out of sight does not mean out of mind

a strange thing has happened over the last few months. more and more people from my past have started popping up. not so weird for many who don't move far from home, but i grew up in a very transient community on another continent. it felt like every year i had to make a new best friend and join a new social group because so many people were always moving away or just moving to the country. i lost touch with most people from high school and from college too. the ones i have kept in touch with have become very dear friends. i guess i never expected so many people to get in touch with me and so suddenly. was there some milestone, rite of passage, or unconscious thing that i somehow missed or skipped over?
i was used to running into someone on the street every once in a while. i mean, i'm pretty sure practically everyone visits new york at least once. and you expect it when you go home for christmas and are almost disappointed if you don't bump into anyone. actually, for the last few years i didn't know of any of my old friends who went back to bahrain for the holidays.
but it's really weird when you're two worlds, your past and your present, collide when you get an email or a message in your inbox on some online community like myspace or friendster. it actually got pretty overwhelming at one point. every day there was one or two new people who had tracked me down on myspace.
i feel pretty bad, though. most of them i never wrote back to. i just had so much going on with the day job and theater and stuff, i never got a chance to go back on and then after a while, it just seems weird if you write them back after ages have gone by. and then if you do, are you expected to strike up that friendship that fizzled out almost 10 years ago? i admit it. i am terrible at keeping in touch. i can't even keep my own life straight, let alone be a penpal to someone i haven't seen in a decade. it doesn't mean i feel any less for them. there are people i still miss years later, but us being so far apart, i just can't keep dwelling on it. i simply don't have time.
there were people finding me that i hadn't seen or conversed with since the 8th grade!
a boy i had a crush on in 8th grade sent me an email. i never would have thought he would have remembered me. he never gave me the time of day or even really spoke to me. now he's studying marine biology in scotland and getting his masters degree. what would i say to him? another boy who made my life miserable for a better part of a year found me on my space. i was shocked when i saw his picture. i couldn't answer him for fear of bringing up all that old hurt. best to leave all of that buried. did that asshole really think we were friends and why would he ever think to contact me?
another girl i sat next to in band class for a year found me, too. i remember her mostly because of her unusual name. i guess that's why she remembered me too. maybe it's my name, maybe it's because my mother was a teacher in my school, or it's because i'm probably easier to find than most on the internet. if you do a google search for me, you'll get a whole list of reviews and websites that have my name on them.
i must confess for googling many an old friend's name, trying to find out what they're up to. many people who meant a lot to me, i couldn't find a trace of or their name was so common that it'd be impossible to sift through everything to figure out if it was about them or not.
i guess i just find it strange that i could have touched that many people, that they'd remember me. i know that more than twice as many people have meant the world to me and have shaped me in ways they would have never imagined. but i've been called over-sensitive more than once and i do tend to cling to the past a bit more than what is normal.
i remembered every one of the people who contacted me (well, except for the boy who claimed he rode my bus and one who was 2 or 3 grades younger than me). they've all shaped me in one way or the other. i guess i should turn over a new leaf and try to start writing these people back, if for no other reason to say thank you for thinking of me, even if we haven't seen each other in a decade.
god, i'm getting old.