oh myspace.

seriously, if you are looking to find a long-lost someone under the age of 30, save your energy and just go to myspace. i did.

long ago in my living-wit-my-parents-going-to-highschool days I used to babysit a little girl, J and eventually her two younger sisters (twins) K and A. J will be 20 (?!?!) this September and I haven't talked with her or her family since in years -- at least eight. When I think of J, I picture the pretty, athletic, easygoing GIRL she was... listening to the spice girls, swimming in her pool... playing basketball.

These girls lived kitty-corner from my parents house and were my first venture into babysitting. I started watching J when she was just under 3. I was 12. I was over there ALL the time... four nights a week sometimes. All day in the summers and on vacations. They were an intergral part of my life. The last time I really spent any time with J she was twelve. Her sisters were 8.

And it was completely my fault that I lost touch with them. ...J's parents are good people. Very Catholic good people. And when I finally figured out that I was queer (at 21) I was terrified of coming out to them. I harbored a significant amount of internalized homophobia and thought that if I told them they wouldn't let me know the girls. So, stupidly, I chose to distance myself from the family before they could cut me off. I regret this immensely. I miss my girls, especially my J, who functioned as a little sister to me.

So anyway, yesterday I found J's myspace account. She's brilliant -- going into her second year of college, skydiving, dating a cute boy she's serious about... basically finding out who she in in that late teens/early twenties way. She's not that little girl anymore... but from what I read I admire who she is and who she's becoming. I wrote her and she was thrilled to hear from me. :)

And today when I looked at her 'bulletins' section she took time to re-post a widely-cirulated email top 10 on hypocrisy in arguments against gay marriage. I almost cried.