So I've been doing this thing lately where I've been writing letters to people in my past, and not sending them. People who meant a lot to me, for one reason or another, and talking about my feelings towards them. I want to share one experience that mattered a lot.
Hadn't talked to many other kids for five years, so I didn't really know what I was doing. And when someone showed an interest in talking to me, I attached really quickly. It creeped people out, so I had a hard time even making online friendships.
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Around this time, I was exploring my sexuality the best I could. Which means exploring my feelings, basically, and consuming LGBT media and reading LGBT stuff online. One day, I met this other boy on one of the video game sites I frequented.
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He told me he was bi, but couldn't tell his parents. So we became a support system for each other to talk about LGBT issues, and it turned out that we had a similar interest in political issues. When he got home from school, he would come online and chat with me and play games.
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After the 2004 elections, we were both kind of distraught. But we had spent most of the summer and fall months talking to each other. So we talked... and basically created a long distance relationship. Which consisted of talking on AIM, pretty much, and playing online.
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He had helped my loneliness, and alleviated the monotony of being all alone every day. I remember being excited to talk to him, and he became my primary outlet for socialization. We were both closeted from our families at the time, and were sort of comrades in that.
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That following May, I managed to convince my family to take me on a trip to the east coast, where he lived. After traveling the eastern seaboard, I finally got near his hometown and we had arranged to meet at the town festival that was happening at the time.
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We had a great day hanging out at the festival, checked out the exhibit he was working on, and eventually, we went out for lunch and wound up back at his parents' house (he still was closeted). They weren't home, and we cuddled for an hour. It was really nice.
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Eventually, his parents called and they were on their way home, so it was my cue to leave. I did, but it was hard. After being alone for so long, finally getting to see him in person, so intimately, was a lot. I cried all night, and flew home the next day.
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We had both loved it, and he told me how happy he was to have been able to be able to explore himself like that. It made me happy, too, for that reason and also because I was isolated from people my own age. I still think fondly of that time. My first date!
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But as the summer months rolled around, he started talking to me less and less. He was busy with school, he had said. I understood, but it was hard. One day he stopped responding at all. He hadn't broken it off. I kept trying to talk with him, but there was no answer.
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Eventually I just asked if he wanted to end it, because of how he had been ghosting me (though I didn't know the name of it at the time). He said yes. That was it, and I was kind of distraught. I had lost my boyfriend and my socialization outlet all at once. And I was confused.
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I was depressed for a month and ended up playing Chrono Trigger, because it was one of his favorite games. Obsessive, I know. I had no idea why he called it off. Later, I found out that there was another boy, who went to the same school he did. Basically I got replaced lol
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Years later, he contacted me and told me he was sorry and felt really guilty for what happened. I understood, of course. It wasn't his responsibility to provide an outlet for me to communicate with the world beyond my house. He was just a kid too, and I was putting a lot on him.
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I know this sort of stuff isn't why you read my feed, but I just wanted to share. He meant a lot to me. He still does, actually, for giving me a daily escape for the half year or so that he did. It meant a lot, in ways I doubt anyone but myself can really appreciate.
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Enough with story time. Writing these letters has been really cathartic, and I've only done three. I will probably do four or five more, at least. I always thought writing letters you don't send sounded like a dumb exercise, but I recommend trying it. It's cathartic.
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