When it comes to being de-friended on Facebook, there is only one thing I can think of to cope with the pain: updating one of my favorite lyricists, Fiona Apple, for the Facebook age. Welcome to my song (an offspring of “Shadowboxer”):

De-friender

Once my lover, now my de-friend
What a cruel thing to contend.
What a cunning message you send.
Once my lover, and now my de-friend

Oh, your profile always there.
And it gave me views of your thick brown hair.
When we had no facetime
Least we had facebook where lookin’s not a crime

Oh, its evil, babe, the way you let your page speak mystery.
When, well, you know, I’d be insane too -
Ever let someone see my information
Who disappeared without an explanation.

So you made me a de-friender, baby
I don’t want no updates on what you do.
And I been clicking Remove,
Cause I don’t want to see your activities.

Oh, your page is dangerous
And you fill your “interests” so strange.
If I see your status change
You’ll tempt me to change mine so you see my rearrangings .

You made me a de-friender, baby
I don’t want no updates on what you do.
And I been de-friending around me and not just for kicks
Cause I dont want them to be able to see my pics.

Last week, at a gala for a company I worked with two years ago, I bumped into an old flame. The old flame had arrived from out of town that night, only to attend the function. It had been at least a year and a half since we’d last seen each other. Suddenly, I found myself face to face with a man I had been the one to Facebook de-friend.

“I want to apologize for being a dick two years ago,” he said, between gulps of beer. “It’s just that I knew I was leaving for school and I didn’t want to start anything.”

“Oh, I see…But you were leaving a year later. You think I was sending out wedding invitations or something?”

“You’re right,” he laughed. I have no excuse. I just–”

“Couldn’t do it…it’s okay.” I smiled.

“But I have to say,” he smirked, “I did notice that I was de-friended on Facebook. And that—well, I would still like us to be friends again.”

“On Facebook?”

“Yeah.”

“But are we friends in real life?” I said. “I mean, sometimes you just need a clean slate. You don’t want to see what that person is doing all the time.”

“I know, and I deserve it,” he said.

Karma. A few weeks ago, I exploded when I saw Mr. Guy had de-friended me. Worse, I had brought it up to him the last time we ran into each other. The interaction like so:

“Oh, so…why did you defriend me on facebook?”
(eye-roll, shuffled steps, huff and puff) “I dunno, sometimes things just get weird…”
“What was weird?”
“The circumstances were weird. It is more… nothing than something now.”

Ouch. Well, Mr. Guy always had a dryness to him.

There I was, at the gala, the de-friender and not the de-friended, and I was being confronted. The truth is, I have de-friended all of my past flames on Facebook, and I think most people do. You want to try to move on.

At least I had sympathy–because it hurts to find out you’ve been de-friended– that moment when you try to look at their profile and suddenly you are met with the profile snipet of a stranger, and the words ADD AS FRIEND, in blue.

There is always the temptation to stalk and keep tabs. And perhaps it is sometimes healthy to just eliminate the possibility to do so, altogether. But of course, it certainly didn’t help that today I saw that Mr. Guy’s ex’s profile is public. I admittedly took in an unhealthy dose of her page. Sigh. I immediately realize how sad this is.