Thirty in Seattle

The Beginning of The End February 2, 2009

I’m not an idiot. Nor am I clueless, out of touch, or naive. No, I am none of those things…but I would say that I’m a deep believer in the idea that people are inherently good and kind. Never before has my belief in the general kindness of humanity bit me in the ass more than over the last several months.

Almost immediately after I started blogging, I “met” someone. I can’t remember exactly how I stumbled across his little section of the internet—-probably linked from a link from a link. You get the idea. But the blessing (and curse?) of online friendships is that there’s a built-in safety bubble. You can find yourself deeply entrenched in the hilarious details of another person’s personal life: you’re laughing with them, crying with them, RAGING at the world with them. BUT, there’s a distance there. You’re not accountable to them…you don’t really know them, after all.

So what happens when the built-in safety bubble bursts? What happens when the online friendship becomes a REAL LIFE friendship? When the person on the other side of the computer screen becomes a voice on the other end of the telephone line? And eventually, a flesh and blood person on the other side of the dinner table?

Sometimes, what happens is bliss. Sometimes, a nightmare. And other times, what happens is just…bizarre, beyond belief, something out of a Lifetime Original Made-For-TV Movie—-and not the kind based on the steamy Nora Roberts novel on your bedside table. Believe me: I’d take the Nora Roberts version over the kind I lived through any day.

All I can say before the gritty details of my story unfold over the days, weeks, and months ahead is this: if it hadn’t happened to me, I would NEVER have believed a word of it.