Really missing one of my online friends

[Anakin McFly]

We were really good friends for 3 or 4 years. We would chat almost every single day, usually twice a day due to the time difference, about all kinds of random things: life, movies, or writing these ridiculously hilarious stories together because we just had that kind of comic rapport: she'd come up with a line and I'd riff on it, and then she would, and it was awesome and we wrote over 100k of that stuff. And she was amazingly supportive when I came out to my family, and was one of the people who helped me get through all that with my sanity intact. We had our private in-jokes and sent each other snail mail and all that. It was one of the best and closest friendships I've ever had, online or off.

The last time we really talked was around August 2012. Her grandmother - whom she was really close to - was seriously ill, and she wanted to take some time away from everything to spend more time with family. So I wished her the best and we parted ways for a bit.

Then there was nothing at all from her for about half a year. At one point I was worried she might have died, because she wouldn't respond to any email asking how she was doing. Then one day I saw her online in gmail chat and said hi, and she was kind of flustered, saying, "oh my gosh, I'm really sorry," and that she'd been extremely busy and her grandmother had just passed away and she was still dealing with that; so I offered my condolences and said I was there if she needed to talk about anything. She otherwise seemed friendly and happy to see me.

and then more silence.

3 months later I emailed her. Nothing.

I knew she was alive, because she started a Tumblr blog and added me. I messaged her there. She said '<3' and that was it.

A few months later I emailed her again - it was still her active address, based on new accounts she'd created with it - and messaged her on Tumblr, asking if everything was ok. Still nothing.

In November 2014 I did some google sleuthing and found a friend of hers on Twitter; I contacted her, asking if she was in touch with my friend - she was - and if she knew what was up with her. She passed the message along and said that my friend had just been really busy with graduate school, but said she would email me when she was capable.

It's now been another 5 months, and I still haven't heard a thing. :(

I don't know why she's ignoring me. But that loss hurts so much. It's one thing if a friendship ends or drifts apart over time, but this wasn't a drifting - everything was completely fine and normal up until the time she just *stopped*, and I'm just left hanging here being sad and confused and feeling like a stalker, and I don't even know why. It's not just me, either - I contacted a few people who were her friends back in 2012, and they tried messaging her as well, only to be met with that same odd silence - but she was getting their messages, because she followed them back on Tumblr.

I just wish she would say something. :/ A couple nights ago I dreamt about meeting her again. Then I woke up and I remembered we haven't really talked for almost three years, and it hurt so much. It's not like her at all to completely ignore a whole bunch of her friends for no reason - and via my stalking, she's still marginally active on various online communities - and I don't know what's going on but I'm sad and I need closure.

[Dr_Liszt]

Your friend sounds awfully a lot like me. I mean I've had disappeared from circles all of the sudden without telling anyone but it was mainly for two reasons:

1. Fucked up shit has happened.
2. I don't feel like talking to people anymore because fucked up shit has happened. So I close my circle. I went to being part of several groups to talking to just three people and that's how I was for a year until I found the way to be more open again.

I really do hope you get closure though. Or that nothing extremely bad has happened to her that made her just do that to everyone. Most of the time is not you, is just her and her situation. My post probably doesn't help. But I'm sorry.

[Anakin McFly]

nah, your post does help.

I thought that maybe she might be just trying to leave that particular phase of her life behind, perhaps because it reminds her of all the stuff that was happening with her grandmother, or who knows what else. I'm also hoping that nothing extremely bad happened to her; I'm a little hopeful that it's unlikely, because from her Tumblr she just seems really stressed over graduate school. The internet sucks that way - knowing that she's still out there making posts on things, albeit it's just Tumblr so it's mostly gifsets and photos - and sometimes even reblogging my stuff, but not actually replying to me or any of the others who've tried.

and argh I just don't know how we could go from pretty much best friends to suddenly just not talking for almost three years.

There's also the slightly more sinister possibility that she's intentionally avoiding us because of family - she's in North Carolina, and has griped to me in the past about her family's pretty horrible beliefs about LGBT people. And perhaps in some twisted way she might think that hanging out with me or others who share opposite views might be an affront to her grandmother's memory, or something, and she's still having trouble grappling with that. Because she's... been posting a lot of heterosexuality on her Tumblr, nothing confrontational, just straight couples being straight, which is markedly different from the way she used to liberally enthuse about random male characters being gay together. She doesn't do that any more, at all.

so many possibilities. /o\

[Anakin McFly]

I also had a thing I planned to mail her for Christmas two years ago because I knew she'd love it. I mentioned it that last time we met on gmail chat, and she got really excited and said that I know her so well. But she never replied to my follow-up messages asking for her new address so I could send it over, and now it's still sitting in my room. ;___;

I just don't know what's going on.