That time a celebrity friended me on Facebook

Several years ago, a celebrity friended me on Facebook. I’m not saying who. In fact you probably won’t recognize his name if you scroll through my contacts, but, for some reason,after I wrote an article about someone he’d worked with, he started following me on Twitter. Then sent me a Facebook friend request. Then, I think, we forgot about each other.

Every once in a while, though, he posts something, and it is always so inconsistent with the other posts I see regularly that it shocks me out of my Facebook daze. It’ll be Throwback Thursday, and I’ll be looking at photos of my friends’ proms, and all of a sudden I’ll see a wedding picture from the ’90s with an Oscar nominee as one of the groomsmen. I will be reading someone’s rant about whatever is going on in the world to day, and then I’ll scroll down to find details about a new project this guy is working on with my high school self’s favorite band. And the front man of that band will have left comments on the status. It’s all a little surreal.

I don’t know if this guy realizes it, but his posts were a godsend last year, when I was home, dazed by the first year of motherhood, no sleep, worried about bills, fighting postpartum depression, upset about my physical appearance and sad about moving. Every time he posted a status, I got a little snapshot of a world much more exciting than mine was at the time. I don’t think it’s world I’d like to live in, but it made me feel better to see it, maybe because even as I was changing diapers and dealing with colic, and not writing nearly enough, I felt like I was a part of his world, just a little. It was like a little glitter from his glamorous world drifted out of the computer and onto me.  And also, seeing celebrity faces in my Facebook feed, right next to photos of a friend’s cat, jolted me out of my depression for a few minutes.

I know we’re told as kids that we shouldn’t strive to be cool, and that we should just be ourselves, but I didn’t want to be myself at that point, and dammit if his posts didn’t make me feel cool. And for whatever small reason, that helped me. Thank you, Hollywood celebrity guy, for friending me. You make my Facebook feed a fancier place, and you made a very hard year a little bit easier.