Facebook Friend Request

"Mario Linssen has requested to add you as a friend on Facebook." Oh my god. I hadn't seen or heard from Mario in twenty-nine years. I still had our picture from 1980 and would take it out, along with other pictures, and look at it once in awhile and think about him. But I never expected to hear from the guy who I'd decided, back in 1980, had never loved me. Now, here I was going through my email only to get the shock of my life to see Mario's name there.

Without hesitation I confirmed Mario as a friend on Facebook and shortly thereafter he sent me an email. His English was much better than in 1980, which was good because my German was non-existent. In his first email, he mentioned to me that he had looked for me throughout the years, by way of the internet and through friends that lived in America. Though he never had success in finding me, every once in awhile he would look again.

A few days later, Mario sent me a second email and, again, I was blown away by his words and feelings. He reiterated that he had looked for me throughout the years and had never forgotten about me. In one fell swoop, he stated that he remembered our feelings from twenty-nine years ago and wondered if we could try again.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. In my wildest dreams I never would have imagined Mario ever thought of me at all in the past twenty-nine years. Nor would I have believed that he remembered or even cared about our feelings for each other in 1980. He never wrote me back in 1980. To me, that pretty much said it all.

I was flabbergasted by Mario's admission of feelings and the question of whether or not we could try our relationship again. Despite my initial reaction, I decided to think about it for a couple days before I replied.

A few days later, I emailed Mario and told him that I felt it had been so many years since we were together that we were two different people now. We didn't know each other anymore, we spoke different languages and we were thousands of miles away from each other. In my mind, I could see no logical or rational way for us to have anything more than a friendship and that was what I told Mario: "I think it would be best if we were just friends."

Mario and I commented on each other's Facebook status occasionally, but other than that we didn't exchange many emails. I felt he might be disappointed with my decision not to want to try a relationship again but I was busy starting a new business and moving to another state and didn't have a lot of time think about it. Despite that, I found myself always checking to see what he had to say on Facebook and was always very happy when he commented on something I had said.

The excitement of all the positive changes going on in my life came to a screeching crash, literally and figuratively, when in late October 2009 I was in a bad car accident. It is amazing to what degree your life can change in a matter of seconds. Even though the outside world saw only my physical injuries, the emotional scars and the thoughts and dreams of the car accident turned my world upside down. And as if that wasn't enough, the downward spiral that began when my car was T-boned continued as I lost my business, my home and all my money.

By Christmas time I was so distraught and hopeless, I was finding it difficult to make it through each day. My family was over 1000 miles away and I had no support system. Christmas night I went to sleep and prayed that I would not wake up.

When I next opened my eyes, I could tell it was morning and I was still in my home in Florida. I got out of bed, fixed my coffee and sat down to turn on the computer. In the darkness of the computer screen I caught a glimpse of a reflection. The face that stared back at me was lifeless, empty, and sad...a shell of her former self. For what felt like an eternity, I stared back at my reflection and wondered how I had gotten become that person and wondered where was the real me. How had I gone from being a young, energetic, happy and successful woman to this empty tomb with the lifeless, sunken-in eyes? In that moment, I had an revelation. I knew I could not continue like that for one more day...muddling through each day, trying to muster up the will to live. I had to find that positive, optimistic, energetic, caring and vibrant person who had moved to Florida five short months earlier.

One month later, I packed a few things in my car and left to go back to my family in Illinois with nothing more to my name than the $160 gas money I'd scraped together. I wasn't sure if I could stay in Illinois permanently because I was still seeing doctors and therapists for my accident injuries, but I knew being surrounded by people who loved and cared for me would help me turn myself around.

Never under estimate the ability of love and sincere kindness to heal, both physically and emotionally. From the moment I came back home to Illinois, spent time with my kids and made the effort to surround myself with positive, loving people I slowly began to transform back into the person I knew I was. As my inner strength grew, I became physically stronger, too. As I regained my confidence and sense of self, I came to realize that I could handle my situation in one of two ways:

• I could allow myself to succumb to the circumstances that had become my life: no money, no job, physical injuries and emotional scars, or
• I could look at the situation as an opportunity to start fresh, with a completely clean and empty slate, open to the possibilities of whatever lied ahead of me and with the assurance that it could only be good. 

Without a moment's hesitation, I chose the latter and began to slowly rebuild my life. Each day I reached out to connect with people who would inspire me and encourage me. Each morning, I woke up and looked for work. Slowly, the pieces of my life began to fall into place. Though I was far from recovering, physically or financially, I was stronger emotionally and finally felt a strong sense of direction...as if I had somehow gotten off-track for several months, but was finally back on.

Each evening, I would sit down at my computer and wind down by checking Facebook. In recent weeks, I had found myself checking Mario's statuses more and more and, eventually, caught myself checking to see if his relationship status had changed from "single." This continued for almost a month when I finally said to myself "One of these days, his relationship status is going to change to 'In a Relationship' and you're going to be devastated."

For months, the regret of telling Mario we should just be friends had been building and it was time to either do something about it or let go of it altogether. After thinking about it for a few days, I sat down and wrote Mario an email.