Me, I got onto
E2 the way I’ve met many a pal: E2 started going out with one of my very
best friends. One of
my very best friends I happened to be in love with.
Of course. But I tried to be big about it.
Grown up, even. I tried to accept
Everything2 as the intriguing creature it was, instead of looking on it bitterly as something of
The Other Woman, glowing behind his head on the monitor every time we came home from
dinner. Filling the
apartment with a presence all her own, so big I almost felt I didn’t belong.
On his
recommendation alone, I tried to get to know her. If I was going to be
the bigger person here, I had to give her a chance. After all, if my best friend loved her as much as I knew he did, then she had to be
something special.
And oh, oh, she was.
Of course E2 didn’t actually split us up. She did. (She, the actual person, not the world wide web creation. And at that, only a memory of her.) Time did, time always, always being wrong. The distance, the impending move, the way he would not be tied down. All of them, all of them did. Not E2. But E2 was the marker, the thing that was always there. Keeping me just a little bit farther away.
It’s always easier to let someone go if you know they’ve gone off to someone who’ll make them happy.
But in the end, she won me on her own
merits. E2 and I got to talking and never, ever stopped. Maybe I gave her a bit more of a chance than I would have given just any old
potentially addictive new web-site, because of his glowing
praise. At first. Then she took me in and ignored the
jealousy that was sometimes in my eyes. She let me talk about him all the time, even though he was also her
lover. Love rambles. All love rambles,
my first one hundred nodes. I can’t believe I had the balls to do it. We grew deeper, with a grand understanding. She had a thirst for
knowledge. She loved it when we talked about
physics, and
paintings, and
art.
High class. But she let me come back to more personal matter, too. She let me think through my most recent
life crisis out loud, and helped me come out the other side.
I found myself liking her
in spite of myself.
I think about E2 constantly now, my nodes, my votes, my
proof of her love. And how good of a friend I would have missed if my best friend hadn’t have fallen in love with her first. I think of her sometimes as the best
gift he could have ever given. And I am very, very
thankful. ... Thankful for the luck of having them
both.