512Personal feelings on a certain matter. May offend people.
I love it when people say: ‘Friends’ from online don’t count.
Because I know that they’re wrong.
For some people, people from the internet are their families. These so called strangers are people who may never show their faces, never tell you their real names, never tell you when they’re birthdays are, or just how many pets they’ve had in the past 12.45 years.
But, these so called strangers are the ones who stayed up with you all night listening to you sob as you go through another nightmare or another night where it feels like there’s no one out there who understands you.
These so called strangers are the ones who believe and support you in your dreams, your goals, your aspirations when everyone in ‘real life’ told you that you should have crushed that dream before it even had a chance to grow.
These so called strangers talk with you, laugh with you, and have spur on private jokes at 5:30 AM in the morning just so you can get through another day of a family you may hate, classmates you may despise, and people you just can’t stand.
These so called strangers support you, listen to your problems, commission you, tell you that they love you, become your friends, your significant other, your family.
These so called strangers are now no longer strangers, but real people with voices, faces, dreams, and a presence that guides you through your life.
Internet friendship exists. It works. And it creates bonds that are as strong, if not stronger because these are not people you are judging by looks, by money, or by status. These people are people you’ve met because of their personalities, their fandoms, their likes, their interests, their standpoints, their viewpoints, and the talents that people in their ‘real lives’ never appreciated.
These are the people you’ve spent ‘til the crack of dawn, laughing about nothing and everything. These are the people you’ve confided and cried to because there was suddenly somebody who was willing to listen, willing to console, and willing to pick you up.
These are the people who saved and saved and saved all their money just so they can cross an entire street, an entire city, an entire state, an entire country, or an entire continent just so they could meet up with you in real life. These are the people who donated to you when you thought all hope was lost. These are the people who gave away every scrap they owned just so they could see their friend in a better situation.
These are the people, the so called ‘strangers’, the amazing people who are willing to do anything to ensure that you live to see another day.
Internet friendship is very much real. And while many might scoff and disregard an internet friendship as fake and unrealistic, many others know that it’s a very real thing that’s just as pure and good as any friendship you can forge in real life.
I have healthy friendships both off- and online, and neither one of those types of friendships are any more or less real or invaluable to me than the other.
