Of Naka

Thanks Naka.

I was young back then, and I had a whole world at my fingertips, the world of the internet. It was "new" to me, back then. We had chat. Video uploads were rare - seeing someones picture - VERY rare, people simply didn't have webcams, computers were still somewhat expensive (but the prices were going down) this was the era of AOL, and YAHOOOOOooooo. Tripod and geocities, and MYSPACE were the bling bling all that of webpages and such. And, there was mIRC.

Ah yes, mIRC the chat program that let you connect with people online, easy download, fast install, easy to use. Simple. Connect to a server, and join a room, and away you chat. It was fun. It was new, and I lost myself to it.

I had learned how email worked, and learned how mIRC worked. I was super into Sailor Moon, and my first search online (in fact my first thing I did online) was to use search.com to look for Sailor Moon, not knowing if anyone but me cared about it... well - people did! Lots of pages! Anyway, thanks to this love of anime I connected with people via email and learned about mIRC and wound up in a chatroom called #sailormoon - see on mIRC # is the prefix for the room's name. We didn't have hashtags yet. :P

Anyway, I was looking for love and romance back then, and I fell for someone named Princess Mercury, and even sort of dated her, or at least wrote to her. In the end, that was not to be, but there was Naka. She was always just there for me, and fun to talk to. We would play in her room #NakaFroce (there was a #Negaforce room and that is where the idea came from) we hung out in there and did fancy color words, and chatted about things and it was a whole world.

We just - clicked. But, she had told me, she was only into girls, and was "young" how young? I never really was told, but I was 16, so she couldn't be much younger and have the ability to type like she did right? So it was we had adventures and friends come and go. New programs with more fancy graphics came out. A new sort of chatroom that let you dress up your avatar and go to rooms with lots of people to chat about random things, and a side chess room that had a "lock" on it so you could talk one on one with someone. This of course, one presumes was used for cyber.

Oh we had cyber everything not just sex back then - you had cyber moms and dads and daughters and family, it was a different time and a whole universe it and of itself.

Naka knew how I felt about her, and would remind me she was only into girls. This is when I came up with.... a plan.

See I had established other nicknames, and other personality's that I would sign in as and "play" as - because I viewed mIRC as a playroom of sorts, we were talking about real things, but we also were doing silly things like Sailor Moon attacks at each other, so it was real, but it wasn't real. Anyone could claim anything, anyone could be anything. Asking for A/S/L was standard, getting a pic was rare but asked for to try to verify someone was who they said. 

Anyway, so I had a girl version of me online - but "she" had not been around for awhile, yet Naka knew of that persona, and from her view, that person was as real as I was. To some degree, she was, since she was me and I am real, but I am not a girl.

But, somewhere in my minds eye I saw that, maybe if I could get Naka to love her - then she could love me, somehow. It made no sense, but I wanted to be in love so much, to love and be loved, it was my quest.

So, it was that I as a girl "Diggy" logged in to interact with Naka. Naka wanted to play the more complex chat room rather then dull old mIRC - so Diggy followed, and new things way to fast - (because I knew them) but I made the excuse that me (the male me) had told her some things.. and that seemed to make sense. We talked of love, and of course well - we (cough) talked of the cyber sort of talk. 

Then, one day. Naka said "I have to tell you something, but it will ruin us..."

"No it will not!" I swore.

Naka: "No, it will... you will never forgive me, I have to tell you my secret before we meat and it will destroy this ..."

"Nothing you could say will change how I feel!" I vowed.

Naka: "This will... its why I've never shown my pic or anything..."

Uh oh. No, could it be? Was... no please no. Don't say THAT.

"Tell me." I said.

Naka "I'm a man."

Oh.

Bleep.

Bleep me.

But in that moment,  I didn't care, we would make it work, somehow. So I told Naka who I was, the whole truth and the illusion was ended, the reality was broken, "I can't be your lover" he said, his name was Steve.

And he was much, much older then I was. 

So he liked young girls. Oh.

Bleep.

So, well I fell in love with someone who wasn't. I fell for someone who didn't exist. I loved an illusion. I was hurt. I had lied, they had lied.

Yet still, I recall Naka telling me how she had got her name from this game where at the end credits it said simply "Thanks Naka." and that was a cool name to have.

Naka, in Japanese means "Within" or "Inside" or "Together"

Yume no naka futari de ita yo ne Hoshitachi ni mamorarete

... so, I learned to be careful online for you do not know who is who, or even maybe who you are. For that, I must say:

Thanks Naka.

On the subject of things that happened to me.

"I know you all hate me" I recall saying to people in my class way back when I was nine or ten, perhaps younger. I had two friends in that school. Each school thereafter I would only have one friend at most. It was online that I was able to make more friends. Yet, I found, that online is fleeting, people are not as much of a friend as you want to think they are, things that wouldn't end a relationship in "real life" (as if the net wasn't also part of real life) would and could and did end relationships online. Even dumb things, mostly the dumb things.

I've come from the "old school" net experience with chatroom and forums - before youtube, before twitter, before facebook and even before myspace was a "thing" oh I've been around I tell you.

What I can tell you is, people are jerks sometimes. And, sometimes they are wonderful. Words can hurt, words can help, words can be forgotten. I've had night long conversations that I forgot in full the next day - had to re-read whatever I wrote, and found that I couldn't really talk to that person, in fact, I had written most of the words, they had written little.

We let what we think the person is become a thing in our mind. (X) person is (Z) way, even if they are not. Our brain fills in the missing bits of that person.

I found romance a number of times online, and never had it pan out. Once it was a girl from the far off land of Texas who I would think of when I would play the song "Fields of gold" (done by Sting)
I would see those fields, see her run towards me, see us hug. See us love. Yet, it never came to be. She dropped me, it was over.

I've had people I really liked as a friend abandon me because we disagreed on something. I've had people betray me. In turn, I'm sure I've done this to others. I've hurt and been hurt.
Yet still, laughter could echo into the sky if we let it.

People can bring pain, or hope, or empty or full. We are strange creatures, always alone, always around others. On line, we find a new face around each corner, yet we are so far away, so distant. We can so easily forget we are a human, and they are human, and what someone is in fact. We can fail to separate our dream from reality.

Get angry online - see who sticks with you. Make a big error online, see who stands by your side. Those are the ones to call friend. Those are the ones to talk to.

So, ya want to be an advocate eh? Be sure you have some mega thick skin, because its rough out there, and its going to be. Your going to have to be together to make a difference in this world. If you break down, if you show weakness, your going to get smashed, so being an advocate for (X) might not be for you.

I've seen it as a theist and as a skeptic. I've seen insults. I've seen kind words. I've heard nonsense, I've heard facts. Its all there. Its all part of this thing. Its happening to me. Its happening to you.

Even as you read this, you are interacting with me, but you can not know me, not really, only a little, only slightly only a bit. Maybe you will want to know more, maybe.

We seek love of all kinds - friendship, romance, a unified family of our own making. We seek understanding and we want, so much, to make an impact upon this world. We want so badly to make it better, yet we have no idea how.

These are things that happened to me. These are things that happen to you.

So, well, big deal I didn't write anything you didn't know most likely, or didn't suspect, or maybe I did who knows? Did it matter? Did it make a difference? Can I make an impact? Can you? Can anyone?

As we all stumble around, trying to do this, debating over word choices, debating over everything from what we eat to how we put the TP on the roll to wipe our butts with (and how to wipe) - and we all want, I hope, to make this world a better place.

Perhaps, we do make this world a better place. Who knows. So, do you want to quit twitter or facebook or youtube? You might. You might need to for yourself - as there are ways and ways to make an impact outside of the net. I've got a message to send, are you there?

Is anyone out there? Am I alone in this? No. You are not alone.
But it can feel like that. I know.
Because this is one of the things that happened to me.
What happened to you?

I want to know. I want to share.
Lets make it better, if we can agree, we can find some way to compromise.
Hope for humanity +1 if I did my job with my humble words.
If not, well - I tried at least.

Perhaps we all must try our best. Peace works, use it. Love wins over hate. I think we must try to be the sort of human we hope others to be. Yet, can we? I do not know. I only know, this is a few things that happened to me.