first thing:
in 2014 i made a online friend on quotev.com. this friend we'll nickname "4". i was only 14 years old at the time just about to start high school. over the summer 4 became my closest online friend, even though through the past years i had similar close online friends but they all ended up leaving the website or just abandoning their profile. i was pretty vulnerable and alone because i was poor as a student and my mom could barely buy clothes, and i couldn't go to school with any new school supplies but the old things i had from middle school. when i was 4's profile on quotev.com, it was this super chic minimalist profile that looked moody with an anime profile picture drawing. i was really shocked yet astounded that the person made it look that way. all profiles on quotev.com were messy, colorful, weird kid mess and i happened to be one of them that always made it look that way so it made me shocked to see someone made theirs the complete opposite. the website also went through several updates that changed the old internet theme to a more boring minimalist look and it made me think that quotev.com was possibly not somewhere i should "stay" if i just want to have fun like real kid of the early 2000's. i knew that would make me depressed because how have i stayed on quotev.com for almost four years straight and i can't do it anymore because their profile looks like that? so instead i decided to message the person with just a "hi" to see how they respond, which i could already tell they'd roleplay a moody emotionless person only because i had an internal break a few years earlier where i had talked to a sasuke uchiha roleplayer and almost had a mental breakdown that the person was actually a normal girl that was roleplaying how moody sasuke gets to be. i held that internally that i knew that 4 had to put on a bigger act like that. i was just kind of tired of having to actually get to know people and who they are online and this was my last mistake even though its kind of cringy that it was almos because of a sasuke roleplay when 4 was far worse. before the story goes on, since it was the early 2000's still i felt pushed to find some kind of best friend online-like a penpal-and i have no idea why. i think i had ADHD or ADD with BPD and Autism that was undiagnosed. i didn't need that at all.
4 messages back with a "hello" and that was it. and i remember i got really angry at myself because i was right. it was literally emotionless on purpose. idk why i got so upset but especially as a child? just block the person, or even ignore them. it's just a website. but for some reason i took on this challenge to make the person act like themselves. going back to the sasuke uchiha roleplayer, i remember i had even made a deviantart account with stolen art that i put apologies on trying to get the sasuke uchiha roleplayer's attention to make them a better person since they were acting emotionless like sasuke. the girl on the other side of the screen had to literally tell me that she's normal girl and to kind of stop bothering her. i remember i wanted to cry that entire day because i felt embarrassed. i was only 11 years old at that point. i messaged 4 back with a normal question "how old are you?" and 4 didn't respond at all. so i felt even more angry and now embarrassed. fast forward and i had messaged 4 again with another "hi" and the person responds "hello" again but that was it. this happens around three times, and maybe on the third time 4 actually answers one of my questions. the question was possibly "why are you acting like that?" and they reponsded with possibly "i'm not acting like anything" but i'm not 100% sure. i somewhat remember looking away from the profile thinking myself "they don't realize their profile looks really mean?"
i obviously wanted to message them again but i didn't know what to say. so instead i used what i usually did on my past online friends and that was to act ":3 derp cringe early 2000's kid" culture and be as attention-seeking and random and annoying as possible and i'll hopefully make them laugh. i just really wanted to have fun on the website still, i really didn't want to be mean. so i sent a VERY big paragraph annoyingly explaning my feelings like an *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧anime high school girl*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ confessing to their crush and i waited. it was so stupid and bizzare the big paragraph saying i like them when i just met them like less than a week ago. it was obvious a bit to be funny and it shouldn't have been taken seriously at all. the person didn't know my gender, nor my sexuality, nor even my age. 4 responded finally acting like a normal kid, which i thought was very silly in the moment because finally it wasn't serious. this is 2014 y'all, with early ariana grande and pastel goth and hipster and stupid kawaii things. i just wanted to be a normal kid and do fun things. 4 responded with "okay, i like you too!" or something along the lines of that. we literally just got to know each other like a real conversation online next, i told them my age which was 14 and they told me that they're 16. i was suprised by that because i always ended up being the "younger" one in my online friendships and i thought 4 was completely different from the rest. i went on asking them about anime, and that's when i mention my favorite anime is "free! eternal summer" which they definetely piggybacked off me and told me they like it too. i could kind of tell by then that they knew i'd for some reason lead the conversation so they were mimicking me. maybe they were telling the truth but i couldn't trust them. it was just an anime show, i don't know why i was so on edge but i think as 14 year old i think people thought i had enough time to make friends, figure out my hobbies, my life, everything so i really didn't want them to mess it up. it just wasn't true, i didn't have any time at all and it was making me have not even a panic disorder but like an anger disorder. i really wanted to hurt someone or even myself.
4 told me their favorite character was sousuke yamazaki. i told them that mine was makoto tachibana. the character they chose was obviously exactly them. this is where things get towards sexual abuse. it was only around 3 days to a week of talking to come to this. i might of asked them was their favorite ship/OTP of the show? i didn't even get to tell them mine, they responded with SouMako which was obviously Sousuke x Makoto. they might've even gotten the ship name wrong and i could just tell it was a lie and they said that on purpose. i don't know if it was to provoke me but i just went along with it even though it made me angry. why mess with anime characters? it's literally just drawings. they made me feel like they said i was gay for liking makoto tachibana and they were sousuke. i wasn't a lesbian or anything. i was kind of questioning during middle school if i could even like girls but maybe i was just an ally. it made me feel like they were pressing a weird LGBTQ+ trivia on me if i could accept them for saying that. like i had to read inbetween the lines for some reason. i responded with "that's super cool!" and i didn't say anything else. and 4 responds with "i like yaoi?" or something along the lines of that. and i got very frozen on the other side of the screen. this was happening by the second, we were both online.
cont. later
