Years ago, when I first started university and the internet was still in its formative years, I used to waste time hanging out in a couple of IRC chat rooms.
Like all social things, do it long and regularly enough and you'll find yourself talking to the same people. That happened to me. I clicked with a few people - a couple of public schoolboy types from London, a female student from London and a couple of people from New Zealand. I especially connected with the female student and one of the girls from New Zealand and we became fairly close. However, even in those early days of the internet, I guarded my privacy.
None of these relationships were secret and they were both platonic, so much so that when I was dating FA2, she would often chat to both women on IRC with me, or sometimes when I was off playing football or whatever.
I did meet London Girl eventually - a weekend in London visiting friends and a handy, spare afternoon, meant we could meet. So we did. And things were no different offline than online. A side note here... while I was in London this weekend, FA2 randomly called me out of the blue while she was on her sabbatical. This was before mobile phones were commonplace, so she phoned home where she was told I was in London. I'd often told her that I couldn't afford to visit her (which I couldn't), but spending money on a trip to London must have annoyed her a little, even if it was about 10% of the cost of a trip to see FA2. Looking back now, I should have realised that there was a reason she wasn't THAT annoyed.
London Girl met a boy in the same IRC chat room that we frequented. She fell in love. She secretly left the country knowing full well that her extremely religious parents would have lots to say. Before she left, LG sent me a letter. In it she told me how much she valued my friendship and said some really nice things. She also included a letter to her parents, confessing everything. So I posted it from my home town, giving off a false trail of "clues" to throw her parents off the case. She was a young woman in her early 20s, so I really didn't have any issues with this (beyond the whole leaving the country to meet a stranger thing).
We kept in touch, on and off. The friendship was always there, but we were losing touch - she wasn't online as much and the last time I did the long-distance snail mail thing was with R2. But I knew when she married the same boy, when she completed her degree, making peace with her family back home, when she was pregnant... all the big events, but it was just that. Even after she joined Facebook, conversations were few and far between and usually short.
I'd almost forgotten about her, despite the fact it's her birthday in a few weeks' time, until I got a private message on Facebook last night.
"Come and see me in Scotland!" LG demanded. "Or I can come and visit you!"
I asked for further details. It appears she's back in the UK for work for a few weeks over the summer.
The conversation continued, but it had a tone that I've not seen before - while she was never serious per se and was always joking, this was different... playful. LG has changed... a lot... but she was talking me round.
We swapped contact details (which, miraculously, were still the same ones from years ago), and the conversation paused as I had a meeting to attend. We will meet up when she's back in the UK, I think. It just has to be seen if she's coming to visit me or if I am going to meet her somewhere.
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