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

I can't say anything of substance here, I was always a spectator in everything that made GW what it is, and that pretty much means that I didn't get to interact with him(or you) as much as I'd like to. I'm just repeating myself here so I'll just stop at that.

Now, here's a name I never thought I would see again. The Truth, man. I can't even imagine how much it took for you to type all of this, and for that my respect meter has gone up for you. I kind of always thought that you were honestly the most annoying douche bag to ever grace Gaming World. Good to see things change over time.

Anyway, as I said in Steel's topic. My one biggest regret in life now is not meeting and hanging out with him the time he came to my city. I could beat myself all day about that. He was truly one the greatest and most under appreciated people of our time. He influenced me so much in politics, music, religion, everything.

i don't think he had any grudges to you in the end. i mean you came out smarter from all of this and i think that's everything he could have hoped for about you. he didn't held E-GRUDGES that's not him.
this is such a badly written post considering the work you put to that post. and it sounds like i'm describing or analyzing this as an outsider when i even met him in real life. but this is what i honestly think about this!! it's good to see you doing this truth. rest now soldier...

i wasn't poking fun

That was hilarious and kind of mean

i'm glad you posted this, to be honest. this is really how i suspected you always felt on the matter, and i'm confident that amark knew that.

amark was such an important part of all of us, and it always hurts a little to read something like this. well no, it hurts a lot. i had such a wonderful friendship with amark, even though there was always some abstract distance between us. we wouldn't talk with frequency, and occasionally we'd bicker about something insignificant(usually due to my aggression), but i legitimately loved and respected him in a way that i feel about very few, if any. as much as he could and would surprise me, i felt like i really knew him, much more than anybody else i've ever known on the internet, and possibly in reality. some might think this as presumptuous, but i always felt like we were cut from the same cloth in a lot of ways. the way we approached the world, and felt about it, always felt very similar even though there was clear fundamental differences between him and i. it's always been my belief that he learned a lot from me, and me from him, to the point where there were significant parts of our identities that we had contributed to each other. i normally resent how much people are able to influence my ways of thinking, but i cherish the parts of my persona that i can look at and say oh, amark put that there, or valuable thoughts or conclusion i've come to that he was the catalyst for. i think a lot of people can say this, which is why his passing was of such significance to so many people. being able to quite literally FEEL the influence somebody has had on the person you have become punctuates their importance more than anything else possible. knowing you will forever be without that, as well as the others they will similarly touch, is one of the most painful things you can experience.

he told me on several occasions that he always looked up to me, or idolized me to some extent, although i think the latter came more when he was younger. what are you supposed to say to that? how are you supposed to feel when somebody for whom you have profound, almost indescribable respect and admiration says that about you? it's just words and you never know how much you're supposed to take that seriously, but there's never been anything ever said about me that i find more valuable, and likely never will. i don't feel like there's ever been anybody in my life who has encouraged me to be myself and trust myself more than amark. i've always been deeply, oftentimes dangerously self-critical, and amark has helped me accept who i am more than anybody else i've ever known, even if he was not consciously aware of it.

there are so many things that one could say on the matter, and i haven't the strength to dwell on it much further. i don't think he would want it that way, either. it's important for us all to remember that, despite the tragedy that many of us continue to feel on a daily basis, the true value here is the privilege we have all had for knowing someone so capable of getting inside your skin and taking residency in your soul. the universe doesn't owe us this much. you aren't guaranteed people like this. they come, brush against your lives, and are one day gone. the loss is not important, but what has been gained. impermanence is the saddest trait of everything wonderful in life, and it's important to not let that overshadow all the undeniable good that has come.

this is the final lesson this great teacher has taught us. you would do well not to forget it.

Yo truth, I actually spoke to steel some time last year and you came up in conversation. He ragged on you a bit for the stupid shit you've said in the past but agreed that you're a generally well meaning and good guy. He didn't hate you at all.

What dietcoke said.

I'm even pretty sure I saw him post in american magic while he still could that you'd probably figured out that you were wrong in your last argument and thats why you didn't come back. He honestly missed you and even asked about you a few times.

I don't think steel really held any serious grudges (its the fucking internet) and everyone has their stupid moments, so please don't dwell on it.

every day i ask myself

wwsd

i've been to these forums off and on for almost 8 years, admiring and learning from several members like they were characters in a book. of course it's not a book but still i wasn't sure if it was kind of self-indulgent for me to be so sad about someone i never even knew. i only interacted with him a few times. but every word he published on this message board had some kind of weird precious value to me. his passion inspired me (among other reasons, of course) to study social science. i remember he always talked about this book called An Incomplete Education and i bought it a few days later. anyway, i don't think it's weird to feel genuinely sad about someone "from" the internet. a lot of human interaction now takes places through some form of technology. it shouldn't seem so weird anymore.