What I Remember of Chatrooms

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boyfriend, chat rooms, chatrooms, childhood, community, dating, family, fear, health, journal, life, memories, mental wellbeing, opinion, relationship, relationships, stupid choices

When the internet craze hit and I mean really hit not like the internet loaded slower than it would take for one to go out and buy a porno just to download one choppy weird photo of some naked chick, when it really hit Chatrooms were all the rage for my age group.

I was in seventh grade the first time I entered a Chatroom, which I did at my friend Heather’s house because my parents did not have internet and if they did the computer we had was so ancient it wouldn’t have understood how to utilize the technology. I think the reason I was able to use her internet was because Heather really wanted to be necking outside with her boyfriend of a year who was a Mormon and a prude, she would have crying fits because he never wanted to make out with her. Poor baby, all I had was the glow of the computer to makeout with (and I never did).

I too was a prude; I guess more so than her boyfriend, at least he had kissed someone.

Anyway, I entered a Chatroom where people of all ages and many interests were able to talk about this and that… hands down the most obnoxious bitches were the ones that came onto the chat without knowing anything of the subject and would put g/a/l which I might have answered once or twice, but it definitely scared most away to say my gender was female, age was 12 and my location was no one’s business. I remember people would get pretty nasty about my age and those that didn’t were probably major creepers but I liked talking. I learned a lot in that time frame most importantly if you don’t type fast with conviction people lose interest quickly.

***
I probably got on chat once every few months, but it was a great pass time. I began talking with a guy named Scruffy33 who was intelligent, funny, caring, and cool. He was really intriguing and because he was I would go to Heather’s house more often just to talk to him. Yeah yeah go kiss your boyfriend I will be here talking to a guy hidden behind a computer screen.

I really don’t remember what he and I talked about, but it was easy to flirt with him and know that it was going absolutely no where. One day Heather sat in on one of our conversations. The entire time she oooed and ahhhhed about how much the guy liked me, when it was all said and done and we promised to talk to one another again, soon she asked me if he was my boyfriend. We were so diluted and young that we actually considered the fact that he might be. Thankfully for me and my safety I am a major chicken shit and I was really afraid of any kind of commitment, convinced that I was unattractive and going to have to grow up to be a bitchy nun (who never got laid I did think that whenever I learned about sex), I decided it was best for both Scruffy33 and I to never speak again.

***
The fact of the matter is I don’t really understand how anyone could meet the person on the other end of the computer screen. Why did so many children at that time go after this person who could have been lying from the moment they got on the computer? I don’t think they were stupid, I think they were just the wrong mix of brave and naïve. Maybe it was that they were not fortune enough to be doing it at a friend’s house for a limited amount of time.

Empty Shell of a Person

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depressed, fear, health, heartbreak, honest, life, love, memories, mental-health, pain, relationship, relationships, sex

I lay in bed, the sun beating on my face through the blinds, which I had closed as tightly as possible so as to eliminate the rays; to engulf myself with darkness late that afternoon.  I sat up almost angry that I had been shaken from my slumber by Mother Nature’s Wrath, the wretched sun.  Why couldn’t that day have been overcast?  I walked out into the living room, black as a cave; the air was dormant and perfect.

I contemplated making food, but hunger I had none.  The day, as any other day dragged on and on, all I wanted to do was sleep.  Await the return of my love to bask in the terror that was our day to day life.

 

I was so unhappy, but swimming in it, that life that was drowning me, I couldn’t see.  I was holding myself prisoner to an existence that I had no business being involved in, much less owning.

The woman in the mirror wasn’t me.  She was a shell of a once beautiful creature that vied for the attention of many men with the best of em’.  Most still saw me, the me inside, but most didn’t matter, only I mattered.  Often I wouldn’t wear makeup, to look on the outside how I felt on the inside; ugly, worn out, useless, and boring.

The majority had no idea, I had so many fooled into thinking I was genuinely happy, they didn’t know of the life I lead behind closed doors.  I even fooled myself into thinking I was happy; I was a child playing an adult’s game.   A bird with a clipped wing, I had pulled out all my feathers and waited for natural selection to take its course.  Yet still I lived; unhappy, inhuman, unchanging, unwilling to accept that this was not normal.

I am honestly not sure what caused this despair; the brain injury, the tremulous relationship, moving so far from my family, loving another so entirely and forgiving him for wrong doings when in reality I knew I would never do anything so deplorable to another human much less someone I loved, or the constant belittling I endured.  The words he would say burned like acid on my already scalded heart; the one I carry to this day “Sex with you is like vanilla, its ok, but why would anyone choose it over strawberry or chocolate?”

He trapped me and I let him put me on a shelf, for others to look at and never touch.  Look what I have; look what I caught she is perfect, just not enough.

 

This is the first time I have admitted this to anyone even myself, and I honestly feel I ran through the depths of hell to pull myself out and see the person I was meant to be, to see the person that had been killed some time before.  This was not without my freak-out’s, my falls, nor the hearts I demolished along the way.

The first time I saw my face again, honestly saw me again I was in a bathroom at a bar in the middle of nowhere.  “I am so sorry I did this to you.”  I told myself; because regardless of the words, actions, and people I encountered I had done all of it to myself.  I should have walked away, my strength was actually weakness, and I wouldn’t wish this feeling on anyone.