Curiosity and the cat...

Damn Facebook.

On Sunday morning I had a friend request from an old beau. One I haven't spoken to for oh - about 14 years.

He sent a message with it, saying that I look great and how glad he was to find me.

I was very hesitant to accept his request. This was not a great love of my life. I think we saw each other, quite casually, from New Years Eve (foolish, drunken party) until I moved to Ottawa in May of the same year. He was a friend of a friend, very sweet, very... intense.

Once I'd moved I was pretty much done with the whole thing - the fact that I was looking for jobs outside of Montreal is a strong indicator that I did not feel the relationship had much future.

Still, once I had moved he called regularly. One night when there was weird reception on my phone he accused me of having a party (I was asleep, and not sure why it was really any of his business). Then there was the letter sent by UPS (where he worked) to my office that as not even in an envelope inside the UPS envelope. A very personal letter that I was very embarrassed to have a co-worker read part of before realizing it was personal and passing it on to me (I bet she actually read the whole thing, but that's neither here nor there years later).

Then, the final correspondence, which must have been close to a year after I moved (I was going out with Marc by this time) was a card from BC, where he'd ended up. Basically it said that he was happy (no thanks to me) and that he thought I should know (was I supposed to swoon in regret?) and that I'd lost my chance (dang, I was almost ready to get on a plane to follow him and beg for another chance - NOT).

So you can understand my hesitation to accept the friend request. But being me, ever so polite me, I sent him a message. I seem to be incapable of ignoring people. I said I was married, we had two great kids and that we had just moved back to Canada and that I had seen some mutual friends of ours a couple of weeks ago.

He replied almost immediately. A huge long message. Gave me all his contact details, wanted me to MSN or get n touch with him on his cell, he's available almost all the time. Wanted to know if I had married the first boyfriend I'd had in Ottawa (warning bells - does he think he was jilted for Marc?). He's divorced, his two kids are out in BC so he's staying. They don't look much like him because they are 1/2 Chinese. He's in love with some girl from Japan who was over on a student visa but had to go back, he's going to see her but it's complicated with his job, she wants to come back... etc etc etc. Very him. VERY complicated.

So, idiot that I am, I let my curiosity get the better of me and accepted the friend request. I was curious to see what his kids looked like - I am weird that way, fascinated with people's kids.

That night something happened with the Japanese girl. Don't know what, I am not asking. But a couple of times a day he has a new status. Things like "XYZ is NOT happy right now, but worse situations than this have tried to kill him in the past". There's others, they don't need to appear here, and they all just ooze... negativity.

I know, I should just delete him (and I think I will), but I am so concerned with hurting people's feelings. I just don't need all the negative energy.

Some people are best left in the past.