I don't really know where to talk about this, perhaps here is the right place.
I haven't posted here in a very long time, it has probably been a year or two now at this point. The reason I stopped posting here was mostly because of a big (and in retrospect utterly stupid) fight between myself and several people. That day I left I decided I was going to write all internet people out of my life forever (with a few exceptions like my boy sb). For the most part this worked well like a band-aid being ripped right off; it stung like hell at first but after a while the "relationships" I had with these people seemed to be forgotten.
There was one thing that always bugged me though, a person that I considered a friend, a person that I did have years of fights and make ups with, that person was one of the main antagonists to my protagonist in the previously mentioned fight. The person I am speaking of was named Amark, better known as Steel around here. What nagged at me forever was just how right he always was about me. Steel could read me better than any person i've ever met, real life or internet or whatever. He knew when I was being facetious, he could pick out personality traits that I had unceremoniously plucked from other people, he would always call me out when I said something unethical or stupid. As much as I always stubbornly argued back and forth with him I always knew deep down inside that he was right.
I knew Steel for the better part of a decade. I can remember fondly him convincing everyone on GW that he was in his mid 20's, I still laugh remembering him ripping apart Fascists in political threads, and most of all I remember his creativity and how good of a person he was. He was 100% right about me when I was an idiot conservative arguing about topics I didn't even have a tertiary knowledge about. He knew exactly the internal demons of cognitive dissonance that plagued me at every turn. Deep down I always knew that what he said was based in objective fact, I knew this but I had a self image of myself of who I wanted to be to satisfy friends and family. He was always right about me in many ways. I am neurotic as hell, I'm needy and desire to be liked. I am a chameleon to other's personality traits and ideas too easily, and I was an idiot for a very long time.
I never could swallow my pride and tell Steel the truth: I respected him more than almost any person i've ever met in my life. He had more of an impact on the person I am today; open minded, introspective in some ways, accepting of my ability to empathize, etc. When I would hear that Steel was getting sicker I didn't want to believe it. I had no doubts that Steel would pull through and would always be there, how can one imagine a person who has had that indelible of an impact on oneself to be gone?
More and more i'd here from people that he was getting worse and worse, I wanted to reach out to him but what could I say? "I waited until you were dying to tell you that I valued you immensely as a friend and am sorry for being an idiot?". I couldn't face that, I couldn't face his mortality. When his mother posted that he had passed away I was as devastated as I was when grandparents have died. I cried for hours and hours, all of the pain and the regret I had about the person I was towards him came flowing out. I felt like people would laugh at me for crying over someone who I only knew on the internet, for crying about someone who had probably hated me at the end. I checked out the thread about it on here and felt some irrational irritability to the people who would post their short condolences or "oh shit holy shit this is so sad". Stupidly I felt to myself that here these people were posting essentially nothing of substance when I could write a fucking dissertation on this person. This was a stupid thought. I should have seen that Steel had touched many people's lives who didn't know him too well. These people weren't just saying something to say something, they were saying something because how could a person who felt like Steel wouldn't even recognize them write paragraphs about him? In short, i'm always an idiot.
I don't know why i'm posting this here to be honest. I don't know if there is a god but I usually lean towards no. I can't deal with Steel not knowing how sorry I was, not knowing how bad I felt about how our friendship ended. Where else could I get this out of me and into text? Steel has been gone for a while now and yet it still kills me every day. Something will remind me of him and it will kill me inside, I feel like a horrible person and hope the man I am today would not dissapoint him.
I don't even know, is this even an appropriate place for this? I just need to share how I feel with someone who can relate to this, I feel like you guys are the only ones I really know who Steel meant that much too.
Thanks everyone
--- Back when we were young and loved the internet....
