To One Who Was Dying Inside

Dear Internet Friend,
Your screen name was melancholy and dramatic, a strange sight on a Christian alternative to MySpace. It caught the eye of newly-adolescent, uncertain me. You were in a band that sang offensive lyrics, and you yourself were unafraid to be offensive. I still don’t understand why you acted so childishly with me sometimes in the chat rooms, pissing off other people with our random tangents and stories, since you were nearly and adult. Perhaps it was simply because you didn’t want to grow up. I get that. But it was a good time, and you shocked me out of my temporarily comfortable corner of being good for the sake of being good.

We both stopped going on that website, and now I remember you as a face singing into a microphone, a guitar strap hugging your shoulder, your eyes closed. I never posted my picture there, but I wonder how you remember me, if you remember me at all. We were both the popular ones in those days, as popular as someone can get in the chatrooms of a relatively small networking website for Christians.

You were my first and only serious internet friend…there have been others, but I’ve shied away from them. Now I lurk, creep, and otherwise anonymously stalk blogs and profiles. It’s safer. You don’t get influenced…sometimes. And you don’t have to exert energy for correspondence—real life too often gets in the way, anyway.

Thanks for everything,
Irene.