I get asked near daily when I will write again by various people. I do appreciate it, and I suppose it is time to do a little experiment of writing more often. Even for the mere escapism of remembering how much I used to write when I was younger. Writing 12 was my favourite course and we had to write every single day, just spill the thoughts onto the paper with no purpose. Which, is how I write these blogs. I have no idea what is going to come out, it is as free flowing as me talking one to one in front of you. Hence, there are likely run on sentences and other things to nit pick, if you choose. I used to write poetry, I love poetry. I love poetry so much. All of mine are tragic romances, depressing, suicidal, ridiculously emotional. I began poetry as a child and then stopped as a teenager. I stopped a lot of things as a teenager. Entering into the public school system for the first time at thirteen, grade nine. My first introduction to the world outside of homeschooling. I had many assumptions how a girl should behave, and so I stopped. I stopped digital art. I stopped web designing. I only wrote stories and poetry for English studies. I thought girls weren’t allowed to be into computers. I remember that very vividly. Girls weren’t allowed to be computer scientists, web designers, graphic designers.

There wasn’t a defining moment I can remember where I gathered these rules and laws of being a girl. I consumed so much television growing up, it makes sense to me I learned what I was allowed to do from tv. I was really young for my generation to be into computers, introduced to the internet 1998 when I was eight years old. I saw my first computer when I was four, there was a chess game on it. I had the big ass computers that are embarrassing to think about compared to the art pieces crafted now. I had the windows 95, Netscape, dial-up, and domains were very expensive. You would apply to someone’s site with a bio as to why they should host you.

I had a blog when I was nine.

What a surprise.

What did I write about? My teddy bear hamster, Natasha. Some random people online. Oh god, I was in many chat rooms back then. Talking to who knows who how old or what they were about. I played shockwave, Neopets, and I remember when the singer Aaliyah died people talked about in the Neopets forum. I asked, what’s an Aaliyah? I got laughed at, flamed, all the fun things. I felt humiliated and never wrote on that forum again. I was eleven.

I’ve been listening to this podcast one of my best friend’s recommended, called, Something Was Wrong, I do think come at it with caution if you have had trauma in your life because I definitely have felt and overwhelming identification with a few of the speakers the last few days listening to episodes. Overall, it is a very interesting pod cast. One episode I think I am going to re-listen to was going over cat fishing. I too, got cat fished once, and only once. When I was quite young, I had an online friend named Kyle for years. I loved him. It was platonic, but I loved him fiercely. Then I got introduced to his cousin, a girl, I can’t remember her name actually. I began talking to both of them. Then, one day, Kyle disappeared. He was my only friend really. Being homeschooled, I particularly had no friends. I had my pet rabbit, I had my Barbie’s. Before high school I was just alone. Some days, on the computer 10-15 hours a day. But, always alone. Learning how to be a human through the television rather than other kids in the flesh. TV then computer, tv, computer, tv, computer. I was always good at getting schoolwork done quickly and with excellence to give myself more time to do my hobbies. I was like that in high school too and should have graduated at 16, I instead delayed and stayed in a peer counselling course to instead graduate at 17. I skipped classes all the time, school was boring. School was a ladder that I was supposed to climb despite wanting to run away from home since 13.

Back to Kyle, I believe I was eight or nine and knew Kyle until around twelve or thirteen. I also had a couple friends from Nova Scotia that did vector art as I did online, played Neopets, and did web designing too. I found those two girls again many years later and added on Facebook, those girls are real. Kyle was never real.

I don’t have the old e-mail account, and I don’t think I could stomach reading old messages anyways for how much I trusted Kyle and felt intimately close to “him”. I loved him deeply. We spoke daily, we spoke in length. The kind of closeness you are gasping for the next message to come through. A tedious wait. Longer than text messages, but less often. One day, he disappeared, to the army apparently. As you can imagine, yes, Kyle was supposed to be older. I would question his cousin, have you heard from Kyle? I am worried about him. He used to talk about alcohol. I am worried. He is in the army. I am worried. He abruptly cut me off. I am worried. I used to write to her here and there, pen pal style and e-mails. I loved having pen pals actually, I love to write, I love pen on paper, I love long hand. I use any excuse I can to write long hand, little notes, my two day planners. I can’t remember for how long, but one day the cousin revealed, a couple years later, when I found her on Facebook.

Kyle never existed.
Kyle was me.
I’m sorry.

Here, for many years I had assumed he had died. The way she said she hadn’t heard from him. I grieved him as if he had died. Grief I never should have had or experienced without my consent to know this was a made up character.

I blocked her, I don’t remember if I questioned her why she made him up. Cat fishing is a whole other interesting psychological mind fuck. It is like role play gone wild. Rogue role play. Un-ethical role play. It has since been around 16 years since that last interaction. The feelings are still visceral, perhaps what I can say is that these sort of experiences give way to me being able to morph into characters I need to be for whatever method acting asked of me. It gives me a sympathy for those that have gone through similar. And, I suppose, quite helpful for the fuckers online who try to scam me for my work. Been there, a long, long time ago. Try again.

And no, my parents never once knew about Kyle, or that Kyle never existed.

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