When you reconnect with someone that you have not seen in years, the image that you have held in your mind of them is from when you last saw them. All these years they are still 16, 18, or 20. Not 38, not 46, not whatever age they are, or you are. All of a sudden, all those years catch up and you are aware of how much time has gone by.
You have changed, they have changed. There might be children, there might be husbands or wives, they might be fat, or skinny, or bald, or just different than you remember. You skim through the pictures that they share and the comments that they post, and you see how much they are still that same person that you remember, that same person who left their mark on you.
That essence of them, that bit that makes them is there, and no matter how they look, whether better or worse or just the same, it resonates with you that this person is that same soul.
You do not know the battles that they have fought in those years between now and then. They do not know the struggles you have encountered. All those experiences that you each lived, you can only imagine what they gone through, and you probably have it wrong.
There is rarely regret for reconnecting, but oh the regret that comes when see how much time you have lost with them. Perhaps they were just classmates, coworkers, or friends of friends. Perhaps they were old lovers, childhood playmates, boyfriends or best friends forever.
Whether they were major characters or if they just helped paint the scenery of your world, their absence left your stage missing pieces, actors, backdrops and props. They share a history with you. Share a time, and world that only a few other people do.
So, they return and the stage is set. They are puzzle pieces that you never knew you were missing. I am mixing metaphors, but I must in this case, because these people enrich the life that you have settled into. They bring an otherness to it.
That little window into their world, it is showing you a whole other world, and if you have no awe of that, if reconnecting with them does not open up your own world and show you how your own world is not the only one out there, then you do not need their friendship and are not deserving of it.
Oh, but the problem with letting these people back into your life is distance. These people that I have let back into my life, they live far away. I want to see them, to hug them, to kiss their cheeks, hold their hands as we walk down the street. I want to sit with them around a table, with drinks in hand, and hear all the stories and tales that have happened since I last saw them. I want to get to know this person, I do not want to just “like” their photos, I want them in my life again.
So, I have these dreams of dinner parties, or vacations where we all meet and for days we get to share our lives. We get to laugh, and sing, and cry, and talk about all that happened and all that we wished had happened.
I so want those evenings with these people. One evening would not be enough. I need days, I need cabin in the woods retreats, and vacations on the shore with them. I need all those years back, not some brief chats. I want to tell them how they changed me, how their part in my life whether large or small was not inconsequential to me.
I want to tell them how when I hear their voices now, or see their messages, they make me smile, and I can be caught laughing out loud at memories or things that I want to share with them. I want to tell them that their pictures and comments remind me of those times when our worlds were the same, and when we lived lives that touched.
Snapshots of Them 
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