Where are they now?

Over the course of the last five years (that’s how long I’ve had Internet) I’ve been a member of several different discussion boards and have run the gamut from being a moderator on a couple and Admin on one to being banned from a couple others. Along the way I’ve “met” a lot of people. Some good, some bad, many interesting (just like in 3D life). But sometimes on the net people just fade out of existence and it always leaves an empty space.

On the first board I ever joined I made friends with Kellie from New Jersey. We emailed back and forth and shared stories and recipes and I found her to be extremely witty. She was working on her Master’s degree and her husband ended up with a lot of health problems. One day (almost a year ago) she just vanished from the net. I always wondered if her husband was OK or whatever happened to her.

Then there was Kim. I met her in a user created chat room before Yahoo shut them down a couple years ago. She’d been in a roll-over car accident and was searching for exercises to help injuries and we got to talking about yoga. I saw the pictures of the accident she had. They were horrific. We instant messaged for quite awhile and one night she said she was taking her son to a youth group meeting and that she’d be back online the next night. That was the last I ever heard from her.

There was “QuixoticVegan” from Oregon (I think) who used to post a ton of information related to health issues for anyone looking to educate themselves. He was a huge help when I was helping JL find information for a paper he had to write. I lost track of QV about that same time that Yahoo shut those rooms down… same for a little group of people I used to talk to every weekend; Corrina, Lexi, David, and a couple others. David was from Paris but was supposed to be in London around the time of that metro bombing attack. I never saw him online again. I always wondered.

The list goes on for other MIA net friends. Sometimes I’ll be doing something that reminds me of a conversation or an email and they cross my mind. Today I had to mail product from work to an address near where I know one net friend lives, and in another instance someone on a discussion board asked about another friend… little things like that make me stop and wonder how all these people are doing. I hope they are all happy and well. I may find out tomorrow or I may never know. That’s just the way of net communities, I suppose. At any rate, if you’re reading this and you’re one of these; I wish you well!