What happens when you fall for someone you met online- The Story (Part 1)

This is my story. The reason I want to share this, is because it will relieve me of the void I feel inexplicably so and to share it with you and show you the real side of virtuality in this age.

I used to be a Facebook addict, five years ago. But since, 2015 I would hardly find myself scrolling down the timeline and posting pictures as incessantly as I used to before. I believe it is all vain. I realised that I don’t have keep posting additional pictures of myself apart from the profile pictures, just so that from the 500+ friends ( or people I haven’t even acquainted with yet mindlessly added into my friend’s list) I have on Facebook, 300 see it and ignore, yet again another 100 tirelessly scroll down their news feed with my picture on it, and eventually only 20 generously hit the Like button to make me feel “liked”, at least. Well, like anyone else, I seemed to like the attention and didn’t bother much coming of as a narcissistic in any form, as long as I got the attention. As time passed, I overgrew those feelings and hardly expect anything from people “online”. Be it even those people who you know in reality. Nothing matters once, you’ve your sleek phone resting in your hands.

One random day, casually I, sent a friend request to a guy called Mark Wayne* and he accepted it with no reluctance. I am still clueless as to why I texted him.

At first, I was at my polite best and “dressed to impress” on the chat. However, I was definitely myself throughout. I felt a comfort unlike any before. It was the very first time I didn’t have to be a pretense in front of a person I just met. I felt like my heart turned into a happy contortionist, merrily flipping and somersaulting in my rib cage. I couldn’t decipher its incessant beating as I spoke to him, hearing him laugh and speak. It was a strange delight.

The first conversation between us was the most wonderful and memorable. I know and understand well, that what felt extraordinary to me is more likely to translate as weird to many who will read further, yet all the recorded memories in my mind has only helped me understand today “why” or “how” certain things happened. Or why they do.

We started off with voice messages on Whatsapp and I heard him sing his favorite old time English classics and I sent him Smurf songs and did funny things which he told me made him grin like a hyena. Something sparked. It was the highlight between us. We neither intended, nor expected anything to strike off because we were only having fun and being wild, on the phone, to each other but something sparked in the first conversation.

I couldn’t believe it! How could anyone be enamored by someone online, really? Knowing, I understood this well, how was I?

Yet that day, and the days that followed, were my happiest and my heart felt at its content than heavy with the sadness that it used to feel in moments of solace grief. We talked to each other about ourselves. Scratching the stories from the surfaces of our lives and sharing it with each other. He assured me so genuinely that he felt for me and asserted my genuineness which only softened my heart. We all need compassion and understanding, don’t we? a Mark knew exactly how to offer that to those bereft of it. Or perhaps now I feel, to certain people. I was highly impressed with the way he talked and presented himself. He stimulated my desire for intellect more than any geek I found sexy, in real life.

It seemed so that he touched me. And I felt it.

Appearance wise, he was definitely handsome. Strong eyes with a tight jaw and thin lips, just like any other White man. He had a deep voice with a discernible Scottish accent, which never failed to make me grin. I still remember him telling me how he did his best to sound “macho” in the first voice message he had sent to me. I knew my face broke into a smile as wide a crocodile. Somehow, that made my heart pump faster and the blood in my veins hotter. Actually, I felt its hotness in my veins for the first time.

Albeit he was 15 years older to me, yet none of us cared or even bothered to mention the distances between our experiences or how much our lives differed. I envied all the wonderful experiences he must have had, and the youth in me almost bellowed the desire for freedom and the calm said gently “Your time will come, Ishi.” I hoped. Only hoped if this would continue and never stop, knowing it was puerile of me to wish for something so platitudinal.

I silently celebrated the fact that we were just ourselves all along and spoke. Everyday. Without amiss.

I messaged him everyday. He welcomed this action of mine and showed extreme interest in reading them. I wrote long messages pertaining to my life and my observations. I had always longed for someone to just listen or with whom I could relate to, completely. We both shared many common things. Religious views, philosophical interests or principles, music tastes and commentaries on some of them, debating nature, random blather, intellectual stimulation, it just turned me on. For a sapiosexual like me, this was a heavenly experience on Earth.

We shared everything we liked. Favorite music. Favorite articles. Favorite theories of this and that. This man taught me so much even without having met me. I saw the world with a pair of new born eyes, knowing him. He made me feel that I was worth many things. He expressed his ideas persuasively, forcefully with brilliance in a way that calls for wholehearted assent and agreement from a listener who simply understood every word uttered.

I loved that this guy had the potential to keep me up all night talking about ridiculous things and yet making it sound logical. I started to like listening to him. His office rants made me giggle. His emotional stories welled my eyes, literally. The heartwarming care he showed for me, made my heartbeats a frenzy and I instantaneously felt wrapped in a fuzzball. He was a wonder, even with his Aspergers.

We had crazy commonalities and often we had quaint coincidences that we never ceased to mention and amaze at. I never missed a moment when I was with him online. I noticed everything he did and typed. Some things he said, photographed in my memory so deep, if I had to take them out it would be equivalent to pulling a piece of glass stuck embedded deep from my flesh.

Unfortunately right now, fortunately right then I was convinced we had something special. I had become a wonder victim of the “Something special” words.

He often spoke to me about random things leaving messages to me each morning for me to read. Voice messages to greet me everyday. Pictures that we exchanged to each other and genuine appreciation of each other to the highest order possible. I always looked forward to him messaging me. I loved reading his stories and everything he wrote, I read them twice. I thought of him every single second. I wished to be more beautiful for him. I wished to be a bit older or match his age. I wished to be there with him. I wished for him to never let go. Or rather, never change.

It all sounds like a romantic reverie. However, it wasn’t ever. He did tell me the second day after we had met that he had a huge crush on me and had seen all my pictures on my Timeline and said that he had never met anyone like me. Exactly, the things every girl wants to hear. He said them. I believed. I fell.

He appreciated every little thing he knew I did. I can be sure that until today, no one has ever managed to make me feel about my abilities the way he did. He gave me honest feedback to my poetries whereas, when others read it never even bothered to say anything. Every action of mine he commended and related it to his Desiderata, his much loved alternative Bible. Every word from that poem, that he had recited for me, turns into a sotto voce each night and replays in my mind. And when it doesn’t, it feels like the silence is louder than the resonance of his voice.

He taught me many things I couldn’t have learnt with any other man. I marveled at his knowledge and my thirst for it was quenched by his added interests in answering my questions pertaining to anything at all.

It was almost like I had met a man who knew how to seep into a woman’s heart.

We were romantic when we spoke with each other. But, we tried our best not to define our feelings, after he started to get high and when things seemed to go awry and sexual which I wanted to avoid on a virtual platform. As much as he understood my sensible take on not taking things to the next level, I only felt the need to “protect” the genuine connection we shared.

There were a few things he did, that I questioned to myself but never to him. Not only was I solicitous, but I was beginning to sense my possessiveness towards him. I always wondered if he called me “Darling” was there someone else to whom he called that too? I wondered if he wished to kiss me, did he also wish to kiss someone else too? I knew, that this was normal. Men were men. Women were women. Whatever we must’ve thought could’ve been inevitable and unstoppable to not think of. That is when I knew, I was beginning to fall for someone, I hadn’t met. And today, as I even type this I realize the intensity behind his words which resonates in my ears, saying “Yes, darling and if we meet, we’ll see if we can take this to another level.”

I wished deeply to submit my life to a word that hit me with a jolt: LOVE.

He showed genuine interest in my life. He liked my Indian style, the way I spoke, the moments when I played my guitar for him. I used to send him videos of my life in Muscat and stories that made me laugh or cry. I could easily understand when he was interested and when he wasn’t, that never happened until after two months of my internet embargo for my final exams, everything dwindled.

He blocked me off everything I could use to contact him. It was like losing an irreplaceable phone with no hopes of finding it. Ever.

Before, I went off, he told me how bad he would miss me. Then, suddenly he stopped texting me. I always wondered why. I missed him. We didn’t have a relationship of course, but I don’t think I had ever enjoyed conversation with anyone but that man. For me, he felt like an epitome of perfection. His deep Scottish voice literally like euphonious mellifluousness that seeped into the crevices of my infatuated memory. There wasn’t a thing I disliked about him. He did confuse me often when he repeatedly kept saying that he had never met anyone like me, when his Facebook Timeline was filled with pictures of him and his ex Indian girlfriend which I am not even sure is/was an ex. I missed him badly. I could go on writing about every little feeling associated with Mark. Mark was too perfect. Or he seemed to be. He was a whimsical fantasy that had to come into my life and struck my heart in all beautiful and horrible ways and left me standing alone with my head bedazzled and heart exhausted.

….. The saddest truth is I miss him. Still. I know it’s ridiculous. But, I feel more empty than ever. Today is the first if those days when I feel if I could just go back and relive those moments. I promised myself tho, I will never do that to anyone. I still think that he was probably the best thing that happened to me. Ever. And although, I should move on. I cant. I cant seem to of this unrequited course.

We weren’t dating anyways. It was just a chemistry that had equated to a perfect balance, and then suddenly burst into flames reduced to ashes and scattered in the void, some strewn at the back of my mind, refusing to let go.

(I have a Part 2 coming soon which will contain what I have learnt from this experience. Thank you so much for the time you spent reading this.)