+ ... Here in my head, I found you running around ... +
I'm going to tell this story as I remember it, not as it happened, although both are not necessarily different things.
It was an evening in the early spring of 1999. As usual, I was glued to my computer, hooked up to the internet, waiting to see what would happen next. At this point, I hadn't been online long yet and nearly everything seemed like a new discovery, a new adventure waiting to happen.
On this August's 14, day I had agreed to test out IRC with someone I knew from a local BBS where we both chatted almost daily. I had never seen him, or really spoken to him (apart from your typical online chit-chat), and to be honest I really hoped the IRC thing wouldn't last too long. Then I could soon get back to surfing and the other stuff I really enjoyed on the net.
At 23.00 precisely my BBS-friend (let's call him Three even if that's not his
real name. How kind of me to protect the guilty.) sent me a mail saying he was
online.
So I went over to IRC and once we had found a server that would let us connect,
the test-chat went very well. We talked on Undernet's #dutch, mainly amongst
ourselves as most other users just seemed to come and go. And for some unknown
reason, far away from the idle chatter of our loyal BBS, Three and I seemed to hit
it off very well.
I don't remember everything we talked about that night, but 3 hours went by really quickly so I can only say it must have been a lot. By 2 am we decided we both needed some sleep and agreed to meet again on IRC the next day. For some reason I seemed to really like this person on the other side and apart from being chat-buddies I now felt we had become friends as well. Internet-friends of course, but friends all the same.
The next day, I could hardly wait to get back on IRC. Looking forward to talking to Three made my day, which was still very much filled with the ghosts of a long-term depression, somehow lighter and for the first time in a long time I really had something to look forward to again. It was a strange but yet happy feeling.
To this day, I'm convinced that my illness and my life as a computer-recluse played a big part in my sudden and not altogether rational attachment to Three, as well as my never-ending acceptance of everything that followed. Chronic loneliness can play very dangerous tricks on the mind. And on the heart too.
The second chat not only went better but also lasted even longer than the first one. First we were just joking around, gossiping about the others on the BBS. A grateful topic of conversation was the rather persistent cyber-Romeo who had, very unsuccessfully, been trying to get my attention for the past couple of weeks.
Three had a great sense of humor and he seemed to be completely on my wavelength. As time went by, and we went further into the night, the conversation turned more personal. More serious.
I had told people at the BBS that I was a freelance writer. Which, theoretically, was true (I did some writing for fanzines, wrote short stories and if I was very lucky something got published from time to time), but the thing was.. I didn't spend my days writing. Not for money at least.
The previous 4 years I had been home, recovering from a serious depression, countless phobias and I hardly left the house because of mild but yet persistent agoraphobia. The net, I had found, was the only place I could be normal. The only place where I could feel accepted by my peers. On going online, I had decided to not mention my problems. To anyone. I just wanted to be normal. Or as virtually normal as I could be.
But well, so here it was.. That question I had been dreading. I was overcome with panic. No. Make that terror. How could I tell? How would I tell? And what would he do with what I told him? I was accepted at the BBS. Hell, even respected to a point, and he just had to log what I told him, post it on the main message board et voila.. So much for my virtual life!
I took a deep breath and typed a careful "Are you absolutely *sure* you want to know this?". Silence. Probably one of the loudest silences I ever heard. Even if it was only virtual one. He told me I didn't have to tell him anything I didn't want to, that after all I didn't know him and he didn't know me and hey, he could be anyone.. I took another deep breath and started typing. I told him that I had fallen ill before my 18th birthday. That a teacher at my then school had abused me. And that I didn't go to work, didn't go to school, didn't do much of anything because I was scared. Scared of going out, scared of being amongst people, scared of life.
So there it was.. My big guilty secret, known only to my closest pen friends, my family and the neighbours and villagers that shunned me for being weird, typed out on a computer-screen. It looked so simple, so clinical, to see it like that.. . The lump in my throat almost choked me.
Three didn't leave. He said he was sorry. He asked if I was okay. If there were anything he could do. That I only had to ask. .. Then he went on to tell me that he wasn't such a simple guy either. That he went through life with quite a trauma himself. He told me his girlfriend had died when he was still at university. He had seen her get crushed between a truck and a wall, and there was nothing he could do to stop the accident. It just happened and he had blamed himself ever since. He had dropped out of university. He had given up learning how to drive because he now hated cars. And most of all, he had never had the courage to start anything with another girl again. For fear of failing once more, losing once more.
I suppose this was when it happened. The point where two strangers formed a bond through words, in a virtual world where only those words mattered and real life was nothing but something that happened to be there but was totally irrelevant within this space, within this context. Three and I had our own world now, and it least for now it didn't seem like anything else could ever soil this secret universe.
For the first time in many years I felt weightless, careless and happy. Deliriously happy. Someone out there cared. I was worthwhile again. The damage didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing but talking to this one person with whom I was connecting more every day.
Of course the rational part of me stepped in now and again.. Somewhere buried deep beneath the butterflies, there was the realization that all this might just be a fantasy, that he mightn't feel the same way about me at all. Maybe I was just living on borrowed love, on borrowed time. But at least I was living again. And that felt good.
About a week after we had first started testing IRC, we started discussing our feelings about eachother. It was a pretty hard nut to crack. He sort of made the first move, as I certainly wasn't going to make a fool of myself by confessing to an online attraction, or even worse: lose a very dear friend by telling him how deep my feelings for him really went...
Eventually, what had to be said, was said.. He had been thinking about me a lot, couldn't stop thinking about me and the more we talked, the bigger the attraction grew. He felt like he were living for IRC, like nothing else mattered in his life anymore. Except us and our chats. I think my heart skipped a beat.
I went asleep very happy that night, or rather: that morning as the IRC-session had been an allnighter. But at the same time I was also scared. I knew, rationally, that if this thing we had were to go further, we had to meet in the real world one day. I couldn't imagine anything more frightening than the real world. It had people. Lots and lots of people.
The following night, we discussed how we felt, and after a lot of careful deliberation, we decided that, yes, we would set up a meeting. Go for a drink in a nearby town and see if we got along in real life. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't. Not all all.
First and foremost, I was, as I already mentioned, agoraphobic. And as for people.. Let's just say that I would have preferred diving into a crocodile-infested river to spending time in a crowd. Then there was also the burning question, would we like eachother in real life? And I don't mean looks as such, just basic chemistry. Would we be able to speak, or would we just sit there shyly stuttering about the weather until the next bus came? This was going to be quite an undertaking. But we set a date. Saturday the thirteenth.
And that, I guess, is when it all began for real...