Why?

Going over one of my lesser-used email accounts a few weeks ago, I stumbled over a string of correspondences I had with a long-forgotten "email-mate". Mundane as this may seem to many, my "email-mate" was far from your usual web buddy. We met, oddly enough, in a local Yahoo! chatroom. Odd because it was the first time I chatted since the death of mIRC (yes, I am that old and yes, mIRC kicked a$$ back then) and because I simply wasn't the chatting type. I guess I was just bored... and lonely... quarter life crisis? Whatever the case, I wasn't really expecting much from that particular venture other than to take up at the very least an hour of a particularly uneventful day. Who would've known that a simple "hi, care to chat?" would end in a two year long conversation with perhaps the most interesting person I have ever met in my entire life.

Perhaps the most interesting conversation we had was our first... what immediately came after the universally accepted greeting in the world of chat: "a/s/l?". I don't recall the exact words my email-mate used but she basically replied: "does it matter?". Come to think of it, would it really matter if you knew the age/sex/location of the person you are chatting with? Think about it... what use would say "23/m/manila" be to anyone? That's just dumb! Wouldn't you rather start with "coffee or tea" or "paper or plastic"? In any case, this was how our conversation started... with me being the stereotypical chatter with nothing better to do and her being the complete opposite.

Our conversations covered just about everything we could think of: Strawberry donuts, the air-conditioning in our respective offices, movies, work, secrets... all these without knowing each other's name (we did disclose our respective ages - i forget how that happened). She was, for the lack of a better term, refreshing. I looked forward to her emails and I would think she enjoyed mine as well (C'mon, I don't think anyone would carry on a conversation for two years out of politeness... pity? a year would be pushing it). Never have I felt more connected with anyone than I did with her... seriously. We were like twins... born seven years apart! More bizarre things have happened, you know.

Our conversation ended quite abruptly. Third party. Someone called "Mailer-Daemon"... damn him! Yup, you guessed it.. she simply disappeared! Of course, I tried to look for her. By "look", I mean typing her email address in Google (which was pretty much all I had to identify her). No hits... no surprise.

So that's that. She was gone. MIA since 2005.

Now to the question... Why? Why blog? Simple answer: Because she wanted me to try it. Why "Rocky"? Because that's what she called me.