I mean there's no word for "a person who you've met online, but never in person, and interact with in some way on an almost daily basis and has had a profound impact on your life."

Oh, but of course there is: friend. Just like you said.

[Edit: x-post with amych, who said it faster and better.]

Victor posted on FB.

You guys, I dirty-danced with ita at girlbar back in the day and it was GLORIOUS.

Oh man. Good times.

Thank you Allyson. Thank you Polgara. Thank you Maria for sharing her words to you.

I kept trying to compose a post, and then the browser would reload on me on the tablet and I'd lose my words, which is something I would have griped about to ita because ita knew her tablets.

I made it through half the day at work after Dana texted me this morning, and then I shuffled home early to put on my pajamas and take out my contacts, and cry.

I didn't see ita in person very often after she got the hell out of Michigan, but I'm glad I drove across the state to hang out with her while she was there. I'm pretty sure that the first time I met ita, I was with Dana at a La Femme Nikita convention. ita had a boss-ass cane because she'd hurt her knee doing capoeira. She set the impossibly cool bar really high.

I don't know how to deal with the fact that I won't get to read her complaints about ScarJo not being able to do action when the new Avengers movie comes out.

Several people have said something to the effect that they don't have a right to feel the amount of grief they feel. There have been very few days in 12+ years that I haven't thought about ita, read something she wrote or tried to answer her challenge to something I wrote. I can't say that about relatives or f2f friends. I know that's true for most of you. How can we not grieve?

I came across this - can't remember where, but I copied it - and it sums it up for me:

The world takes from us relentlessly. It takes our friends and first loves. It takes our parents. It takes our faith. It takes our dignity. It takes our passion. It takes our health. It takes our honesty, and it takes our credulity. To lose so much and still hold onto yourself is perhaps the most complicated task human beings are asked to perform, which is why seeing it done with aplomb is as thrilling as looking at dinosaur bones or seeing a herd of elephants. It’s an honor to exist on Earth with these things.

Shrift, she used to have the picture of us and Theresa in some A2 bar up on her fridge.

I don't know how to deal with the fact that I won't get to read her complaints about ScarJo not being able to do action when the new Avengers movie comes out.

Gods, I'd forgotten about that. I just burst into a fresh round of tears because Bend It Like Beckham is on, and she's not around to be horrified by Johnathan Rhys-Meyers' running. (seriously, so bad.)

I don't know how to deal with the fact that I won't get to read her complaints about ScarJo not being able to do action when the new Avengers movie comes out.

That's been my Anya-fruit-punch-speech reaction. She won't get to see Avengers 2. She won't get to see the rest of SPN. I'm not sure where she was going with her questions about binders and genderfuckery, but she won't get to do that, either.

Unless maybe she will. Who knows? (Not getting into existential stuff right now; I know some people here believe this is all we get, and others believe there's something more. Right now, I'm in the "who knows?" place, which is okay. Ish.)

I'm like a lot of folks, I never had the chance to meet ita in person, but I looked forward to being able to do that some day. But in some ways, I still feel like I met her, because she was such a larger than life personality on this board and I feel like, even without having seen pictures of her, I would recognize her in a crowd just from that force of personality. Damn. Just, damn.