Friends

One of the most difficult aspects of SecondLife is the emotional tribulation in realizing a friend was not your friend. Or, a lover was deceitful and took your kindness away.

I wonder, for how many of us, this has happened and we can't express the feeling of the void it creates. It's early morning and I have lost a friend. Oh no, she didn't leave SL. As a matter of fact, one of my oldest friends re-entered SecondLife today so I guess you could say I've had a neutral day.

But alas, that isn't the case. The joy from a friend back does not dry the tears or dampen the thunder of your chest heaving and sighing. And a SecondLife friendship, in many ways, is harder to lose then one in firstlife. We spend such emotional time with our SecondLife friends. We invest ourselves into them. And for the most part the investment is worthwhile, loving and brings us happiness.

There are different ways of knowing in SecondLife that a friendship is over.Especially your more casual friends. They just stop saying hello. Sometimes it hurts and sometimes not.

But then there is the losing of a close friend. A friend you've shared deep thoughts. A friend to whose rescue you came many times. One of your handful of friends. Someone you trusted dearly with you soul.

Some of these are those who leave SecondLife and plan not to return. Those tears are hard to dry but there is the smile of the times together and the wish they are happy in firstlife. Every now and then you come across something in SecondLife that reminds you of them. Your lips curl up and you think of the good times with them.

Then the most difficult type of friend to lose. Whose tears cannot be dried. It usually involves some other action. It needs a force to move this to being a lost friend. Other people can make it happen. A project you are both working on can be an instigator. Some external event is usually the catalyst.

And, I guess you can be on either side of this revelation. The weaker side is to need your friend to care, to understand and not to judge at a moment of extreme weakness. Of course you didn't just come to this point in a day and so it is usually blurted out at an inopportune time. Oh yes, you had promised yourself you wouldn't but you ached to long to wait. The fuse wasn't long enough to make it to the right time.

You want them to see their mistake and say, "I'm sorry". The kind of "I'm sorry" that heals the wound you have. Somewhere, you realize they don't understand at all what they have done to hurt you and instead shift the blame to you. Where they never pondered what was happening, you had and others had said as much many times to you. They get frustrated with your seemingly incoherent talk but they should know the difficulty of even speaking one word since it was held so long.

You had weighed the insult and simply wanted it understood and healed. But, the friend's conversation never touches on you or your pain. Instead, your friend defends their actions. You look hard to see if they would have held you had you fallen in battle or in health. Would they need to say, "I was not my fault?" Or, would they have just held you until your eyes closed? Would they think you a burden?

And, then you see they would've have. Their friendship with you had some other purpose and your warm tears fall onto the hot surface of life and vaporize because you know you've lost someone special and you can't come back.