AIM is the new ILU

Some high-school students had notes that they passed around in class. Some had the mall as being the place to meet new people.

For people like me? I'd had AIM.

Dyingfame: Hey

Luverlie5389: um..hi?

Dyingfame: I know your friend Amy. She was telling me how you like to write

Luverlie5389: ...

Dyingfame: So, I was thinking, maybe we could start talking..

Dyinfame: and share each other's stuff

Dyingfame: if you want to.

Luverlie5389: Do you have a name, mysterious stranger?

Dyingfame: 😉 Ray.

Luverlie5389: Amanda

Dyingfame: It's lovely to meet you, Amanda

Luverlie5389: lol, it's lovely to meet you, Ray

And so it began...

Fifteen years old and I'd met my perfect stranger via instant message. My best friend Amy had been talking to Ray's best friend, Andrew. They'd both lived in Braintree so it didn't work between Andrew and Amy. However, Ray and Amy had become fast friends. She'd talk to him on instant messaging and tell him about the shenanigans Amy and I would get ourselves into.

Interested, Ray had asked if he could message me. Amy had gone ahead and given him my username.

Doing something like that is almost as bad as giving out someone else's phone number. I'd been annoyed for a brief second. Fortunately,  Ray had turned out to be a nice addition to my instant messaging contacts list. We had begun messaging late September in 2005. I would find myself spending hours-HOURS- on AOL. We never ran out of things to talk about, comment on, ask. The more that we spent time talking, the deeper the conversations.

I'd self-disclosed information that even some of my friends didn't know. He in turn, would tell me something personal about him.

Ray suffered from social anxiety, and was naturally shy. I suffered from low self-esteem and tried to make everything a joke.

But online... we were ourselves. We didn't have to hide any of it.

He'd send me chats between him and Smarter child. I would do the same. It was always something stupid. We would insult Smarter-child or pester the chat-bot until it got angry and blocked us for the day.

Then a few months into our friendship, Ray sent me a conversation between him and Smarter-child.

He had been asking Smarter-child if it could tell Ray who he loved.

Smarter-child, being a chat-bot, searched for information on love. Ray then asked if he was sick. Smarter-child sent information on illnesses and symptoms. Then, the last one--how to know if a girl likes you.

Smarter child had provided websites with charts and examples.

I couldn't respond. I'd felt the happy bubble I'd put myself in starting to thin, and could sense that everything was about to change.

Ray played it off like it was nothing, but I became uneasy.

Was Ray indirectly trying to tell me that he liked me?

Or better yet--

Did I want him to?

A few days after the conversation with Smarter-child, Ray had begun to urge that I joined Myspace.

Myspace? What the heck is that?

So I asked him:

Luverlie5389: What is it?

DyingFame: It's the new way for the future! Pictures, music, blogs, quizzes, friend lists, you name it.

Dyingfame: I just want you to join so u can like my blogs 😁

Luverlie5389: I should have known...

Dyingfame: Don't worry. I'll do the same for you.

I decided to give it a try. Everyone else at school kept talking about it, so why not join the masses? Besides, if Ray was on it, it couldn't be too bad. After all, we were two peas in a pod.

So I joined on a blistery winter day. I was overwhelmed with the sections in the site. You could create a profile, upload a code so that it had pretty backgrounds, input music, and write blogs. What more could a high school girl want?

After I got a preliminary profile up, I searched Ray's, and put him on my top eight list... as number one.

Bold. Too bold, I'd decided, so I'd moved him to number three and put my sister Jenny and my cousin Kelly in the first two slots.

Then, I wrote my first  blog and dedicated it to Ray. In a joking, indirect way, of course. We had been messaging during this time and he was explaining how to search for profile backgrounds. Instead of doing that I looked at his profile, and stalked every inch of it. He'd had a few recent blogs so I read them.

I'll admit I was looking for my name somewhere, my stomach filling with butterflies just at the thought.

There had been mention of a girl bringing him back to the light, but it was left at that. I'd been frustrated that I couldn't ask him who he was speaking about. To do that would give away that I had developed feelings for him and being turned down, losing a friendship that I held dear.

I'd already gone through a bad dating experience and had my friends turn on me, so I couldn't handle it if it was Ray that did the same.

For awhile, we remained in the limbo, never being open about our feelings, but writing them in metaphors and codes, all of the same.

He'd taken the plunge a couple of months after, writing what he felt for me on a blog.

How did I respond?

I stopped going on AOL.

I'd been terrified, unable to handle the fact that everything had changed, and I didn't want it to. I didn't like Ray, I'd told my friends through Instant message chat. He was too clingy, too this, too that.

None of it was true, but I needed them to believe it. If they did, maybe I would.

Ray and I stopped talking for a few months, but we never stopped writing.

I had no idea my first love was going to be someone I'd met online, or that we would engage in a battle that had never been written about-

I'm talking about the blog war.

A pen is mightier than the sword was about to take on a whole new meaning.