We’ve all done it, sat down with a coffee, maybe exhausted, maybe bored, but for whatever reason we’ve picked up our phone and started scrolling, or maybe it should be called stalking?

Too strong a word? Let’s see. It all starts off innocently enough, friends have just come back from some far flung corner of the world and you are genuinely interested in their pictures and comments. Others are too, you follow a couple of new people, wander off to check out their page, see who their contacts are, then you recognise a name.

This is where the gravitational pull of the rabbit hole is at its greatest. Five minutes ago you had no interest in this name from your past. A past that was lived without social media. Yet now, here they are. Their whole life mapped out for all to read. One click and you are pulled in. You’re not doing anything wrong, after all you were best friends when you were six. The fact you are now forty six and have not spoken to them for over thirty years, bears no relevance. You are in freefall mode, unaware of where you will land.

You have gone off on your first tangent. You have joined the first two dots of a so far, unknown dot to dot pattern. You are the first dot, they are the second. Yet to discover are the plethora of dots that you have both created in your lives apart. Who did they marry, do they have children? Do your children know their children? Where did they live, work, where are they now? Are they single or married? Another cup of coffee is needed, whilst you fall, ever deeper towards your first bumpy landing…….

It is a bumpy landing as well, you can’t stop scrolling around now. You’ve abandoned your first find, in favour of a guy you used to work with, who you know was friends with your neighbour, who you suspected was involved with your cousin’s wife. It’s as if you are right there, in the pub with them, listening to their conversation. Joining them on their dog walks, admiring their baking. You are going off at tangents all over the place. You never actually stay anywhere long enough to find out anything too incriminating, after all, you are reading freely posted information, not peering in people’s windows, or going through their bins.

You’re off again, falling deeper, because you have recognised a picture of a child. Oh, yes we had to reach here sooner or later. I am guilty of it. Parents and grandparents post pictures of their holidays, their visits to the zoo. Use children’s pictures as their profile picture. A lot of people keep pictures of their family off the internet completely. Others post occasionally. After all one 2yr old looks very much like all the others right? What’s the harm, she looked so cute cuddling the new baby? Be very careful here. You cannot unsee things. Once you have made that connection you now know, what you were not supposed to know.

You sit back, looking at the picture. Nothing unusual, it is of a toddler having fun with her grandparents. This however is a picture you should never have seen. You are still unsure of how you landed here, so far away from home, yet so close. You have done nothing wrong, yet you feel dreadful. You might just as well have waited until he was asleep and raided the sideboard drawers. That is where family secrets should be, not plastered across the internet for all to see.

The dots are all joined. The damage has been done. You have opened a can of worms, the question is can you put the last d back on securely enough?

So, what have I done? Well, after a conversation with my mother, during which both of us failed to remember the name of my first ballet teacher, I decided to ask a Facebook history group in my home town. I had a picture, maybe someone would recognise themselves, but before I could post it, I saw a surname that I’d first come across last year. I’d been invited by a friend to attend a talk on the history of the church associated with our childhoods. The guy giving the talk, had a surname of foreign origin though. I had at the time pondered his connection to the church. It was not a family name I knew. I’d thought no more of it, as I had been unable to attend the talk, yet here he was again,; n the history group,so he must have a connection to my home town …..Yes, of course I clicked on his name. It gave no clue as to who he was and I didn’t recognise him. I should have left it there, but I didn’t. I wondered if I knew any of his friends. I only got as far as his friends with the surname beginning with ‘C’ when I saw a picture of my friends grandchildren. I hadn’t seen the actual picture, it was a recent one, from Christmas I guess. The children were dressed in red. I froze. I knew I shouldn’t be there. I should not be seeing this. I couldn’t have known where my innocent search would end. I didn’t know her name, well not her surname, but the man with the foreign surname had her listed as his daughter. I clicked on the children’s pictures and there it was. A picture of my friends ex wife. There was another picture of the oldest child, she is the spitting image of her maternal grandfather. I have seen numerous pictures of her. I knew the first name of his ex, I knew what she did, twice, but I didn’t know she was local, nor that she had remarried. Nor, more importantly, what her maiden name was. I didn’t want, or need to know. I now console myself with the fact, I am prettier than her, but she is smaller than me. I cannot tell him what I have seen. We both have bad ex’s. They happened at a time in our lives when we were apart. Yes, of course, I’ve wondered about her from time to time, but not enough to want to know. I am still wondering which God of the underworld felt they needed to punish me in such a way as this.

So, beware of social media rabbit holes. This should have been a simple posting of me in a tutu as a gawky four year old. I knew there would be comments from my friends on the site. That was what I wanted. I have learnt my lesson.