The Encounter on Instagram That Made My Heart Race

I woke up the next morning to a bunch of likes and some “Happy New Year!” comments. Mostly old friends, but also someone new. Apparently, before midnight I’d gotten a new follower, like Cinderella at the ball, and found my prince. I recognized his name immediately: He was an old college crush I’d been friendly with in my freshman year. My heart still raced, after all this time.

Through his posts I learned that he was in California, living what appeared to be an exciting life in Hollywood, the kind I dreamed of before teaching. I smiled when I saw his name, but I didn’t think too hard about it. Algorithms often put people together, and judging from his page, he was a guy who had a lot of followers. I was just one more.

“He knew you were single,” a friend said when I spoke of him. “I mean, who posts a picture of their cat on New Year’s?”

In the Stories feature on Instagram, unlike the newsfeed, you can see who has looked at your posts. This I found fascinating. People might not like your pictures, but I felt solace knowing they were looking at them. That was all the motivation I needed to post more.

And so, each morning, I set out to find sunsets, sunrises, flowers and leaves, anything about life and growth. Sometimes I noticed my Hollywood guy was also looking.

Winter turned to spring, then summer, and the city suffocated with humidity. I packed up my car and headed upstate. After online grief counseling, I’d finally stopped my daily crying over my mother. I decided to sprinkle her ashes in my garden and give her a chance to grow, too. I was ready to find new companions.

That’s when a movie he had been working on came out. He posted about it in that Stories feature, and I, new to the game, took my hipster-created avatar and “clapped” for it. A day later, he hearted that post and wrote back: “Thanks, Elana. Do you know how we know each other?”

My ego was in no way bruised. It had been over 30 years, and most people didn’t have a savant-like memory like mine. 

“We went to college together in my freshman year,” I wrote. “Before I transferred.”

To my surprise, this led to numerous, perfectly adorable PG-13 texts. It was not clear if he remembered me. I simply assumed that a guy living so far from home, from his past, wanted the chance to reconnect with nostalgia, if only for a moment. But then he wrote, “You look totes adorbs in all your photos.”

Big smile emoji!

Someone had noticed me when it seemed like everyone else was beginning to fade out of my life. My heart raced.

I continued to write him, and he almost always wrote back.

He was coming to New York and wanted to get together to catch up. Again, nostalgia, I thought. But his texts were frequent and flirty, albeit all via Instagram Messenger. My garden was blooming, and so was my love life.

I became a regular on Instagram Stories, posting snippets of my life with the hope of him seeing them. He did, often, and would write me sweet notes. Could this be something real? We decided to meet upstate since his close friend had relocated there. I was giddy.

The summer ended, and we never met IRL, though we came close. He said he had family obligations. I understood. I headed back to the city in the fall, as I needed to set up my classroom. To begin another year, I would need to let him go.

I found myself doing more, taking more pictures, and then a funny thing happened: I was actually happier. He was the impetus for my adventures, but the effect was the same. It didn’t matter that I was single or that my friends were too busy. I found that adventurous part of myself that I had lost.

Fall turned into winter, and we were still communicating. This time via text, and we even started sending very short videos (his idea). Purely wholesome. But like anything else, I took to it like the shy karaoke singer, and maybe sent one too many. Not sure. Maybe he was working on a new movie or had found a new girlfriend. But he stopped commenting on my posts. He stopped calling me his dream girl. And he stopped being my muse.

The thing about Instagram is that likes come in the form of big red juicy hearts, desperately confusing my fragile one. I guess I just wanted there to be someone lovingly peeking into my life. But seasons come and go, and there’s still beauty in the world. Each season passes and a new one begins. And if you don’t take the time to look at it, it might just disappear.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.