Well, they are neat and awesome people and I'm really really lucky to be able call them friends and it just bowls me over they call me friend too.

You're a noodle.

Which is all kinds of fucked up, but anywho.

Eh. Just because we don't know where you live it doesn't mean we don't count.

But more seriously--friends fall into different categories all the time. Sometimes you can draw other lines around them and say "online friends get this, out of town friends get that" but I don't think it's fucked up if you are being honest with yourself about it. Because those lines are pretty much coincidental for me. The important categorisation is how I am with them, not where they are (or their gender or whatever other demographic slots you're looking to fill).

For my mom, I was an easy kid. Sure, around 15 there was a set-to in which she declared she loved me, but she didn't really like me right now ( basically, I was being an irrational bitch from hell.) I tore up a lovely admiring note she'd sent me earlier, and then taped it back together in a fit of apology later. I still have it. The whole like and love thing has stuck with me in a very good way. It was a good lesson.

Poor dad, nsm. I wasn't the terror my brother was to both of them, but I seriously hurt him on numerous occasions.

Oh good, I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

Oh no. Loved that. And, no he wasn't devastated. Just didn't understand why no one thought it was funny.

And Poor Tim! He so doesn't want to abandon Bo, being abandoned himself, but knows mom's right. Gah.

Love. This. Show.

I was NOT an easy kid on many levels but on other levels, I had a perfection issue that made me easy too.

I miss Tivo.

Honestly, I'm probably more forthright about my emotional state in the semi-anonymous online world than I am in meatspace (outside my family.) Which is all kinds of fucked up, but anywho.

Fucked up? Not at all. I suspect that applies to a lot of us.

Eh. Just because we don't know where you live it doesn't mean we don't count.

No, very true. Hell I'd argue the opposite. I know the opposite. All your points are right. The friends I've made online are more numerous and just as dear as those in meatspace. It's more that those who can be my physical nearby backups and who... I tend to insulate them. I am not wholly honest with them. I think I blurt more to the ether than I do to the people I talk to everyday, or on the phone or...

Which also explains why Thanksgiving spent 24/7 with people from the internets is less stressful than a party of people I work with everyday thrown by a meatspace friend here.

But where I boggle at my oddities is the anonymity. I throw out stuff on the internet that I don't in my other lives. Anyone can see it. ANYONE. And yet, some stuff I'm hesitant to tell my dearests.

Because telling is harder than writing. Writing is so much easier. Text means distance.

And pthbpt! I know where sara lives.

The insulating thing - that's big, I think. If I'm freaking about something (not like, politics, but something personal), venting to people who are part of it or know the people involved - half of me is trying to protect or not upset them or not somehow implicate them in whatever the situation is. Here, it can be about me, and I can ask people to sympathize or teeth-grind on my behalf. Or they'll tell me I'm being a bonehead. Either way. It's both more personal and more distanced, if that makes any sense.

Text is... no less revealing, and hell, I do that a lot. It's still a weird distinction. I know, I know.

pthbpt yourself! Me calling is such a huge thing, as you know. Speaking of which...