Friend

I met a friend on a mental health website.  I said we were all "wounded healers."  He said we were all looking for validation.  I had hoped we were more altruistic than that.  But this started a discussion that left the website and moved to our personal email spaces.  We discussed our histories, abuse, medication, children, ourselves as children, music, books, travels, hopes, opportunities, aspirations, limitations, and the idea that we would like to meet...one day.  1000 emails later, he is gone.

He had a manic episode that I did not know how to handle.  He was getting 'in your face' confrontational with people in his neighborhood.  I tried to calm him down and that was apparently not the thing to do.  He signed off...and that's the last I've heard from him.

So many feelings...so many reactions...so many possibilities.  I hope he's alive.  I hope he's safe.  I hope he knows I care about him deeply and would not abandon him...intentionally.

Our two months of correspondence walked me back away from a near-fatal depression last spring.  I now face the days without the dozens or more new emails titled in bright blue.  The silence roars with intensity,.and I wonder, what happened to him.

I will not think I could have been hurt...that I am better off.  In spite of his intentions to go out looking for trouble, I know he would not have hurt me.  I feel no concern for that.  I did not like the intensity of his anger and belligerence...that is why I failed to be what he needed at the time...friend.

I hurt, but I'm ok.  In one unanswered email, I said I was like a SETI technician, sending out signals in hopes that I would one day hear something back.