September 11, 2015

• The Passing of Internet Friends

  Thinking of Jamie's passing today. It's only been two years; it's odd, it feels like longer. I still remember getting the news when I was at work, in my office. I had a meeting I had to go to in 10 minutes. I tried to pull myself together for the meeting with my colleague. I walked in and told him I couldn't do the meeting, then went back to my office to mourn some more.

  I think one of the odd things about Internet friends is that we have incentives to pretend we don't care as much as we do. After all, often we never met them in person. Or, they live far away, or are different from our usual type of friends. So it's easy to start saying things like "Oh, it's the Internet" or "Internet friends come and go." And there's some truth to that.

  But I have to admit, because Xanga allowed one to read a lot of other people's deepest thoughts, bonding happened much deeper than one expected. No, I only talked to Jamie about once or twice a month outside of Xanga. But it often was on deep topics, or raw moments. I randomly looked up old messages with her. There's one where she says she's trying to get some help with something, but "only my Internet friends are responding." And that's how it is sometimes; our Internet friends may not be real life, but they're the ones who responded when no one else did. And so we miss each other and mourn more than is expected, because of those bonds that were created when no one else would listen.

  • 12:42 am
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