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Without
Joey
written October 10th, 2003 It's hard to say how I would have turned out without Joey. As Joey puts it, "You're a ditto. There are dittos and leaders That's why we're able to get along so well. If you were a leader, we would butt heads all the time." His observation of how easily I'm swayed certainly holds true when it comes to my absorption of many of his views. In fact, people like Tim hated Joey not simply out of jealousy , but because they blamed him for "changing" me. So, just what did having Joey in my life do to me? "He's everything you want. He's everything you need. He's everything inside of you that you wish you could be. He says all the right things at exactly the right times, but he means nothing to you and you don't know why." (from the song "Everything You Want" by Vertical Horizon)Joey began emailing me when I first created Corey's Corner in August of 1998. Unfortunately, so did many, many other people. I met "Amazing" then too. His emails immediately struck me and I was hooked. Joey, on the other hand didn't even get my attention until one of his emails said that he had to change the subject because it was too painful. Still, he didn't stand out any more than the person (that got my attention by contemplating suicide) who I would later ask to help sift through an overflow of incoming emails. Joey and I would chat online from time to time, but just as friends. I seemed to feel "love" (ie, crushes) online so easily--just not with Joey. I started to fall for someone else who emailed me even while my crush on "Amazing" was still blooming. That is, until this person expressed the opinion that sex was ok and I wasn't really able to safely contemplate his ideas at the time and so cut off our contact. Later on, I would "attack" the first person who helped with my emails (before I let Tim try) because he had promiscuous sexual fantasies. As long as people stayed off the topic of sex, I was fine. So, I emailed with countless people in 1998 and now, not counting Joey, only two people still email me from back then. Others were neglected when I couldn't keep up with emails or keep track of who was who. One person I wrote to fairly frequently about events in my life, but he still had to stop emailing me because my emails were too much about me (and, Pete, if you still have those emails, please email them to me). "Rather it's that you were the only person that I use to communicate with over the internet, and for quite sometime I thought it was that way for you too... Perhaps that's why I felt so close to you... I thought you were all alone out there... both in the real world and in the virtual world like me. I felt comforted in that. I don't know what is better, knowing or not knowing. Living in my own fantasy world or facing reality and being hurt." (an excerpt from something Joey wrote after we met)During the '98/'99 winter break, my parents moved (again), I became sick, and Tim entered my online life. I still emailed with "Amazing" off and on as the school year progressed. Events in my real life began drawing me away from the internet and I wouldn't write to people for long periods of time (as is still the case). And, somewhere during all this and all my neglecting of his emails was Joey saying he loved me. To be perfectly honest, I played with his emotions. I made him think that I felt the same way. If I could so easily care about so many, why not him? Maybe I thought I could change how I felt. I even let him believe (by not denying it) that some hints to love in my thoughts and even my reference to one of my first emails making me cry were about him. I didn't want to hurt his feelings and he seemed so swept away in the "I knew it" and "I felt it all along" that I kept silent and, worst of all, played along. If only I could feel that connection that I thought I felt with others. Then came the summer of 1999. Perhaps it's easier for me to to believe that "Amazing" wasn't real, that he was playing along and never really loved me, and that he never really died. His "friend" online sounded just like him as he told me he was dead. Yet, no sooner had one emotion died than Tim introduced me to "Breathe" and I fell in love. This I know wasn't a crush, because the feelings still haunt me to this day. He told me things about physical contact that scared me, but this need inside of me burned so much. He made me happy and I loved him (and, sadly, still do). Just a few months of knowing "Breathe" affected me so deeply. Perhaps it's because, unlike "Amazing", who is either dead or unreal, it was left unresolved and unfinished in my mind. So, I chatted with Joey and told him I was in love but not with him. I tried to convince him to pursue a relationship with a girl he knew and eventually get married. And, as I had done so many times before, I stopped emailing him. And, just to be fitting, my "true love" was punctured and I, too, was left heartbroken. I couldn't deal with my emails anymore and, as I would later come to realize, I set myself up for future impersonation and attack. Needless to say, my Junior year started badly. My mind was everywhere but at school. In the beginning, I was in a daze of "love." The, after (and as) "Breathe" left, I fell apart. Even without this internet life "crisis", my hormones and emotions were still creating a crisis of their own. I was having trouble being attracted to my classmates because it was too real and too physical for me to handle. I emotionally fell for freshman and then felt guilty. I began the whole needing to be younger (and not so "old") feelings again. My parents knew something was wrong and they tried to help in the only way they seemed to know how: we moved. So, in short, I was crazy by the time I met Joey. "I feel responsible... I wish I could take away your pain... The only thing I can do is try and be here for you and try to comfort you as best I can. I'm not a professional counselor or whatever, but I do love you very much and I think that makes all the difference in the world. We CAN get through this together. I survived through SO much for you. The heartache was immense but you helped me through it. You were, and still are worth fighting for... some people are worth fighting for... One person... the person that I have always loved and will always love..."I still remember the first time I met Joey in real life. I was sitting down o a bench doing homework and eating lunch. I was drinking when he sat down on the bench with me. He made the first move. He always did. He said "hi" and I said "hi" back. He made some small talk that I don't recall anymore. I just remember how nervous I was (and how nervous he was) and that I kept taking sips of my drink. We became friends almost immediately. As time went by, he told me who I was and, of course, came who he was. Someone lost in emails and a surreal internet existence became all too real. So, was our becoming friends in real life a coincidence? How could we be meant to be and I not know it from the start? The love he felt for me, all the cards and presents he used to win me over, came hand in hand with dealing with the hurt I put him through. It all came at once. He wanted to kill himself when he thought he had lost me online. The hurt and the pain was so strong within him, but what was stronger was his endless love for me. As I learned to love him back, another factor came into play: memories. I had been hurt long ago and somehow repressed it (or tried to). The nightmares of old returned. I finally had to face what I most feared: touch. Just touching my hand and holding it in his brought my fears to the surface again and, all at once, showed me what I was missing. As complicated as it was, life seemed easier online. I could handle touching, but it took a long time to become comfortable being touched. As Joey guided me through my fears and my seemingly endless paranoia, I discovered that I feared what I also longed for. As I put it at the time, "It's strange. I both desire touch and fear it." I wanted to be close. I was just afraid to loose myself. I wanted to stay safe, even safely alone. "Can this be...? Can this be the same person who I shared so much of myself over the internet? Sometimes I can't see that... the REAL you. I saw it the first time I talked to you at school... and I saw it again just now... The warmth, the feeling is unmatched by any other."It's true that I would be very different without Joey. I would still be afraid of so many things and I would still be alone. I'd probably have been writing a lot more of the types of thoughts that I was writing. I'd still be searching for answers, never satisfied with those answers I found because I'd still be missing something. Joey and I have been through so much together and we are closer than best friends or brothers. So, it's true that he has changed me, but that's not something he should be blamed for. It's hard to say if Joey, hormones, or both made me sane, but it is clear that I have changed in many ways for the better. It used to be that even hearing a song that talked about sex or a physical relationship would drive me crazy. I was so afraid of the thought of physical contact. Whether I still considered myself "innocent" and my own protector or whether it was my repressed fears from the past, the fact remains that Joey brought me out of the hurt that kept me from loving someone in real life. "It's nice to be appreciated the way I look. I'm starting to feel a lot better about myself because I'm loved." He didn't make my tan fade. That began in early 1999. He just tried to protect me from the sun and everything else. I always needed someone to protect me and he fills that need. He actually revived my interest in toys that I had lost at puberty. I even collected a few Bratz Boyz dolls (Cameron , Koby, and Cade), which is something I probably wouldn't have had the courage to do without Joey. I was afraid and he became my strength and courage. He's helped me to deal with a lot of issues that I couldn't deal with on my own. At first, the fact that our tastes in music were so different was very difficult to deal with, but he's opened me up to things I never would have listened to on my own. I may not write as much as I once did, but the reason I stopped writing as frequently was that I had someone to talk to and some of the wonder I lost can simply be accounted for by saying that I found what I was looking for: love. May I never be without Joey... |
