I don't know if we're friends anymore, but I hope you'll "like" my social media post

Maybe we'll finally get that coffee after all

Sometimes right before I make a social media post, I think about you.

It’s not intentional, not really. It’s not even always you. Sometimes it’s him. Or her. Sometimes it’s no one in particular. But it’s always someone.

I don’t mean to do this. It’s not a secret pining or some desperate attempt to connect. At least, not in a way that isn’t inherently built in. It’s totally involuntary. It’s just that I start off feeling so good about a photo or a caption and then I think of you and all of a sudden my wrinkles are too visible, my face is not the right shape, and I am sure I looked better in that top in the mirror.

My fingers type out a clever caption but suddenly it’s not really that clever at all. Suddenly it is vapid or silly or just plain stupid and I am small. I wonder if I’m funny or too funny (truthfully the latter has never been the case), if I’m being introspective or just plain obnoxious. If I come across as wise or only full of myself. If anyone cares at all.

I don’t have these answers.

So I spend ten minutes or twenty minutes or days creating the perfect caption, the one I know (hope) you’ll relate to, or laugh at or smile at, or literally have any reaction to at all. The one that maybe you will see and think “ah, that’s the girl I know,” and we will share a remembrance of the person I can be if only given the right time and consideration.

Eventually, I’ll hit “post” at the perfect time (while acting like I’ve put no thought into this whatsoever) then immediately abandon the platform and pretend like the whole thing never existed. I won’t check back for hours or days and when I do inevitably end up back there I won’t click the little button that teases “five others like this,” because at least with that there’s mystery.

But you know, at some point I’ll accidentally click it.

I’ll tell myself, it doesn’t even matter if you liked the post, or commented (what a gem that would be!), if you even noticed me at all. I don’t need to be acknowledged by you, I remind myself.

But then I click it anyway.

And I see her.

And him.

And them.

But not you.

I click away quickly, like somehow the speed of it can erase the embarrassment, which is silly because no one can see and no one knows, least of all you, who either did not deem the post like worthy or worse — saw it and chose not to like it.

I would say I don’t know which is worse but, I think we both know.

Still, it won’t stop me from thinking about you next time. I will still chastise myself for not fitting into that shirt the way she does, and I will wonder if my smile lines were really worth it at all. I will smile with my mouth closed because of that thing he said, I will smile with my teeth when I realize how unnatural it looks, and I will still criticize myself over every bit of it.

I will look at the camera and I will feel lost in the moment. But when I look at the photo, I will think of you.

And him.

And her.

And them.

In it, I will see your face against mine, full smiles and endless antics, restless and reckless in the best ways. I will hear the sound of your laughter when everything else was falling apart. I’ll feel the warmth of your arm looped into mine and the crunch of leaves as we walk. The memories, the promises, the never rescheduled coffee dates.

I will hit “post” and I will hold my breath and look away and when days later I come back to it, maybe you will be there, extending an olive branch towards the things we never got to experience. Maybe I will reach out.

Probably I won’t.

But if we’re very lucky, maybe one of us will take social media up on the thing it was designed to do, or that we pretend it’s capable of and we will connect. Maybe I’ll reach out after all; maybe you will say that you just saw something that reminded you of me. We’ll share an inside joke the way two people can after a decade of near silence.

Either way, I’ll keep posting.

Maybe, eventually, we’ll finally get that coffee after all.