatus from schmoozing. I used to be the kid who always knew someone at the party, and now I need introducing (then I’m off and running, right, but geez… ). Ain’t like it was.

Until suddenly it is again, thanks to getting a public-oriented job where I have to be the strong, confident chick I always was, and also to the magic of these virtual connections like Facebook. You plug yourself in and suddenly the board lights up. I found out a little late, but it turns out that much of my old crowd from “the golden days” — aka the time before the fall — got together yesterday for the first time in more than a decade. Curiouser and curiouser, to be sure.

Now I’m listening to one of the soundtrack-type albums from that era of my life, that time when music was Never Gonna Get Better Than This (’92-94) and life was the road in front of me, The Black Crowes’ Shake Your Moneymaker. I remember hearing this album for the first time when an ex-lover was driving me and a friend of his home sometime well after midnight and I was pretending to be asleep in the backseat as I listened to them talking, and heard the quiet but good things he’d said about me. I fell in love with the album as the car rumbled on old side roads. It was a good night.

I’m trying to remember why I walked away from everyone and everything, but the opportunity to change things came up and I suddenly found myself living in the Yukon and chasing that dream instead. Came back a year later and everything changed. I felt like the cog left out of a fast-travelling wheel, but the truth now probably is it’s when my depression truly began.

This past winter, the depression’s finally lifted, and it’s funny to see just how far from my past I feel I am and now I see that I’ve never really gone that far away after all.

How weird it all is.

‘Cause, you know what? I’d like another chance to be that girl, the one who existed before all the “real life” came and bit her in the ass. The one with a little innocence and a little mischief and a little zest for anything that’d come her way. I’ve been working towards being that again and I’m just a little baffled to be happening on such timing as I am with the whole Facebook thing. That part I’m having trouble putting words to, so just know that I’m feeling a little discombobulated about it all, and kind of in a good way, too, ‘cos I know the progress I’d been making on coming back to myself long before this came about.

It’s cool, it’s all good. And now I have a house to clean and a lazy afternoon (a Sopranos marathon; you know my thing for mafioso) to atone for. Happy Memorial Day, yanks, and a good morrow to everyone else.

PS: I bought my first-ever pair of plaid panties today. Cute! I’m Scottish, too, y’know, so what better to cover the tush in?