Ghosts

I don't know how popular among Americans http://www.classmates.com/ is. All I know is the russian counterpart, http://www.odnoklassniki.ru/, has swept russian-speaking community. It is so popular that it swept even me.
I need to say that I am not a very easy-going person who usually joins online communities. I have a small circle of long-time friends who I love dearly, and a bigger circle of friends who I like to socialize with. I am happy with that, and I stay away from either live or virtual communities of people I don't know.
I joined odnoklassniki though, because I needed to find someone. I had a dear friend who died in a car accident almost 4 years ago. She lived in Israel and had very few friends and relatives. I needed to find someone who knew her. I don't know why I needed to find them - probably just to talk about her, share some thoughts. As I told you, I have a very small circle of very dear friends, and I don't like to loose them to anyone, even to death. Odnoklassniki was my chance.
So I joined, and for a while nothing interesting happened. I could not find anybody, and nobody seemed to find me. But as odnoklassniki craze was picking up speed, people from my previous life appeared to me out of nowhere. Besides old classmates, some of whom I don't even remember, there were relatives, some of whom I haven't seen for years, some I've never even met.
I was swept by odnoklassniki hurricane. As soon as I woke up in the morning and turned the computer on, there it was: "Hello little sister!" For someone who has been an only child all her life, this is quite a shock. Yes, I know that in russian language you refer to your cousins as "brothers and sisters", so the message really was from a distant cousin. But still... for a minute it seemed like I indeed found a brother or a sister that I so wished to have all my life.
Odnoklassniki is like a mirror where you see people, but you can't touch them. You can't, because they are left in your past, and now they are just words on your computer screen. I call them ghosts. For each of them, it's the usual: - "you look great, haven't changed a bit... how old are your kids, how is work, what does your husband do, ..." After 2 or 3 messages you know everything about them that you ever cared to know, and you think long and hard of what else you can write. You have your own life, they have theirs, and those lives will never intersect again. You are tired of thinking, so you stop writing. Until you find another ghost, and the cycle repeats again. It seems rather pointless to me, except for one thing. Every ghost necessarily says to me: "I still remember you laughing."
It seems amazing to me that they all say that. I remember myself as a very unhappy and angry teenager always picking fights with her parents. Basically, I was a geek who was never invited to any parties, suffered from that immensely, and was envious of "popular" kids. Whenever I recall my teenage years, that's all I can remember - anger, suffering, and envy. And all they can remember about me is the laughter! Somebody's memory is glitching. Probably mine. It can't be theirs, because they are ghosts, and ghosts are never wrong.
It's an urban legend that ghosts appear to people because they have some unfinished business. I think that the unfinished business of my ghosts is to tell me that I wasn't an unhappy, angry, and envious teenager. I was a light-hearted, funny, and kind teenager who had her share of problems. Years passing by, like a magnifying glass made those problems seem much larger than they were. And now jealous, angry and often crying girl lives inside my head, unable to let go of her problems, unable to forgive, unable to be happy. My ghosts want this girl to laugh again. I will let you know if they succeed.