Words on a Screen

I’ve stuck in it for years, since senior year of high school. This was when friends turned away, turned into things I didn’t need. Depression destroyed a lot of what I held dear, leaving my life in shambles. Somehow I made it through to the end of the year. Somehow I managed to grab hold the edge of my cap, and managed to toss it up into the air, and join my Class of 2011 in celebrating the feat of graduating high school.

It wasn’t until I was out in the real world that I realized the saying, “You are only friends with people at school because you saw them five days a week.” Quickly I watched as everyone got married off, or had kids… within the simple span of months since we took pictures on the tarp covered graduation floor. The men wandered off to their missions, the women started families. Everyone I was around for the final year of high school quickly ran off to their futures, as I struggled along at the back of the pack, trying to pick up my feet into a run after them.

I flunked out of my first year of college. I had no friends. Some people I graduated with went to the same school as I, but college was… as I quickly found out, not meant for me. Not in the beginning. Yet it was this school that introduced me to two dear friends I have still to this day – and caused me to appreciate the one friendship I retained from my high school years.


Ball up the paper, delete the words, try again. Who wants to hear about the sappy story of no friends and a college drop out? This isn’t the place for that. This isn’t the place to talk about what led up to the friendships – but rather the friendships themselves.

Which friendship, however? It’s not possible to have one singular best friend… is it? If so I wish someone to give me their story of it. Of the longstanding friendship that has survived the roughest patchwork of rocky roaded life. Tell me the story of the one friendship that has gone with all the changes in tastes and attitudes of life. Sure, some people could perhaps drag one up, could tell me the stories of their best friend that they met in Kindergarten, and are going to raise their children to be best friends.

I’ve heard it all before.

How unlucky am I that I never had that?


You are more than words on a screen to me, I care for you the same as those I know in person. The only change, the only difference, is that we cannot see each other. We do not speak with our voices, but instead with our fingers. There is no physical touch, only the touch of our words to each other’s minds.

We have not known each other since Kindergarten, yet we dream of the day we would have kids to grow together. To pair them off, watch them marry, and become sisters-in-law. Never mind the fact that children are an impossible feat for you or I, it is fun to think about. Ignore the realities of our states of mind, our lives, and the dream is beautiful.

I have not known you since Kindergarten, but you are still my most dear friend.


A cycle set in stone since the final year of high school, when depression struck the heart of friendships, scattered shrapnel, and destroyed what I held most dear. No one wants the details, and thinking about it is just as depressing as writing it.

The cycle is something I cannot break myself. Since the day I was told my depressive actions were far too selfish and I never thought of anyone but myself, I did strive to remain as thoughtful of others as possible. It is the core center of my being, and being told otherwise sends ripples of cognitive dissonance through my frame.

There are some, however, who have told me to ignore them and think of myself. This begins the cycle, for it almost always ends in those same people taking an offense to my suddenly selfish behavior. Never so severe as the contemplation of ending my life, maybe something simple such as buying something for myself and not offering to pay for them – when so clearly they have their own income and money. Is it too surprising that I treat myself on occasion? In the past it was an issue.

To this day, it is an issue.

So I retreat back to my old ways. I stop thinking about myself for a while, I focus on my friends and sacrifice everything for them. Yet there have been a precious few among the few who have become swept into the current of the cycle, and broken it. It is hard to fathom that it could be broken; part of me waits for the inevitable day the cycle begins anew with each of them.

It’s been three years, however, since we became friends.

For two of those years, we were in love. For two of those years, we hid it from the world. In the end, it ended; and yet here we are, talking to each other about the simplest of things, to that of the complexities of political systems. We may go quiet for a long time, but when we talk, it is as if not a moment has passed since the last time.

I do wish I could say I still love you. Disheartening as it could be, I do not love you as I did once before; but in all the ways that matter, I do love you. I know you know and understand that –

You are still more than words on a screen. Though our meetings and partings have been short and brief, they are pieces of history I will never give up, even if the book of my mind wears away the edges of the memories like a finely read book. It’s a chapter I’ll have read well.

                                                                      our l i f e–

You were the one to ask why I stuck around people, even when I seem unappreciated. Mistreated. You received the same cookie cutter story as everyone else did, really; I was abandoned when I needed my friends the most, the shot to the heart and the shrapnel that killed it all.

“I’ll try to be a better friend to you.”

The first friend to be willing to share a home. Never before had I dreamt of meeting someone from my circle of friends I formed online in person – no, not since the failed attempt of March 2012, an adventure I am both proud and dismayed by. A friend I would sacrifice so much for, and have sacrificed sanity for. Stressed for, worried about, and given my full attention to.

Much more than words on a screen. Stories from everyone surrounding you showed an echo of similarity, a kindred spirit. Someone who focuses so much time and energy on people, only to be let down again and again. Of course no story has just one side to it, yet every side rings with a grain of truth to it.


How silly, how foolish.

Sigh. Erase the words, shake the head. There is no particular way to put this friendship into words. No way to put it into sentences, cohesive or not. A friendship that has been around for merely a year, and yet is one of the best I’ve had. A kindred spirit, perhaps.

Yet isn’t it a bit selfish and narcissistic to think he is like me? No, no. A friendship like this is not something that should be tainted by such terrible thoughts. Though I must give it credit; for lasting a year, we managed to live together without blood being shed.

Instead Mountain Dew killed a calendar.

I still cringe at the memory, yet I cannot help but giggle.


One month.

It has just been one month since the precarious first spoken word between us.

Yet you are the easiest person to talk to. I’ve explained before that the people you know, as well as your art, have intimidated me and gave me nervous bouts of anxiety. Now here we are, a month later, laughing it off and wondering how it could have been so. Don’t undercut yourself; you are a formidable force in your own right.

A frozen molten lava cake, in a sense.

Though our friendship has been short and sweet, it is by no means disrespected. Every day is a brand new adventure into what hilarious antics can be performed. For an entire month, there has not been a moment that has passed without some sort of silly laughter passing from my lips.

Innuendos and puns abound, microwaves and toasters explode, and come early summer of 2015, Knott’s won’t know what hit it.


Some may say I am unlucky; I have perhaps only four friends in the life of the “real” world. Ones I can touch. I can hug. I can do things with.

I would rather say I am one of the luckiest.

Straggling behind those who graduated with me as they plowed into their futures, my life has been opened into meeting, greeting, and loving a family of friends I would not trade the world for.

I would and have traversed mountains and deserts for them, and would gladly do it again were it ever in my power. Some day I will cross oceans to see them. I will learn new languages. Some day I will give to them what they have given to me.