January 7, 2008

• Internet Intimacy: My first E-lationship in Retrospect

  So what, if anything, do I see as wrong with that Internet intimacy, and other Internet friendships I made the same year? Go back and read the first postagain. Then look at my senior pics below...and read further.

  

  

  I was a SENIOR, CO-CAPTAIN OF MY SOCCER TEAM,I’m 6’2” with eyes of blue (ok, 5’11.5” with brown eyes, sheesh, allow me some exaggeration for story’s sake) and I’m spending my time on a 15-year-old girl I never loved. (I liked her, but she was 2000 miles away, and 2.5 years younger, and I never got serious about her or vice versa). What in the world? What about school friends? Did you know that I barely applied for college that year because I was so busy with extracurricular activities? To the point that my dad filled out half the application and shoved it to me to finish the rest?! That despite being 99th percentile type on standardized tests?

  Oh, and more importantly (kidding!), why was she the major feminine influence in my life? Come on, there’s not much more social capital in life than being a senior, starter on the sports teams, smart, and having deceivingly good-looking senior pictures! Why didn’t I choose to develop a relationship with, say, the junior captain of the girls’ basketball team, the only other student in morning math class? (Told you it was a small school!). Or the girl goth artist who became a good friend as the senior year went on? Or the younger girl with the pretty blue eyes who had a crush on me? (Ok, she was in middle school, come to think of it, so there was a good reason to ignore her!) Why not any of the girls on my own JOS team, who I was spending hours with weekly? Oh, I can give you reasons, babble about so-and-so having a boyfriend and my 17-year-old self being smart enough to realize that having a girlfriend just to lose her was no way to go through life, blah-blah-blah…but Web intimacy does this to people, every time. Is the Web REALLY filled with more interesting people? Or are we too busy, too afraid of real-life intimacy to find out, and we turn to the web?

  And who did I impress? A talented but lonely 15-year-old girl, with one younger sibling, impressed by a senior. Wow, pulling that off was like splitting the atom! Don’t take this personally you all, but winning Internet respect is not that hard. What about that intimacy, that knowing and being known-ness that I was building with Miss Hollywood? Sure, it was deep when it came to JOS; but when I started asking her about other things, or we actually talked about our attitudes toward dating, I realized we were quite different! Internet intimacy is deep, but it is not broad. You tell me about your broken past, I tell you about my dreams and fears…and then we wake up in the middle of the night and realize that the pretty pictures we painted for each other are but mist and spiderwebs. The truth does not lie in histories and fantasies,but in who we are now. And what happens when you sign on, and their names disappear from the screen? Is it computer failure, or is it lack of interest? You never know, do you?

  Oh, but I was able to reveal myself honestly in conversation! What about my freedom to be me? Well…she kind of accidentally let slip some things I had told her about someone else to that person. Oops! So much for that freedom. And did I forgive, shrug off those details she shared with someone else? No, I felt betrayed, wanted an apology, and snapped those bonds of friendship in two in an angry Christmas day conversation two years later that doesn’t rank high on my proudest moments list. (Seriously, Christmas day? Classy of you, 19-year old GreekPhysique!) But it had to happen, sadly…pieces of me no longer belonged with her, and our friendship couldn't grow any more because of the distance. That's another creepy part of Web relationships--why do they feel so much deeper than real-life relationships?

  Anyway, bottom line is, we had 6-7 great months of talking to each other, then I went off to college (so we no longer had JOS in common), and we slowly started drifting apart. We went from chatting almost nightly to once a week to rarely. Also, some mutual acquaintances of ours, by their actions, started forcing us to choose sides between them, and unfortunately we ended up on opposite sides. It's impressive that we talked with each other as long as we did. The eventual break didn't come until 2 years later. Eventually, our personal shortcomings became more noticeable to each other, and that was that. Have I talked to her since? I actually befriended her recently on a social networking site and exchanged brief update messages.

  Looking back, I don't really regret the relationship itself; she was smart, cute, and socially very engaging, and I think I gained a lot from my interactions with her. I couldn't type so many posts if she hadn't taught me through AIM! This isn't one of these stories where I tell you she grew up to be a terrible person. She's a successful professional today. But I still have to wonder--why so much time, just for her? What did I miss my senior year and first year of college while talking to her on AIM? I'll never know.
  

  • 11:24 pm
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