Increasing use of social media has led to the development of a new kind of relationship. For lack of a better name, I call it guarded intimacy. It's like you will tell anybody almost any intimate detail about yourself but you won't give your full name, or address, or phone number, nothing that would let another person actually reach out and touch you; For the past six or seven years I have had such a relationship with a young woman on line. For the life of me I cannot recall how we first came into contact but over the next few years except for some troubling interruptions, we chatted online almost every day when we were in touch. She was always guarded about her personal information and I respected that but occasionally she would slip and over time I could put together a picture of her life. I do know her name and she has sent me pictures of herself.
She never would tell me exactly where she lived though and that raised some suspicion. I am not stupid. I know people will con you and lie to you on line but I also know it is very difficult to maintain a lie for six or seven years, so I am fairly confident she has been honest with me. Even one time when I felt so sorry for her and wanted to send her a warm winter coat, she had too much pride to let me do it.
Mind you this was a very troubled young woman. Among other things I learned was that she was a runaway from her family in Texas, sometime before her 18th birthday. By what path I don’t know, but she ended up in Cleveland. Along the way and there, she did turns as a prostitute and suffered from an addiction to methamphetamine, though she would hardly call it suffering. Part of the suffering comes from the hepatitis C she contracted from a dirty needle.
She seemed to get by moving in with a series of men, leaving when one tired of her and then finding another. Most of them were abusive and at least one of them turned her out to work on the street.
I could tell by her typing when she was high and occasionally lost patience with her.
There were times of clarity when she displayed an amazing intellect and creativity. She read books, her choices in music were eclectic and she showed an affinity for Irish folk music, not the hard rock one might expect from a meth user. She seemed to like plaintive ballads as well and was always suggesting I listen to this or that singer. She could be very insightful as well catching me at times in inconsistencies and calling me on them.
There was a time in Cleveland one night we were chatting and her typing gradually degenerated and she became more and more incoherent and then said she felt sick and wanted to know what to do. I was pretty sure she was having some kind of a drug-related reaction. Turns out the man she was living with at the time had injected her with a mix of drugs and she had no idea what was in it. She asked what to do and I said contact a neighbor. Fortunately she did this and the neighbor came on asking me what was going on and I suggested drug overdose, gave her an idea of first aid and to call paramedics. My friend ended up in the hospital for a time and then ended up living with the woman who saved her.
But she destroyed that one night when the woman was away, she got high and invited friends over who trashed the woman’s apartment.
This is getting longer than it needs to be. Over time there were highs and lows but in between there were some wonderful conversations and gentle chiding to clean up and make something of herself. She even audited some college courses and for one semester took a writing course. What she wrote could be beautiful.
More recently she moved to St. Louis. During that period she did well for a while but had a relapse and at one point told me she knew how the world worked and I was wrong. At that point I figuratively threw up my hands in frustration and didn’t talk to her for almost a year. But I kept track of her. She is the most avid reader of this blog. If you combine the hits from Cleveland and St. Louis there are almost 200, by far more than from any other single ISP. In following the hits I at least knew she was alive and that was reassuring.
Then after almost a year, last fall I answered one of her IMs and we renewed our relationship. Still like before she was very guarded about personal information. She told me she had a job and I could sort of confirm that by the regularity and schedule of when she came on line. She had her own place and told me she had cleaned up and had been off drugs for a while after reaching the lowest point ever and seeking help. We talked almost daily until a few weeks ago.
She was going to try camping though she had never done it before. Among other things I told her to set up the borrowed tent in her apartment so she would know how before she had to set it up in a hurry at some campsite. It turned out she had so much trouble with it she put off her trip for a week. Though she never told me she was going the following week, when she didn’t show up online over the weekend, I figured she was camping.
But then I didn’t hear from her for almost two weeks. I worried she had been mugged as she was going to a fairly public park in the St. Louis area. When she came back on two weeks later I discovered it was worse than that. I noticed from the blog counter she was using a different computer (Mac now instead of PC) and signing on through a different ISP. I asked her why. That is when she told me she had given away all her stuff including her computer because she tried to kill herself. I always knew this was in the undercurrent but the reality of it was chilling.
That of course upset the life she had with her own place and job and I learned she was now in a room with some sort of social agency that was helping her. Again we started talking almost every day but only for about two weeks.
In one of her conversations she told me that I was the only one in the world who stood by her that she had no one else. That was after I asked her where she could find some support. In that conversation she asked me who she should live for. Who she should live for? I tried to support her because I knew it was a serious question but my answer was in the long run, you live for yourself. I could tell by her hesitation and then her very noncommittal response, my answer wasn't good enough, not convincing. That response gave me a sinking feeling that this was deadly serious and for once I felt incredibly helpless to somehow intercede and change her direction, to somehow say the magic words that would make it all right.
I have not heard a thing from her since then. The last time she looked at this blog was June 27. Not a hit or a word since then. Given what was going on in her mind I am very worried. The only thing that gives me any hope for her is that knowing she is from Texas, even knowing she never wanted to go back to her abusive parents, maybe she did go back to her family. There have been hits the past couple of days from two ISPs around Dallas with several page views. That’s a very thin thread. So, I guess the length of this speaks to how worried I am. Which just goes to show that guarded intimacy can lead to some very deep connections and, I hope, explains why I am “desperately seeking Kitty.”
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Memorable quotations
The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.
"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent
"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger
"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend
A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader
“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May
“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.― Kurt Vonnegut
“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”―Stephen King
The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"
"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”
Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.
Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently
My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter
Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.
"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN
Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?
My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.
I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry
I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"
“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper
Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka
We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again
If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle
Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."
If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin
It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell
You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”
If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both
If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that
I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill
German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”
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Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem
Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center
One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan
Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends
It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson
3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes
Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”
You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming
He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama
Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker
“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500
Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla
“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti
“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places
As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again
Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting
Each day do something that won’t compute – anon
I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration
Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”
You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer
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So sad, Timothy, So sad....
ReplyDeleteMy goodness, this is such a wrenching story. I hope Kitty is alive and pulling through.
ReplyDelete