Typically this is something I'd rather keep personal, but I can feel it eating away at me and I can't really talk to any of my friends about this, so I guess here is as good a place as any.

About three years ago, while playing some shitty F2P MMO, I met a girl. Now I want to post straight up that this isn't a girl blog. I didn't have a crush on her and we didn't do a long distance dating thing. But I did care about her a great deal.

Through our time playing said shitty MMO, we became incredibly close friends. We shared a taste in music, movies, literature and games. We'd spend hours and hours talking on skype about whatever caught our attention, and it was incredible.

She'd had a tough upbringing, however. She was brought up in a foster family and had no idea about her real parents or family. The family she'd been brought up in was nice, and she loved them a great deal, but for reasons I can't really divulge she developed depression. There was something about her familial situation that made things tough on her, and left her with a great deal of responsibility at an incredibly young age.

She more or less raised her younger brother herself, cooked and cleaned and took care of her family herself, all the while studying and maintaining grades she'd said were good enough to earn her a scholarship when it was time for college.

At this point I should mention that, though I didn't have a crush on her, nor did we date or anything, she was head over heels for me. And she did little to hide it. It made things awkward between us and many times things would devolve into arguments because I hated being put in that situation.

We began to grow apart. She started to go from being incredibly introverted, only really talking to me and one other person about things, to just straight posting all her depressing stories on facebook and talking to complete strangers about how terrible her life was. For some reason it grated on my nerves and we started to fight more and talk less.

About a year ago her depression worsened. Things with her family had apparently gotten worse, her real life best friend was dying from leukemia and our friendship was severely strained. We'd stopped talking as much and it was harder on her than it was on me. I did my best to not think about her. We had our last conversation around July of last year, which is roughly around the time I deactivated both my facebooks and stopped using Skype as much.

Today I woke up with the intention of maybe catching up with a few of my gaming buddies from back in the day. I reactivated my facebook and went to her page only to find it flooded with messages of mourning. I didn't believe it at first. Apparently she'd died in November of last year.

It took a while for it to really hit me. Someone I'd once considered one of my closest friends had passed away, and I've been blissfully unaware for six whole months. I can't express the guilt and anguish that's settled into the pit of my stomach.

I haven't found out the cause of death. I'm too afraid to message anyone and ask. It could be suicide, which makes me feel physically ill. I knew about her depression and knew how things were, but instead of trying to help or make her happy or do anything at all productive, I abandoned her because I felt awkward. What the fuck?

I can't really remember what else happened today. My mind's just been focused on her pretty much non-stop. I've lost people before, it happens. The grief always passes. But I've never felt such tremendous guilt and self-loathing before. I don't know what to do. I just hope to god it passes or I may lose my mind.

'Til it does, though, I'll try my best to remember all the good times with her. I'm trying to dig up some of the poems she wrote back when she posted on dA, or some of the drawings or graphics she created. She was an incredibly artistic person. And kind, caring and playful. There are so many things I'll miss about her and so many things I wish I could tell her, but obviously it's too late.

I guess this will have to do. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. Thank you for making me a better person. And good bye. I hope you're finally happy. Much love.


P.S: Sorry to anyone reading this. I don't really know how these blogs work and typically I hate posting anything personal anywhere because I always feel like an attention seeker or whatever. But I feel like I'll explode if I don't put this somewhere and TL's community has always been so incredible to me.