My cousin called me the other night and we talked for an hour and a half. We hadn't connected since she last called sometime earlier in the year, maybe March when she was living in Arizona.

My landlord is her uncle, and a few weeks ago he needed to come into my room for some work to be done and I asked him about Audrey. He surprised me with news that she had moved to Switzerland.

I was duly surprised. Maybe part of me was a little disappointed that she made such a major life decision to move from Sedona to Switzerland and never once was I on her mind to tell me about it. But to be truly disappointed, I would have to presume that I had some importance to her, and being important to anyone is antithetical to my being, so it was easy to just let it go.

Apparently I would have known about the move if we were connected on Facebook, but in the interim of our connections, I had unfriended both her and my old friend Madoka. I unfriended them as a reaction to people with whom I wanted more substantial communications. If they wanted to communicate with me, then communicate with me.

As far as I'm concerned, Facebook is for superficial contact with people with whom I would otherwise not be in contact. It's not for people from whom I expect more personal, direct communications. I realize no one thinks like this.

Facebook is a primary contact for many people. It doesn't matter if posts, likes and replies become a matter of committee between total strangers. It doesn't matter that a post wasn't meant personally for you and any number of replies are also not meant for you or by people who know absolutely nothing about you, and any reply you make goes to everyone who weren't intended as recipients.

It took about six months for Madoka to realize we were no longer friends and she sent me a message and I duly re-friended her. She didn't get it, but I felt re-friending was the only course of action to make my initial unfriending her not be passive-aggressive. It wasn't. It was hoping for something, and it didn't happen.

I still don't read her FB posts and our communications continue to be superficial and not at all a dialogue. Positive, but not dialogue. Theoretically, we continue to profess being important to each other; practically it's lip service. Well, no, we mean it, but the manifestation in our interaction doesn't live up to it. It's like going to church on Sundays and that being all for spiritual commitment.

Audrey never realized we were no longer friends on Facebook. After her uncle told me she moved to Switzerland, I sent a one-sentence e-mail to her telling her that I learned from her uncle about the move and wished her the best.

She sent a short (but longer than mine) email back saying it's all on Facebook. She still didn't realize we were no longer friends on FB, and I didn't know how to respond, so I didn't and decided to just let it go. Whatever.

Then she called the other night, a couple weeks after I didn't respond, and we talked for an hour and a half.

What's the take away? Well, we don't matter to each other in an attached sense. We're not keeping tabs on each other, concerned for what's happening in each other's daily lives. It's Buddhistic non-attachment perhaps. It doesn't mean we don't care. We care, we just don't matter.

For her, things matter. Her kids, her father, whoever or whatever else matter. I don't, which is great. I don't want to matter.

And nothing matters much to me. That's also great, I don't want things to matter. I don't have kids, I don't have family who matter. I don't keep tabs on them, they don't keep tabs on me. Whatever happens to them and whatever happens to me is just news to each other. There's no involvement. There's nothing we could do if either side knew any more than we do about each other.

I don't know what issues they're dealing with and there's no indication they want my input on anything. That would be mattering.

And they don't know I'm an alcoholic and ignore how big of a problem insomnia is, but regardless, I don't want their input on those things. That would be mattering.

If you want to matter, you have to stick your nose in someone else's business. If you want other people to matter, you have let them stick their nose into your business. Caring is fine, but caring without action isn't mattering.

Me, my cousin, my family, we all care for each other. We just don't matter. There's no judgment in this, it's just fact.