This is somewhat of a long story, which several people already know, but it's something I'd like a proper record of.
A good few years ago now, before Facebook and Myspace, the only social networking site I was aware of and a member of was Faceparty. It tended to be full of perverts, fakes and cam girls trying to sell cam sex shows online. However there were occasionally some good people on there, and a couple I am still in touch with now. So anyway as I was in my early twenties and slightly more immature than I am now (although not much), I'd mainly browse through the site in the hope of finding attractive single girls to chat up. One such attempt was Christina, who surprisingly messaged me back and we eventually swapped yahoo messenger addys and kept in touch that way.
We started to chat quite a lot, and a friendship evolved, and I no longer saw her as someone I'd like to chat up. It turned out she lived in London near Hyde Park, but she never told me where, just that she lived about 15 minutes walk away.
She always refused to meet up with me when I asked, so one afternoon, with the help of Alex, I wrote out some very brief notes and put them in various places around Hyde Park for her to find. She ended up finding two of them, which was pretty cool, and she then decided to do the same to me a week later. She found a bench where she left me a note and a lollipop. The next day I found the bench she'd described and left a note for her in return. For years this would happen, we'd leave presents and notes under the bench for each other to find, and it was just really fun and cool. I'd even left dvd's under there, and thankfully no one else found them but her.
There was also no romance or anything like that involved, just a good friendship, although I did leave her an engagement ring once, but she refused to marry me, she kept the ring though (luckily only a cheap £1 ring from Claires).
Still refusing to meet up in person, one day I decided to do a stakeout of the bench, so I talked Alex and Kat into joining me, and we spent hours and hours sitting in Hyde Park watching the bench and waiting for her to collect the goodies. Many things happened that afternoon, including a woman getting naked on the bench and having a guy (hopefully her boyfriend) taking pictures of her. However there was no sign of Christina, so we gave up after meeting some french girls who we attempted to chat up and went off with. Well, as fate would have it, Christina was apparently in the park at that moment and collected the stuff about five minutes after we'd left.
One day I was at home and I got a parcel in the post. It was from Christina, somehow she'd tracked down my address. It sounds somewhat silly now, but that was a really cool day, as it was totally unexpected, and I still remember how excited and happy it made me feel. She'd sent me cd's a Spiderman top, a rubber duck and some other bits and pieces. She said it was to thank me for being there for her. She had a lot of issues, and we used to talk a lot, and hopefully I helped to an extent.
So, after a couple of years I certainly had my doubts as to if this girl was real. Was she really a girl, was she called Christina? She'd never meet me so she could be anyone. Well I was and still am fairly sure that she was a girl. She'd often sing songs and send the soundbites to me to listen to. Also one day out of the blue she actually called me. She never used to answer her phone, she'd only text, but one time she called me and we chatted. She'd wanted to apologise as she often had major moodswings and felt she was often quite mean to me (which she certainly could be). It actually sounded like she was almost crying whilst on the phone too, so I do believe it was really her, I never spoke to her on the phone again after that unfortunately, as she went back to simply texting and communicating online.
I also did a search on friends reunited for her, and found her name listed there, as well as having done google searches with her email addy, it all seemed to check out that she was who she claimed to be. However there was one girl in her class on friends reunited who had a website link, so I clicked it to check it out. Now if you're still reading this, you'll probably find this quite silly, but this girls website had photos of her pet cats. They were exactly the same photos that Christina had sent to me claiming they were her cats. So I did wonder if Christina was this other girl (Gemma I think it was). I questioned Christina about it, and she admitted to stealing the pictures and pretending they were her cats, but I still find it quite odd even to this day.
The swapping of presents lasted for a few years, and she'd often send me things in the post, although I was never allowed to know her address to send her things. As I mentioned before she had a lot of issues, so as time went by she chatted online less until she was hardly on at all.
We then kept in contact via email, but that started to become rarer. In recent years I'd get about two emails a year from her. The last I heard from her was about a year and a half ago, so I assume she has a new email address now. It's a shame I've lost contact with her, as although I never met her she was a good friend. I suppose the fact she didn't know anyone I did and that we'd never met, we were able to talk to each other about things we'd rather others didn't know.
I almost forgot, there have been several gigs I've been to and she was there, but this was before I knew her. Then, since I got to know her she'd often be at the same gigs as Alex, even texting me once to tell me what Alex was wearing, so I'd text Alex and freak him out by this. But I believe she saw Alex a few times, not that she'd ever approach him.
So, even after all this time I still have all her letters kept safely in a folder, and I'd still like to meet her. I think it's unlikely she'll ever get back in contact and want to meet up.
I did send an email to her before Christmas, just in the hope she may get it, but I've still not had a reply, I've also tried to find her on Facebook, but to no avail. I would really love to know for sure if this girl was who she claimed though, but I think it'll always be a mystery.
Well, whoever she or even he was, they did become a good friend even if it was only online.
I also hope she has her life sorted out now and is settled down with a nice guy and a decent job.
If anyone I don't know is reading this and knows of a girl who'd leave presents under a bench, it'd be great if you could put me in touch with them!
No comments:
Post a Comment