I feel like if I can just reconnect with people from my past, I can heal the those years and move on with my life.
I’m particularly eager to reconnect with people I knew during my brief sick year at UCLA 1988-89.
The problem is I only remember one last name from that period and that is of my ex-girlfriend and she’s now married with a kid and calls me an “old man” and she’s not on Facebook so I can’t scan her friends list to look for familiar names.
Only once have I run into anyone from that time. It was a Friday Night Live at Sinai Temple circa 2002. I ran into Doug, who was on my special quiet floor at Rieber Hall.
He was this dimpled little Jewish guy who’d done some modeling.
It was great to reconnect. I think we only talked for a few minutes and this was during the days before Facebook so we haven’t had any contact since.
This UCLA year was a painful year for me. I had expected it to be the springboard to my grand future and instead it was only a springboard to another five years in bed with the whimpily-titled Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
I flashed some real promise that year, impressing several of my professors and classmates. Yet I was only a flash in the pan. I dropped out of school, never to return.
All my friends thought my illness was only in my head. If I could just talk to them now, if I could only explain it was real, but I’m doing better, I’ve overcome. I’m a fricken hero. If only I could just talk to them. If only I could find them on Facebook. Perhaps if we could get together for coffee.
There was that one girl. I did reconnect with her six years later. And I treated her wrong. I want to apologize. I was a fool. I’d thought there’d be plenty. How wrong I was.
Related: My Former UCLA Classmate Is Now A Lieutenant Colonel In The U.S. Army
Sierra Community College, June 1988, after winning awards for Student of the Year in Communications and Political Science.
On my girlfriend’s bed at Rieber Hall in the Spring of 1989.
At UCLA in August 1989.
