Multiply is going the Friendster route, that is, folding up their social network side and choosing to focus on where it does well – the marketplace. And so like Friendster, they have given their members the chance to download old memories. I have copies of all the photos that I uploaded to my site then, but I decided to browse through them anyway, to check if there was something that I didn’t have, and boy was it a blast from the past.
The funny thing about growing up is that you don’t realize that you are changing.
I look in the mirror and think that I look pretty much the same as I did five years ago.
But then I realized I was wrong when I saw pictures of myself back then, when I saw that I looked fresher and younger, somehow. I still don’t have any wrinkles now nor do I look that old, really, so what changed? Maybe the skin? Or does wisdom show through one’s eyes, or facial expression?
Well there’s the weight change; I was thinner back then, but other friends who are thinner now still look younger in their old pics, so I don’t think it’s that.
It’s not just my face that went through change, though. There are the circumstances, naturally.
During the peak of Multiply’s popularity, I was still in a completely different country and was therefore governed by influences completely different from today’s. There was a lot more clowning around in my old office, for example. I can’t believe we were so free back then, so creative. People are just a lot more serious in Singapore, I suppose.
Then there are my clothes. My hemlines have gone shorter since I moved because most people don’t bat an eyelash at skimpy outfits here (not outwardly, anyway). There were dresses that I used to wear with leggings whenever I wore them in Makati, but after moving here, I wear those same dresses bare-legged.
Then there are the shoes. When Maya first moved here, about two years after I did, she said something that surprised me: “Wow, it’s a miracle that you’re in flats.” And that stunned me because – hey, I always wear flats. That’s when I realized that I didn’t used to.
The Dee she knew in Makati always wore high heels at work, but the Dee in Singapore hates to wear them because of all the walking that she has to do here.
But the most significant change, I think, is the people.
The happy faces that surrounded me back then are mostly different from the ones that surround me now. It saddens me to realize that some friends whom I used to share my life with everyday no longer talk to me except to post one-liner birthday greetings on my Facebook wall once a year.
Was it my fault? Did I not try hard enough to keep them in my life?
But then again there is a saying that goes:
“As you grow older, you do not lose friends. You just realize who your real ones are.”
But it’s not just sad things I realized from looking at the people in my pics. If I lost friends, I did keep some.
And there were also those people whose roles in my life completely changed since then, and it amuses me how I had absolutely no idea. If I had known then what I know now, would I have treated them differently?
Like there is this one picture of me in a high school reunion in Manila.
I was smiling happily next to Chi, whom I hadn’t seen in a really long time. Our last significant exchange had been in high school and though we were classmates and we had a very brief moment when we sort of became close, we didn’t really belong in the same cliques. She was one of the prettiest and most popular girls in our batch and I was, well, a nerdy nobody.
That night was the first night I got to catch up with Chi after so many years of no information. How was I to know that some months from then, she and I would be talking nearly every day?
The only thing constant in this world is change, and the good thing is, sometimes, or maybe most of the time, change is good.
So goodbye, Multiply. We had some great times, but I’m ready to move on.
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