by Amelia Bray

Created on: October 29, 2008   Last Updated: June 28, 2011

Isn't it wonderful, after all these years away from someone whom you've laughed, loved and lived a huge part of your life with, you can finally catch up with them thanks to the world of the Internet.

Sure, sites like Facebook and MySpace seem to make the whole thing or reconnecting with long lost friends seem like you're just trying to get more friends than everyone else, but doesn't it feel amazing to know you've found someone you shared your very first drink with (whether it was legal or illegal is beside the point!) but you don't forget what it's like to know what they're up to again. It's lovely to know if they're married, with kids, or if they're even (yes this will sound bad) but if they're worst off from you.

It's healthy, only if it doesn't become an obsession with finding out how their lives are. Which is, understandably easy to do. We all harbour a little bit of jealousy for someone in our lives. Whether it's our enemies, our best friends for getting a top score on a test we revised for hours for and came out scraping seventy five percent marks, or if it's just for someone we knew from afar.

These sites can connect us to these people, and it's then when you have the email, or little message telling you that they've accpeted your friend request is it that the obsessions can occur. The trick is, to have a check up once in a while, write on their walls, ask questions, but ultimately, remember that what might have been good for them, might not be good for you. You are your own person, and these people from your past aren't you. Just people you have a connection too, and have shaped and moulded you into who you are, in either a big way, or a small way. You have most likely done the same to those people. They're not you. However it is easy to feel like they are better than you.

It is a perfectly safe, and good idea to get back in contact with those that you might have left behind. You can re-kindle friendships, find parts of yourself you might have forgotten and also which is normally the best policy, is to just have them on your friends list. There to talk to, catch up with if you want to, but there. Yes it is always tempting to let it get to you, but having old friends on your list is a great thing to have. It shows you've lived life. You've laughed with more people than the ones you have as current friends now, and that there is a history to you.

Because ultimately, these are the people who made you the way you are, and in some ways, it's rude to forget them.

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