The Tragedy of Online Romantics
By Myung Kim
The hero of our adventure into
cyberspace... |
I hardly have the exception to the story, but I thought my story was as valuable as any, so here goes. I go by the handle Billy the Kid (not in real life, mind you). As loser as it may sound, most of my relationships have been long distance, primarily via the Internet. But I have seen the tattered remains of many of my friends after real life encounters with similar girls, and I have come to realize a few things. But first, my personal history.
I suppose my first true relationship over the Internet came with a girl named Katie. She was a depressed, boy-band crazy (I know, red flags right from the start, huh?) girl from the east coast. We hit things of extremely well and I fell in love with her. It was the best feeling in the world, and the first time I ever really felt that way about any one. She had a sad past, she had just broken up with a guy who was the biggest jerk you could ever imagine. A football jock named Brian who made no disguise of his sole interest in her body. The extent to which I was in love with her is hard to even put into words. It even had extended to a future engagement. Suffice it to say anyone who knows what it’s like the first time would have an idea. As with many things, though, it’s just as things are getting good that they go bad. Just before I started school that year, she told me that
another old ex of hers, Adam, wanted to get back together again and she was conflicted. She thought it unreasonable of me to not agree to wait for her while she went out with some other guy. She told me a week later that she wanted to stick with me. Well, in a matter of weeks, I got an email from this Adam telling me to back off his girlfriend. I asked the two of them what the hell was going on. Now here’s the kicker. Apparently when she told me at the beginning of the year that she chose me, she lied and went out with Adam anyways on the side. Not only that, but apparently this had her so conflicted that she ended up sleeping with her ex Brian again. That just about killed it. She still wanted to be friends though. If there is one thing I pride myself on it’s being able to stay civil in the midst of filth that I seem to find myself in now and again. To this day she probably still thinks I hold her to some esteem.
Send Me A Jpeg = A Portrait of Pure Evil |
My next serious relationship was with a girl who I met under adverse circumstances. I had dropped into a teen suicide chat and met a girl, Sam, who was quite ready to kill herself. Through the combined efforts of myself and the room’s host, we narrowly averted a rather tragic disaster. I maintained correspondence with her, just to make sure she was going to be all right. I figured if they were talking, that meant they weren’t dead. This eventually bloomed into a wonderful relationship. By all accounts she seemed nice. I talked to her over the phone, and she had the very squirrelly, hyper disposition that many girls use to mask whatever machinations are in their mind. Her past was tragic as well, including an abusive father, a rape, and the overwhelming depression she felt. She decided to help me with other people in the chat room, trying to help herself by helping others. Eventually she met this tortured soul named Jon who seemed to capture her heart. And like the other girl, she asked me if I would wait while she decided to go out with this other guy. That ended that. From what I know, she is currently institutionalized.
The third girl I met was the host of the room that fateful day I met Sam. I guess I’ll just call her Em for now. She saw what happened with Sam and I and was there to pick up the pieces. We hit it off incredibly well and I fell in love again. She had an equally tragic past, with a lover who killed herself (yes, Em is bi), rapes by classmates, and a seemingly endless harassment for her sexuality. She told me she had always dated guys who she felt were lesser than her. She wanted an intelligent, funny, honest guy who wouldn’t give her any drama. I thought this was perfect because I was tired of all the BS too. Well it turns out that for the one week I am really busy at school and manage to only drop her the occasional email, I find that she is into this new guy, Nathan, who has his own depression complex going. I found this out on her web site. I emailed her about it. No response. I called her finally and asked her why she never told me. She told me that she didn’t have anything to say. We got into a disagreement and she finally told me she was apathetic about the whole thing. This was the part that really crushed me. I really did love her and here she tells me she doesn’t even care. Again she wanted to remain friends. What is it with me and girls who think they can keep someone after screwing them up the ass like that?
I guess my main conclusion is this. I don’t think that girls are evil, per se. They are evil in the way crack addicts are evil. I don’t hate them at all. What I truly do feel is pity (which some would argue is worse). These girls told me that the guys who used them before had made them feel like whores. To some degree, they are. They are whores who will do anything, sleep with anyone, shatter anyone they see fit so that they might get attention, so that they might finally find someone to give a damn about them. I wanted to show them that they didn’t have to sleep with anyone, that they didn’t have to degrade themselves in order to have someone love them. All they would have to do is allow themselves to love back. But they can't. And that is why I pity them. Love is what makes us human. They cannot know true love because their perpetual victim complexes won’t let them. They live in a world without consequences, a world in which they feel they have license to do whatever they please because their past was so sad. They are so wrapped up in making their lives sad so as to elicit the attention they crave that those who they break in their way don’t figure into their lives as the perpetual victim. Those who they hurt will fade away and never exist, so that the only world that exists to them is the one in which they are the eternal victim. If they were ever to have to face themselves in the mirror and truly, frankly, earnestly say to themselves "I have hurt others just as I have been hurt, sometimes worse," their heads might very well explode. I suppose in the end I am the fool to believe that I could nurture the ability to love again in someone. Em told me once that her greatest fear was the fear of being shallow and normal. Arguably, she’s worse. She is predictable.
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