Is it possible to fall in love with a person you only know online? If I had heard this question eight years ago I would have laughed. Back then, I was not so attached to screens and my social life was relatively normal. However, after moving to my current residence everything changed, because when I arrived here I only knew my relatives. Although I went out for walks from time to time and attended university for a while, I didn't socialize with almost anyone and lived more on the internet than in the real world.
This happened five years ago, on a social network that no longer exists. I don't remember which of us was the first to comment on the other's publication, but that's how our relationship began. I was reading her, a poet and writer whose lyrics didn't seem to be of this world, and she was reading me, an aspiring writer who wanted to eat the world when he was still committing spelling mistakes due to his ignorance.
The first time I wrote to her privately was to ask for help with an attempt at a novel I was writing and she helped me correct several things. Then she showed me one of her poems and I fell in love with her writing. Days went by and without realizing it, we began to spend hours talking about books, music, movies, poetry.
We would talk until the wee hours of the morning. We didn't always agree on what we thought about certain topics, but these differences served to debate and enrich our conversation. However, it was not a healthy relationship.
Maybe it was a spur of the moment thing or it just had to be that way, but we were so depressed that we often fell into that theme. Neither of us had an easy life and, in a way, we were like the chicken that the more it digs the more dirt it throws on itself. I resorted to escape routes that created new prisons and she acted with total indifference to the more relevant things going on in her life. As if it didn't matter what we felt. As if none of it caused us pain.
We showed each other several of our scars and without being close to each other we could touch them, feel them and experience them firsthand. But it wasn't just she and me. There were shadows around her and sometimes they mattered more than our friendship. Those shadows consumed her, demanded everything from her, left her tired, and then she would come back to me to tell me about her exhaustion, the boredom, the weight of existence, the meaning of living empty.
She would say she was dead, that she felt nothing, but her writings, her way of seeing the world, the way she talked about books, how much she loved cats and how much she enjoyed nature, gave me the assurance that she was alive, only that there was no warmth in her life, but coldness, indifference, disdain, mistreatment, inconsideration. I, on the other hand, despite my situation, wanted to give her all that warmth she needed, to embrace her even if she was more like the stem of the rose than the flower, to be poisoned by her pain, to live it to the fullest, to cry and scream for her if necessary. I cursed every night that I knew she was suffering, that something was wrong with her, that she was sad, down, because I could do nothing to change it, no matter how hard I tried.
I don't know how or when it happened, but I felt a connection between the two of us that went beyond the screen, something that bordered on the spiritual and held our souls together. Perhaps, I was being overly romantic or dramatic (I always have been), however, that was how I felt and I wrote her several poems where I let her know, with the intention of making her fall in love, just as she had made me fall in love with her verses and her stories, which were not romantic but showed great intelligence, sensitivity, and writing skills.
However, we both knew that our thing wasn't going to last a lifetime, that we weren't really living, and that we needed to get out of our bubble and share with people we could see, hear, smell, and touch. We needed to get away from the screens and get back to our lives, to appreciate what the world has to offer.
I took the first step but in the worst way. I stopped writing to him, I didn't enter that social network anymore, I disappeared from the internet and I didn't even tell him I would be back months later. Deep down, I was also tired. The distance between the two of us was so great that I couldn't go visit her to meet her and that frustrated me. Despite what I felt, I was aware that we were just friends and, at the same time, strangers, and that we might never see each other in person.
I forgot about "everything" and went on with my life, although I thought about her almost every day. During that time, I met another woman in the real world and started dating her, but the memory of the previous one would not go away and I failed to connect with this new person. I felt like a jerk, ended the new relationship and wrote to my friend again after almost a year of not hearing from her sure enough. Unsurprisingly, she turned me down, said things I deserved to hear, and I was on my own again.
At least, that last time, we were able to say goodbye.
Currently, I have more than three years without knowing about her existence. I don't have her in any of my social networks. Blocking her and not knowing more about her was the best thing I could think of to forget her. I couldn't bear to see her posts after that cold goodbye; even so, I still have some of her old writings.
I only hope she is well, writing daily, free of the pain that lacerated her soul.
If I think of her, I imagine her with a pile of poems or stories to be published, looking for a publisher. I see her cleaning the lenses of her glasses before concentrating to play the keyboard and interpret a score. I hear her laugh at some meme or notice that she is once again hooked on a good movie. I see her a little sad because she has become too attached to the character in her play and he is having a hard time. I hear her fingers brushing the pages of a book as she reads. I hear her talking to her cats, even if she seems crazy. I see her quiet, full of peace, appreciating the beauty of nature or being lost in her thoughts.
And if I can't sleep after that, I feel a tightness in my chest and write something for her. Even if she never reads it or I never dare to publish it. Even if it makes no sense.
• Design: Photoshop CS6.
• Translation: Deepl (free version)
