Losing Friends
by LilBlueEyes, HSM guest contributor
We all have them on our friends list:
Friends that log off PSN for 24 hours at a time. Soon, 24 hours turns into 48. Then days turn into weeks, then weeks into months…
The decision to keep inactive people on your list for months is a personal choice. My older sister hasn’t been on Home in nine months, yet I keep her on my list hoping someday she will come back. I talk to her once a week by phone, and I understand that holding down a job and going to school doesn’t give her much time to get on Home or play games like it once did. But still.
In most cases, it’s never easy to delete someone from your friends list, but it’s even harder when someone on your friends list passes away. I had a friend named Emily; I won’t use her PSN ID out of respect for her husband and family. I met Emily over a year ago when I complimented her avatar. She always found ways to create new and exciting outfits and make them her own — not an easy task to do on Home when everyone has the same clothing, I even tried to steer her in the direction of the Fashion Thread because she had a gift, but she was much too shy and modest to put her name out there.
Even though Emily like to play video games, she preferred to play them alone — because, as she put it, the sound of online multiplayer people calling each other bad words nonstop was overwhelmingly offensive, plus the savage competition to win at all costs took the fun out of multiplayer gaming for her. So, I didn’t get to play many games with Emily other than Little Big Planet.
Emily let it be known to me, after over a year of friendship, that she had cancer. And she only revealed that to me because I asked her why she never defended herself on Home against the rude people we all encounter. She informed me that she didn’t want to waste time arguing with people; she just wanted to have fun, and arguing with people would only rob her of what precious time she had.
Time did eventually run out for Emily. She passed away last week.
And even though I never met her in real life, it affected me as if I had lost a real-life friend, because Emily was a rare person whom I would describe as blameless. I never saw her argue with anyone, and when chat turned to gossip, Emily was always careful not to get involved in talking negatively about anyone.
Some of my other friends are skeptical; they believe Emily just got tired of Home and closed her account. Anything is possible, yes, but Emily wasn’t one for the dramatics. Plus, she had way too much money invested in Home and PSN games just to close it down. I believe in my heart of hearts Emily succumbed to her illness and is no longer with us.
…If there is a moral to all this, I guess it would be to not take your friends for granted. Home friends as well as real-life friends. Don’t waste time arguing over petty things. And most of all: do like Emily, by not letting the bad elements around Home rob you of any precious time.
March 8th, 2011 by LiLBlueEyes | 14 comments
LilBlueEyes is a Home citizen and high-school student in the United States.
This is never an easy thing,whether your friend languishes at the bottom of your list for month’s on end or abruptly deletes you.It’s hard and in some cases can define events for some time to come,not 10 min. before i sat down to this i was talking to a friend on home about another friend that had deleted me long ago and how it affected me and still affects me to this day.Either way,cancer or voluntarily deleting you,you are without the love and friendship you once knew and for that i offer you my sympathies.
Indeed. Over the course of Home life, have personally lost many friends. A good number of which were considered to be close friends. It is sad when a difference of opinion can cause one to remove another from their friend list. The depths of human pettiness never cease to amaze.
Excellent advice for anyone. We never truly know how much time anyone has. Someone you think will be around for years and years because of their youth, could be killed in an accident tomorrow. And if it happens to you, you *will* regret every unkind word and the time you spent arguing over trivial things.
I’m really sorry you lost your friend LiL. She sounded like a very special person.
Losing a loved one can put life in perspective. It helps you to understand to not worry about things you actually have control over because there are certainly those things in life for which you have none.
Live life. It’s much too short.
Though only met on the internet, I consider close friends as real life friends. Having had friends on the internet who have died, I empathize with anyone who had lost an internet friend.
And sometimes just like in “real life”, internet friends move in different directions and contact is lost.
I think the most profound thing out of this was her reason for not arguing. We are all on borrowed time so why should our philosophies be any different on the subject? Conflict simply eats up what little time we all have.
It’s one of the cruelties of the Internet that we often learn enough about our online friends to care, but not enough to know what happened to them when they vanish. This has happened to me again and again. Sometimes they reappear, years later. But more often, they are simply… gone.
Thank you for writing this, Lil. It took courage. I am sorry for your loss, and grateful for your willingness to share it.
Indeed it was a beautiful philosophy, we should take note!
I myself have a friend in Europe suffering from this terrible disease, and she takes each day as her last …
I pray that history doesn’t repeat itself!
After the 50 year reunion of the class of ’56, the class president decided to start a website for our group. It has a message board and a chat room. I had to stop going there. At least once a month, there is another obituary posted and the chat room shrinks again. I would rather remember them all the way we were in 1956 when life was full of hope, pain was only physical, and bodies were not betraying us. But I dutifully post a message in their Forum once a week. No matter that triviality I post, the real message is “I am still here ……”
Thank you everyone,
I think that’s the beauty of Home. It gives us all a chance to meet people who for whatever reason need friends to make them laugh or take their minds off whatever is ailing them.
Long live Home and the wonderful people in it.
Another fine read, Lil… even if it did strike a chord or two on a personal level.
In all the time the pilot of the Nosdrugis avatar has been online, have befriended a good number of individuals who have/had confided in Nos their terminal illnesses. The stoopid hooman vessel of the Nosdrugis avatar sometimes seems to be a magnet that draws these beings close. And although sadness and heartache have been experienced time and again as a result of these friends’ illnesses, would not change it for the world.
Appreciation for every meaningful friendship ever developed online is/was deeply genuine. And even those individuals who might think otherwise who have removed themselves from the Nosdrugis friend list are missed. But those missed most of all, are those who are gone from this earthly life.
Hope your afterlife is full, gone ones.
It is annoying that Home has a 100 person limit on Friend Lists. I cannot bear to delete someone I like and respect and yet as other needs intervene (club rosters, etc.), I have to keep sending sad little notes saying, “I hope you understand …” I also keep opening more accounts and trying to designate, this one is for HSM business, that one is for Homelings and Grey Gamers, and the new one is for Imagine…. Plus, with the limit of 5 club memberships, per account, it is difficult to attend parties at private clubs -- no open slots left for club invites.
As I said in a previous post I lost track of a friend of mine who I made at the very beginning of my Home journey. Why? I may never know, he just simply vanished one day never to return. In my minds eye I hope it was for financial reasons not physical ones though he had a handicap. I kept him on my friends list for over six months hoping he would return, but then I had to let him go. Thank you again Lil for an insightful article about the loss of your friend. I sympathize with your loss.
May peace be with you and your dear friend. Real, virtual, a friend is a friend. When you lose someone or something you can’t replace it punches a hole in your heart. These holes we gather in our hearts over time never heal completely, nor should they. You would think that over time these voids would overcome our hearts and there would be nothing… sadly in some cases it does. But if you remember your friend with love, your heart grows ten fold to not only offset the hole the loss caused, but to allow you to offer your heart to others. That is one of the greatest gifts that love gives us. I hope the holes in your heart reminds you of your loss but the love given and received dwarf your loss.