Fifteen Years Later, We Were Strangers

“Hey, this might sound crazy, but do you remember me?”

Of course, I remembered him. I was thirteen when James and I met in 2007 on GaiaOnline, an anime roleplay forum and niche cornerstone of chaotic 00s internet culture. We met on an open server, and his avatar was dressed like Sora from Kingdom Hearts, carrying a keyblade, which was objectively the hottest thing a person could do at the time.

In the early years, James and I bonded over our shared love of music and anime at a time when the concept of internet friends was new and exciting. Eventually, we took our relationship to the next level, Facebook, where I confirmed he was my age and hot.

James was an all-American East Coast boy. He had shaggy blonde hair, an acoustic guitar, and a girlfriend he met at Christian sleepaway camp. He had it all. Meanwhile, I was a child of the New Jersey suburbs, the only seventh-grade girl hovering at 5 ft. 10, and hopelessly in unrequited love with a boy IRL.

The Internet became my safe space. James was a welcomed fantasy from real life and the only relationship I felt I had any control over. Our friendship required minimal effort. For me, it meant I could hide my height behind a screen and curate my online presence through (tasteful) Picnik filters while distracting him with off-the-charts text chemistry. For him, it meant talking to me when there was nothing better to do and forgetting I existed as soon as he powered down the family computer. And for us, it meant using the geographical distance as an excuse not to confront the feelings we may have had for each other.

The system worked for us. It was a symbiotic relationship until we went to our respective colleges in 2012 and lost touch for good. That is, until ten years later.

This is everyone’s dream, right? That the one who got away comes crawling back at a time when your skin is clear, and the remnants of adolescence are finally fading?

I was 28 and dry-heaving over the sink in my Brooklyn apartment, staring at an Instagram DM from the boy I hadn’t talked to in ten years. Keyblade James was alive, living in Bushwick, and wanted to meet. So, I stalked his Instagram feed and sent screenshots to the group chat for consultation. He still had his acoustic guitar but had acquired a DSLR camera. We set up a “coffee hang” for the following week, history in the making.

The first meeting was intoxicating and overwhelming. We could not stop giggling as coffee became five hours of walking and subsequent drinks. I was obsessed with his profile view. The boy I only ever knew through the screen was here and three-dimensional, with the same piercing blue eyes and shaggy blonde hair.

James was fluent in Internet. He was the kind of boy to say Twitter memes out loud in conversation and laugh at them. He was a self-identifying Good Boy who reposted all the correct social justice graphics on Instagram, and believed The Rehearsal was the best television show in history. This was the kind of Brooklyn boy my friends and I were used to rolling our eyes at, but the magnetic hold James had on me was otherworldly because it wasn’t grounded in reality at all.

He agreed with everything I said, nodding along to my many anecdotes, and he maintained strong eye contact that suggested he was deeply engaged. Most importantly (to me), he laughed at my jokes. The validation was addictive.

That afternoon, I popped the question I had been dying to ask ever since he DMed me.

“Why did you reach out to me after so long?”

“I just wanted to know where you went.”

I could have told him I never went anywhere, that after months of dwindling texts I initiated, he had unfollowed my Instagram with no articulated reason. But I had already decided that this was our Harry Met Sally moment — we would tell our kids we met on Anime Neopets.

James and I decided to be “friends,” which was the beginning of the end. Suddenly, I was back to my old ways, waiting for his text to light up my phone and overanalyzing every like and comment. I was a shell of a girl, once again trying to force an outcome I had no control over to begin with. The night before our second “hang,” I received a text from James before bed.

“I’m so glad you’re in my life again, and I can’t wait for us to get to know each other better.”

Oh, he wants to marry me.

When I saw him for the second time, something was immediately off. His enthusiasm felt rehearsed, as though he were reading off a script, and the hidden cameras would reveal themselves any second. He was hiding something and clearly trying to put me at ease with the forced laugh and strained eye contact that was initially so charming. I couldn’t help but feel like this man wanted to go home.

Did he catch my face at a bad angle? Maybe I should have talked less. Maybe he forgot how tall I was. As we spent more time together, our online personas faded, and we were left with something messy, complicated, and perhaps too honest. Without the physical and digital distance, we were two people desperate to hide. It was too hard for him to keep up, but I tried harder. Before the night ended, I invited James to meet my friends.

“That sounds so great. I’ll be there!” he gushed and theatrically put the date in his phone, flashing his calendar to me as proof. But the time came, and I was ghosted for a week before receiving a text apology. He soft-launched his new girlfriend on Instagram that same day.

James often told me he “couldn’t believe” we’ve “known each other for fifteen years.” The more he said it, the more it felt like a desperate attempt to assure himself that he made the right choice, reaching out to me again. But it hadn’t been fifteen years. It had barely been six months. James was a perfect stranger, and so was I.

Eventually, you have to cut him off when you realize he is only interested in the idea of you. After a series of objectively embarrassing “hangs,” from playing Kingdom Hearts on his couch to watching Oceans 12 on mine, I finally realized.

It happened one day when he DMed me again to tell me he was starting his own “creative agency” and needed “people with my skill set” to join. The man lives in Bushwick, after all. I should have seen this coming.

I did what I had to do, what Keyblade James would have done. Mustering up all the forced enthusiasm I had, I responded

“That sounds so great, I’ll be there.”

And then, I blocked him. Now, he will never know where I went.