"I don't really know what to say," I would say to her. I suppose if I was saying something, clearly I knew what I was saying, however you could probably argue that I didn't know what to say, despite knowing what it was that I was saying. This wasn't going to be a one-sided breakup.

"I just..." I would start, and try to find the best words to soften the blow. Like it sounded fine in your mind until you realized you had to say it to someone, about them. You know, about her.

"Well, spit it out," she'd retort, egging me on. I loved eggs, not like the ovarian duct kind, but like the food kind. Isn't it work they call it ducts? Like the tape, or the pipes that hold the heat from your dryer.

"I don't have all day."

I could feel her tapping her foot on her side of the internet. "Well, it's just that... I've changed," I replied. It was hard to show the gravity of my words on the internet, where she and I lived, where we had met. I had left for a while to take care of some things. But I couldn't stop there. "... and you've changed too."

"It's not easy," my friend would tell me. One of my offline friends, you know, the kinds of people you meet in real life before you only talk to them on the internet because they move or start dating other real life people and forget about you. "Habits are hard to break, and when you want to go back, you know, it's not like you can just slip right back in." I didn't really understand him, until now. I always thought he was talking about scootilypooping, to be quite honest.

"I don't love you anymore."

It stung, it hurt, I couldn't bear to think it - but it was true. I thought this break would help bring us back, closer together. They said distance made the heart grow fonder, but they forgot to tell you what you'd be fonder of.

I stumbled back, well, not exactly because I was sitting down when she told me. "Your opinions aren't far enough to the left, and you can be a little insensitive. You're living in the past, it's 2016."

It was 2016, heck, it still is. Even in a short time, not even a decade, heck, not even half a decade, we had been apart. My time off the internet had changed me and her. It's easy to think things will always be as they were, like that the time stops when you're not around, like everyone's on pause until you're back on the scene, like NPCs in a video game.

But life doesn't work like that.

I couldn't even recognize what she had done with her room. Heck, I could hardly recognize her. She looked familiar, but yet I felt like I didn't even know who she was. Her justification felt odd, like something had taken ahold of her while I was away, like she had joined a cult or started dating a dude with poor taste. Maybe being removed help me see her for what it was?

I knew the breakup was inevitable, heck, it had already happened, but we were just formalizing the details, like signing off on divorce paperwork.

"That's fine."

That was all I could reply back. I struggled to type the words, to find the diction to accurately convey my feelings. It's the truth, it's all it was. It was fine. Period. Although I wasn't outwardly upset, there was a general malaise that fell over me as I thought back to our earliest days. We used to sit at the table together, we used to have things in common, we used to have mutual friends who we'd shitpost with. Man, you should've been there, just to see us, in our prime.

"I'm seeing someone else," she said. "You wouldn't know him, he's new around here."

"Oh, okay," I replied. I was at a loss for words, in part because, I was lost myself. I had only wandered back here when something reminded me of her. Maybe it's my fault for walking out, but there must've been a reason I left her in the first place, and only now were the pieces coming together, like one of those jigsaw puzzles in Banjo Kazooie. The crystal key to understanding her was all that was missing, but even if I found it, would it work? Was it ever intended to mean anything? I'll have to stop and swop about that.

I tried to think of a way to tell her how I was feeling. It wasn't even about my feelings about her, but rather my feelings about my feelings, about everything, about all I've seen and what I wanted to share, but it seemed like the trading post had closed, and that I had been forgotten.

I never met her new boyfriend, but years later I found out they met up in Cincinnati and he was actually a catfish who told her he liked anime and gender neutral pronouns so he'd get nudes from her. Part of me wants to say it served her right, but at the same time, who is to say that wouldn't happen to me if I was her? She was younger than I was, still a fool. Heck, I'm still one too, come to think of it.

It's weird now reflecting back to the times we shared. It wasn't that long ago, but now, as I look back at all the chat rooms and discussions, what was it all really about? Were we just hiding from our real selves? Were we only projecting what we wanted to project onto each other? Maybe that was something I stopped doing once I split town, I mean, stopped going on the internet as much, but dang, that feeling I once felt for her.

Man, if only you had felt it too. Heck, you probably have.