This might be quite painful to read for a certain Second Life friend of mine whom I’m not discussing here. I’ll understand if you don’t go past this point, M. Fair warning. But on the other hand, you might find it helpful. You be the judge.
I’ve been thinking a lot about closure and the lack thereof lately. I have always felt compassion for those who have loved ones who seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I thought I could imagine how horrible it must be to not have answers, to live on a rollercoaster of perpetual hope and dread for the rest of your life.
But I had no idea. Not even a clue. I do now, because It’s happening to me.
Sixteen years ago I met someone online, and we became dear friends. She was like a sister to me. I’m estimating that we had at least 3,000 conversations during the course of our friendship. Some conversations were deep, others were whimsical. She always broadened my horizons, inspired many a blog post, and added about a thousand pages to my reading list. I never failed to learn from her, and I’m a better person for having known her. Her dry humor always made me laugh, and still does when I think about it.
It’s hard not to get a sense of someone after that much interaction. But if I’m honest, ours has always been an unequal digital power dynamic. If you’ve read my blog at all, you know that I’m an open book. It’s just who I am. My dear friend, on the other hand, kept her real life and her virtual life extremely separate. I never knew her real name, never met her face to face, never saw a real life picture of her. I had no way of contacting her outside of the virtual world of Second Life.
Most of the time I was okay with that. She does, after all, have a right to her privacy. But the scar tissue that I will always carry from the lack of trust has become deep and unattractive over time. Sometimes it hurts so badly that I find it hard to function. I sometimes wonder if that scar has hindered my emotional range of motion.
I will never understand what nefarious deeds she thought I might be capable of after knowing me all this time. I’m not someone who could keep up a façade for a decade and a half. (I can’t even manage to say someone’s shorts don’t make them look fat if they do, and they ask.) I could never destroy her life or even insert myself into it. It’s not my nature. Nor is blackmail or stalking.
I was never given a straight answer about what she feared about me or herself. I can’t even imagine what red flags she saw. Since I’m autistic, I hate residing in a land of uncertain, illogical, unanswered questions. Just tell me.
Did she actually think that I wouldn’t love her just as much if she turned out to be a man living in his mother’s basement, or an exotic dancer, or a dog-hoarding housewife or a recluse or a prison inmate or a paraplegic or any other flavor of human being she may have been? Would I have cared if she were transgender or albino or short or any one of a million other factors that her DNA dealt to her? Not one whit.
We connected mind to mind. I felt a sisterly bond because of the thoughts she shared and the ideas she had. That’s the beauty of Second Life. The outer shell doesn’t really matter. She could be famous, or weigh 600 pounds. Who cares?
I loved her for who she was inside, so mostly I could squash the bitterness that stemmed from the lack of trust on her part, and just connect to who she was, rather than worry about what I was to her. Mostly. The benefits far outweighed the disadvantages.
But she disappeared abruptly, 11 months ago, and I haven’t heard from her since. We hadn’t had a fight. I don’t think she simply ghosted me. I never got a sense that she could be that cruel. (Curt, yes. Cruel, no.) So after a time, I feared the worst.
I’m not going to lie. There’s a tiny underlying current of anger within me, because I had been warning her about just this kind of scenario for as long as I knew her. And it could have been so easily avoided. I used to beg, in fact, that she’d put some mechanism in place in the event of the worst. I begged. I pleaded. After all, if I disappear, I have a broad enough internet footprint that it won’t be hard to find out what has become of me. By contrast, I’ll never know if she had a footprint at all, or even a foot, for that matter.
For me, she’s just gone. I’ll never know if she’s alive and just no longer able to contact me, or if she’s trapped under something heavy, or if she’s lost forever. There will never be any closure. And that’s a realm in which I do not thrive.
The sadness is ever-present, but it comes in waves. The week of this writing, the waves have been so high that I can barely keep my head above water. Tears have flowed. This feels both heartbreaking and cruel. And the fact that there is absolutely nothing I can do about it is a bitter pill that I swallow every day.
More and more of us have cyber friendships in this modern world. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you have such a friendship, and it has been long and consistent and there’s been no exploitation on either side, I hope you will give them the gift of future closure, because you never know when/if the digital link will get broken through no fault of your own.
There are many services online that allow you to send emails out posthumously. I’m looking at one now called after.me. It can provide quite a few useful services for a fee, but it also allows for some free options. One of them is sending emails to 5 people.
After.me will contact you periodically, and if you don’t respond for a certain length of time, they’ll send these emails out on your behalf. I hope no one will compose vengeful emails along the lines of, “You know, I never liked you…” That would be a horrible thing to do.
But you could use a service like this to make people’s lives easier. You could say, “Here’s where you’ll find all my computer passwords, and the key to the storage locker is hidden in the ice cube tray,” or “Here’s the code to open the safe, where you’ll find my most current will and the Hope diamond,” or “never forget how much I have always loved you,” or, at the very least, “Peace out.”
Here’s the email I wish I could get from my friend:
“If you’re reading this, I’ve either passed away or am in such a physical state that I’m no longer able to communicate with you. Please know that I always valued our friendship and thought you were an amazing person. I hope our talks meant as much to you as they did to me. I wish you well, my sister. Hugs forever.”
An added bonus would be, “My name is xyz, if you want to look for an obituary or a find-a-grave. Just please don’t reach out to my family, because they didn’t know I went in to Second Life, and I don’t want them to. Thanks. And for what it’s worth, the thing I was always shy about you knowing was abc. It was never anything personal. Please know that. If you’re ever in the vicinity of my grave, maybe stop by and have a chat someday. I’d like that.”
It’s a moot point for me. It’s never going to happen. But maybe you can give someone you love the closure that I have been robbed of. I hope so. You have absolutely no idea how much that would mean to them. Trust me on that, if on nothing else.
Caly, I will never forget you. Thank you for having been such a big part of my life. I hope that wherever you are, you’re at peace.
Dear Reader, if you’re feeling the urge to tell me that this person was not my friend based on the choices she made or the information she withheld, please know that I wrote this from a place of profound pain, and I can’t possibly condense one of the most meaningful long-term friendships I’ve ever had into a mere blog post. While I usually appreciate your insight, for once on this blog, any criticisms will not be welcome. Emotional support and comfort is always appreciated, though. Thanks.
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