Block Contact, Delete

A while ago, this girl from school once asked a bunch of us while we were whiling time away, would you block and/or delete an ex from your MSN contact list. It's excruciating especially when you see the ex-significant other move on in life, and pepper his/her MSN nick with lovey dovey messages to some other person and you're somewhere out there pining, and getting jealous, and getting upset.

I hear of friends who say that the change of status of their, or of some person whom they care about, the most immediate marked change would be their relationship status on Friendster. Granted, I don't have Friendster, so I don't know how that works, but from the stories that I hear about, the most accurate (other than of married men trying to sian sweet young things) reading of a person's relationship status is from the Friendster account. On getting hitched, people would immediate change their relationship status from single to attached, and likewise for those who've falled out of love.

So, am I accurate to say that these cyber information are the most accurate one can get out of another person? I don't know...

What I do know is that I have 317 contacts in my MSN list and have never deleted anyone off that list, even though at the height of my rough patch everyone called for me to block and delete him and not be bothered about him. I lied, I did try to block, sometimes, but I lied still, and now even when I'm the one who (sort of) ditched him, I still left his contact on my MSN list intact.

There are some freaks out there who by some means get my MSN contact from some weird place and add me, but after I found out that they were freaks, I merely just ignored them. I don't bother to block them, and when they IM me, I just leave them alone. Most of the time, if they don't get a reply they'd say stuff like "u there?" "y u ignore me?" but I'd still just ignore. They can think I'm dao, or can think that I'm busy or think something else, but most of them are just lonely people out there only wanting to talk to some other person out there and they'd probably have added hundreds of other people onto their MSN list just like they've added me. It's sort of like casting a wide net and hoping that there's be some fish caught in the net.

I don't see a point in blocking people because I don't want to see an MSN list with half of my contacts with the blocked sign. And because I'm pak jiao, I'd probably mix that up with the busy sign. I am also against deleting contacts because they'd just all end up in my trashbin somewhere and occupying a similiar space. MSN Live works a bit quirkily, I don't know why. Either that or is the fact that I don't want to burn my bridges.

Once a guy I used to go out with taught me this, never to burn your bridges, because one day, you never know when, you might need all the help you can get. Like if you need votes for some sort of competition, or if you because an insurance, finance agent, and you need to build up a contact list, or even a database, or just plain queries and help. You need contacts.

Because of this warped theory, I end up keeping a lot of trash people on my MSN list. Even though some of these trash people might already have blocked or deleted me, I still keep them on the list because for every contact, there's an email address.

Proud to say, people I used to go out with are all still on my contact list. Take Mr Swirl for example, (some might remember him, some might not, it doesn't matter) I still have him on my contact list, and I do look at his MSN nicks and stuff, and sometimes I do take tabs of the times when he's online and ya, I think about him. I'd whonder what he's doing at this time of the day/night, if he's at work, at home, doing stuff we used to do but with another person, or is he just chatting with friends/families or just chilling out. Ya, even now, especially when I'm alone at night and I tend to think more, I still think about him occasionally.

The main reason why I'm blogging about this tonight is that I think that RP has blocked and deleted me from his MSN list. I can't deny that I don't feel good about it. The feeling is a bit indescribible, it's something between indignant, jealous, sore, and a dash of relieve. I have been avoiding being online in the afternoons in the past couple of weeks when I know that he'd be online, mostly because I'm out, but mainly because I don't know how to face him. Then the other day when I finally was online on an afternoon he was online, he IMed me and I ignored every of his messages.

I think that was when he blocked and deleted me.

It is not hidden secret that I always had thought of one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe in the far far future, of returning to the rough patches days, so I made it a point not to burn that bridge even though I think I should have done so. And even though realistically, it was also not possible for me to go back to those days even thought I did think about it. I think of everything anyway. The point is that, I am quite upset over being blocked and/or deleted even though this is probably the most convenient thing that could have happened to me.

For the past few afternoons, I've been coming online just to check if RP's online as a proof that he didn't block/delete me, and maybe was just busy or outstation. Even though I know I'm not going to IM him again, I just sort of want to indulge in the comfort of knowing that he knows I'm still alive, and I'm happy without him.

If Mr Swirl can accept that I'm still online and not be bothered about it, perhaps there's something about RP toward me that he's not comfortable with me still on his list. Is it because it would upset him that I'm happy? Or is it because he just can't be bothered with a contact taking up space in his list? Or is it that he think that he can fuck up my mind by deleting me off?

In a way, with me penning this post, he did succeed in mindfucking me. Or maybe it's just me thinking too much into some insignificant course of action...