There are a group of people in my life who mean a whole lot to me, and I have never met many of them. I've never seen their faces, I've never heard their voices, I don't know how they smell. I know them only by the words they choose to use and way they choose to use them. I know them only on some subjects, and only in strange, punctuated time frames. In the shorthand we use, we don't know each other "IRL". In real life.
It seems to me that our shorthand is misleading. The parts of my life I share with them are real. They support they have shown me during some of my worst times over the past few years is certainly real. The camaraderie I feel with them is real, and the disappointment I feel when they let me down is real.
Why do we require physical proximity to believe things? These people of whom I speak are scattered all over the globe, and yet I am closer to many of them than I am to people I see every day. I speak to them from my heart more, I show more of myself to them. At first, this may have been because I felt safe in my anonymity, safe because they were so far away. Now it is because I know them, I trust them, I consider them my friends. And just like my other friends, the way I feel about them goes beyond political allegiances and common interests. Somewhere along the line screen names and avatars turned into people. If I lost some political efficacy when that happened, so be it. I am not sorry.
*Title from Ani