Might end up powerleveling a bit, but I've got something I need to get off my chest and don't feel right posting it on facebook. I'm in my late twenties, and started using the internet semi-regularly when I was about fourteen, kinda on the tail-end of the geocities/angelfire days.
I made a friend back then, probably one of the first exclusively online friendships I'd ever had, and certainly the most enduring. We'd shoot the shit on aim, talk about random gems we'd find on limewire and make fun of shitty fanfics (because I was an enormous faggot that was into stuff like that at the time). We sorta fell out of contact for a period of time towards the end of high school, but I found him on facebook shortly after graduating and we started talking again. All in all, we knew each other for a little over a decade, and I honestly can't call to mind even one unpleasant memory, he was super easy-going, pretty tech-savvy (certainly more than I am), an all around good guy that you always liked hearing from. He wasn't
especially active on facebook, and while he'd occasionally comment on a status and I'd sometimes shoot him a pm, going for weeks and even months without hearing from him was sorta par for the course. It wasn't until earlier today that I sat down and thought "shit, I haven't heard from Nate in a
while." and so I pop over to his page and lo and behold, I found out he died back in December. He was twenty nine years old.
Now I'm just sitting here feeling like shit that I got so wrapped up in my own business that I couldn't even take a second to realize that this really good, old friend of mine has been dead for over six months. It's weird, I'm at a stage in my life where death, when it happens, is almost
always unceremonious. It can't be much of anything else for people my age, and yet when it happens, I find myself feeling the most fucked up over the perceived spontaneity of it.
I really want to leave something on his wall, but I don't think I should. I don't know who I'd be doing it for. Nate's dead, I don't know any of his friends. I don't know his parents, I only know that he was their only child and they're (obviously) devastated by his loss. I feel like leaving something, irrespective of how nicely written or heartfelt it may be, would just look attention whorish this long after the fact and even barring that, I'm sure it'd make trying to cope more difficult.
That being considered, I'm just gonna leave this one post about it here, where I figure it won't do much good, but won't do much harm, either.If you'd like for this post to have some value, hit up an old friend that you haven't heard from in awhile.
Here's looking at you, Nate
I'd say I'm going to miss you, but in a way I already have.