Facebook has become an archive of all the awkward moments I’ve experienced over the last seven years. While this may sound like something negative, I don’t see it that way. Instead, Facebook offers a visual reminder of how much I have changed from high school, when I was at the tail end of an aggressively awkward phase. In grade nine, I discovered black eyeliner, and I decided I liked it enough to reapply it midday. I preferred polos and shirts with Paul Frank characters on them. Some days, I would look at my over-straightened hair after gym class and think, Things have got to get better than this. Looking back at those moments from the early years of high school, I’m pleased to tell my young self that things have gotten better. I no longer wear cheap perfume or fedoras, and I no longer avoid capital letters in text messages. Now that we have moved past the awkward years that came before and after puberty, I think it’s time to celebrate the changes we made, and the moments of wisdom we had in the midst of our MSN chats.
I joined Facebook in the spring of 2007. Of course I wasn’t the earliest adopter of Facebook, as it was initially open only to American university students. I wasn’t the first at my high school to get Facebook either, but I certainly wasn’t the last. I joined at a moment when it was de rigueur to join, and all photos had to be accompanied by some sort of a hand gesture. This was one of my first profile pictures, which I carefully selected from a series of photos I took with my friends. (We were all about the photo shoots in those days.) I still dream that I’m wearing that turquoise polo shirt sometimes, which proves that some wardrobe choices are difficult to move past.
Profile pictures were hard to come by because very few people had camera phones, and I would have to use my mother’s camera if I wanted to get a decent picture. If I wanted to take what would later be known as a selfie, I would have to stick my arm in front of me, and hope that I managed to make it into the photo. It was a trial and error process that resulted in many deleted photos of the ceiling. My preferred technique was to put the camera on self-timer and take photos in the grass, as in the photo above, taken in August 2007.
During these early days of Facebook, it seemed that every conversation that could be had, had to be posted on your Facebook wall so that everyone knew how popular you were. The conversations were always inconsequential — even then we were wise enough to know that some conversation were meant for text instead — and usually involved us staying that ‘n2m’ was going on. (That’s ‘not too much,’ for everyone who has forgotten their MSN abbreviations.) It was also essential that you updated your Facebook status constantly, so that everyone would know, “Courtney is reading Harry Potter” or “Courtney is Christmas eve!”
I was still at the age when I took myself too seriously, and I hadn’t quite figured out how to laugh at myself like I have now. Okay, I had mastered the art of a kind of fake laugh, so that everyone would always be laughing with me, rather than at me, but I still wasn’t at the point when I saw the humour in situations that made me look ridiculous. I didn’t know what self-deprecating meant yet, so often my comments would come across as sarcastic when I couldn’t really figure out what to say. Looking back on my comments on my photos, I think, Young Courtney, have a laugh! Not an ‘lol’ but a genuine laugh! Though this was in the days when everyone adopted Seth Cohen defensive sarcasm, because everyone watched The O.C. and played the The O.C. Trivia Game on Facebook, so in a way, my comments were excusable.
Luckily, as time passed, I was able to laugh at myself. The picture above is from March 2008, when my synchronized skating time took a trip to British Columbia. I think this picture proves that I was going to figure it out eventually, though I was still wearing Paul Frank and Puma sneakers.
Over time, my sense of humour and sense of style started to improve, and I was finally able to laugh at the moments when I came off as rather less cool than I hope. I was finally able to move past the trauma of two and a half years with braces, though I was still glad that few of those photos existed on Facebook. This photo was taken in July 2009 at the Cliffs of Moher in Clare, Ireland, and it’s still one of my favourite profile pictures because it is so imperfect. Today I am better able to accept my imperfections — though never in spelling or grammar — and I fully embrace photos where I’m doing something ridiculous. Sometimes I have days when I feel like the fourteen year old who needed to touch up her make up after gym class, or like the seventeen year old who wanted so badly to be perfect. Now I’m able to move past those days to realize that I’m happier and funnier for allowing the imperfections to exist. Now I can post photos like the one below of Clara and I from New Year’s Eve 2013 because I know that life is better with lanky arm movements.
And whenever I’m having trouble accepting my Facebook past, I remember what my wise friend Erica once said: always keep your old Facebook photos because they let everyone know what a success you are today.
Song of the Day: Especially in Michigan by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Because it was my favourite song in high school.
