Distance sucks.

[Scribbly]

So, the majority of my friends, I met through the internet.

I don't mean that I don't have any friends IRL - I do. I just know more by volume over the internet. This is good and bad. Sometimes, you lose touch. It is easier to walk away from an online community than a real one, and never find out what happened. I've even done it sometimes. About a year ago, I walked away from an online game because I didn't have time commitments any more. As a result I lost touch with a lot of people who I only knew through the game.

I decided to log back on this week.

One of my friends there I used to chat to a lot at insane o clock. She's canadian, incredibly talented with tailoring, did a lot of cosplay and was very pretty. She was also married, successful, and had a good sense of humour. What I was unaware of was that she also has social anxiety disorder and used the internet as a way of getting around a crippling fear of being around more than six people at a time.

At the end of December her husband declared that he no longer loved her and walked out on her.  I obviously don't know the full story, but she had a breakdown. She cut off all her hair, cut herself trying to work up the guts to cut her wrists. Thankfully her roomate found her before she did it and she got to spend a week in a mental health unit.

She seems to have stabilized and no longer wants to kill herself. Her husband wants to see if there is anything left by dating again. His idea of doing this is apparently taking 21 year old women (he's 33) to expensive dinners and then taking his wife to Denny's on her birthday.

It is times like this that I hate distance more than anything.

If she lived in the same country, even, I could drop everything and go and at least take her out to dinner to try and cheer her up. If she lived in the same city I could hang out with her and actually support her. I could kick her husband in the nads.

But she lives on the other side of an ocean.

The internet lets us do a lot of wonderful things. It lets us forge these relationships despite never really seeing each other face to face. But it can also make us powerless to help when we'd most like to. 

And that sucks. Communication makes the world seem smaller than ever, but in the most fundamental ways, it is still a huge place.

[Dildo Argentino]

i agree it sucks, commiserations

but she sounds like someone in a situation in which she could use someone supportive and reasonable to talk to at length, repeatedly

and that could be you, with the help of the wondrous internets, no?

[Scribbly]

Absolutely, and as long as she wants to talk I'll be listening. I just wish that I could do more.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Absolutely, and as long as she wants to talk I'll be listening. I just wish that I could do more.

Sometimes knowing that a random dude thousands of miles away cares is enough. And anyway it's all that can be expected from you. You are already doing the most that you can do in this situation, and I'm sure that it is helping.

[Dildo Argentino]

Absolutely, and as long as she wants to talk I'll be listening. I just wish that I could do more.

Sometimes knowing that a random dude thousands of miles away cares is enough. And anyway it's all that can be expected from you. You are already doing the most that you can do in this situation, and I'm sure that it is helping.

i'm not sure it is helping, but i think there is a pretty good chance that it is

and i share Billy's sentiment