Friends

Last night I was home alone (it has become a regular thing these days with hubby being gone on business trips for at least one night almost every week). I spent the evening on the couch, TV on and chatting/writing online with my friends on my Echelon FB Groups. We are mostly girls, so the majority of the time is spend discussing how hot Jared Leto is, or his brother Shannon. But we also share stories about our lives, we laugh and cry together, we share everything from “YAY, I am getting a Mars Tattoo” to “I feel so down today, it’s not even funny anymore” I can talk to them about everything. Great to have such friends you might think, lucky me to have them, good to be so close to someone you can share so many things with. Well, guess what, I haven’t met any of them in real life, to be honest, I haven’t even known them for more than a few weeks. But without giving it a second thought I call them friends. And I share my bad days with them, frustration and all.

While getting ready to go to bed I thought about it and then I decided to write a post about it. I have a weird habit, if I think about blog posts, I usually think about a title first and then, whatever is written in the post has to do with the title. I don’t write random stuff about what I did the last few days and then give it a title, if three things important happened in the last two days I would write 3 posts and address each of them with their own title (yeah, I am weird like that). I read once that titles are important, with email being the most important way to communicate; you have to catch the reader’s attention with a title. Untitled emails are not taken seriously because something untitled is considered unimportant. If you don’t make an effort to give it a title, it can’t be that important. So I tried to find a title, thought about “talking to strangers”, “communication” or “social media” but decided this would be a post about friends, old ones, new ones, strangers who became friends (and friends who became strangers) and more.

Let’s start back before 2000 and the whole internet thing, I was an Au Pair in the USA in 98/99, thousands of miles away from home. I had to use the phone, pay huge amounts of money for those calls or write letters, you know with a pen and a piece of paper, I would use this thin, blue airmail paper, one of the first things each morning would be walking outside the house to check the mailbox (not turning on the Computer to check my mailbox like today – some days I even forget my “real life” mailbox). Yes, I did have an email-address, but no one really used that way to communicate (yet). Keeping in contact wasn’t as easy as it is now. During my time as a counselor for future Au Pairs I sometimes couldn’t help but laugh. Those girls would usually ask me if they will have their own internet access at their host family because they want to talk to their parents/friends every night, otherwise they would feel so homesick. The world is so connected these days. Back then it was a huge effort to keep in contact with everyone and yet we still managed to stay friends. The funny (or sad) thing is that I lost contact to one of my oldest/longest friends (we have known each other since kindergarten, so almost 30 years) a few years ago, despite having Emails and Facebook. We wrote letters to each other every other day back in 1998, I was 4000 miles away but it didn’t matter. Flash forward 10 years, I moved 400 miles away and she became a stranger. She told me once we have grown apart, not only distance-wise but also emotionally. I guess emails don’t transfer emotions as good as old fashioned letters do. I am really sad about it. There are sooo many ways now to communicate, to keep in contact, to stay close to each other but it didn’t work. Emails are a lot faster than phone calls but not as personal. She actually told me she would end our friendship by sending me an email, she didn’t even bother to make it personal and call me. It hurt and still does 3 years later. I send her an email back asking her "why" but never got an answer, I didn’t want to call because hearing her actually say it would have made it even worse.

But all those new ways of communicating can also be a blessing. I found so many old friends, from Elementary school, to people from my exchange stay in Canada, to my host children from the time as an Au Pair. I can keep in contact with friends who moved thousands of miles away. I can see pictures of the baby-girl my friend from High School had, even though she now lives in Melbourne, Australia. I was able to follow the life of a friend with whom I had had a huge fight and stopped talking to, she wrote about her ups and downs on a blog and eventually after a few years we started talking again and being able to follow what had been going on in her life it was like we had never stopped talking. I can read stories from strangers who are brave enough to share them publically on their blogs and I can learn something from them. I can write down my own stories, struggles and successes. I have the opportunity to find new friends. And the anonymity of the WWW makes it a lot easier to become friends with someone. You can share almost everything, you can be silly and you can be sad. You can write down everything and people can decide whether or not they want to read it. For me it is much better than talking to someone (like a therapist).

Yes there is also a contra-side. You never know if these people are really who they pretend to be, you can get along great online but might not like each other in real life, people can act, people can be fake. But honestly, that can also happen with people you meet in real life. You meet and get along great, but then you might disagree about something and start arguing and all of a sudden that person is not someone you like and want to spend time with anymore. People can always play a role or be fake. And yes, it is kind of weird to be friends with strangers, not everyone will understand it, probably only those who have done it themselves, only people who blog or are on Facebook regularly will understand how normal it is. It’s the modern version of “pen-pals”, just way faster than sending letters.

I also make friends in real life, and great ones. I wouldn't want to miss them, sometimes spending an evening on the couch talking to a real person is much better than spending it on the couch talking to friends by typing your words into a computer. I have yet to meet some of my online friends and hope they are as wonderful and awesome in real life as they are in the alternate universe of the WWW. I am sure you can have both...

Here are two (of many) great blogs I read, check them out and see for yourself:

www.theinbetweenismine.com: one of the first blogs I stumbled upon when starting my blog-journey a few years ago. San is German, but moved to California to be with the man she loves and has been there for a few years now. I took me a while before I actually commented on something she wrote, but after exchanging a few words I was sure San was as lovely as I had already thought she is from reading her stories. We have yet to meet in person (I hope that will work out one day), but I REALLY like her already. And here is also a huge “Thank You” to her for caring about me without even really knowing me in person.

www.mattlogelin.com: a great blog from a great and absolutely brave person (I think). I came across the blog because it was mentioned on another blog I read. I recommend reading it yourself, it is too huge to explain. Matt lives in Los Angeles, he lost his wife a day after she gave birth to their first daughter, she died from a pulmonary embolism without even holding their daughter once. He wrote about the pain and the life as a single father with a newborn after losing the love of his life. He reached out to all those strangers out there and became friends with a lot of them. And they helped him get back on his feet. Read it from the beginning but be prepared, it takes a few hours because once you start you can’t stop reading and be sure to put a huge box of Kleenex next to your Computer, it will make you cry (but also laugh, I promise)

So here is to old friends, new friends, close friends, friends far away, real life friends and online friends...I love you guys!!!

Irene