I’ve been really stressed lately. I only just realised when I started writing this post that once before I was really stressed and what I ended up doing was going into an old school chatroom. To let the words wash over me, to distract myself from the stressful thing in my life. And on the back of going to that chatroom I met people that were important to me.

That isn’t what I was going to write about today, but that is interesting. I’m going through a stressful time right now, and probably because of it, I’ve been going more into the chatroom connected to the website I use where I met my on/off person.

And this thing happened a few weeks ago.

I was in this room, and I was using the cams. And I saw his name added to the list of people in the room. And I started smiling thinking of the previous times he and I have been in the same chatroom together, the messages he sent me. The time I laughed at the thing he messaged me. It was nice.

That didn’t happen though.

He came in and out of the chatroom for more than an hour. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t click to view my cam. Obviously I can’t see if he clicked on anyone else’s cam but he seemed to leave when the other woman on cam switched off her cam and left.

And I was in a state over it.

It felt like my worst fear. That he only ever meets me or messages me when there are no other better options.

And I hate feeling like that. I decided in that moment that I would archive our message thread on Whatsapp. And that I wouldn’t message him again until he messaged first.

I’ve said that to myself before.

But this time I had that awful feeling that still lingered on me. The disrespect of it, the horrible way I felt about him not acknowledging me, that he didn’t message me. I was not under any illusion that he hadn’t seen me there. If I knew he was in the room, he knew I was in the room.

So that was it. A line drawn.

Eventually, he did message me. I don’t remember what he said. Something fairly casual and inoffensive. Hi, how are you? perhaps. And when I saw he’d messaged me (hours after he sent the message because it was in my archived folder), I did consider my options.

Deleting it. Ignoring him. Responding as if nothing happened.

But in the end I said oh, hi. And then immediately said I actually came across you the other day? We were both in the chatrooms for well over an hour at the same time…?

And we talked about it. I said it hurt my feelings. That he didn’t acknowledge my presence, that he didn’t say anything. And I was proud of myself for not letting it go. He apologised and even though it didn’t feel like enough, it felt like enough for right then. And our conversation continued.

We weren’t in the same chatroom again for several weeks. But when we were, he said in the main chat ‘Nice dress, Em’ and I couldn’t stop smiling for the next half hour.