When I was in high school I experienced an impactful loss of “someone I didn’t really know”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a player in an online game I played that went by the handle Blythe; a person I looked up to as a level-headed role model. He was older than me, married with a couple of kids, and that’s probably about all I remember of him. He was probably not far from the age I am right now, writing this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think I did a stick figure drawing of his character that I would like to include in this blog post but I can’t find it right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along with Blythe, I was a chat moderator, which put us in some shared circles. Still, I wasn’t close to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was nevertheless earth shattering when I learned that he passed suddenly from an aneurysm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wrote a letter to him, “Dear Blythe” to process his loss. And in the years following, every now and then I would write another “Dear Blythe” as a diary entry of sort. Life updates or things that I needed to angst over. They went into the same notebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I often think about Blythe, in the same way that one thinks about faraway internet “friends” that one has fallen out of touch with. It’s just that in this instance, I know why we fell out of touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I actually wrote my most recent “Dear Blythe” a couple of months ago. It might have been ten years between that and the prior entry. It was a happy one, as I feel like I’m in a most incredible stage of life right now and it felt right to “let him know” after angsting to him in the past! I suspect I will write again to him in the future, but my most recent letter felt like the end of a long chapter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
About three months ago we received our first visit from a cat that we have come to call “The Stranger”. I was in Melbourne at the time but received word from John that our indoor cat had observed and interacted with the Stranger in the window. I got to meet it perhaps a week later, and one day when I was working from home it hung around for quite some time, eventually deciding to use an awkward box of painting supplies to sit in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We allocated it a cat bed instead; we welcomed its intermittent visits and the unpredictability of our relationship perhaps makes it even more endearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don’t know if it’s a stray or if it’s someone else’s cat. A week or two ago we spotted it trotting around with some neighbours, and asked them if it was theirs. “No, it just sleeps in our garden in the afternoon”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps soon we will try tying a message to its neck or bundling it off to the vet to check for a microchip (I didn’t notice any microchip tattoos). For now though, it continues to pop by and use the bed at our front door overnight, sometimes making a point to say hi and sometimes just appearing and disappearing, the only trace being an indent left in the cushion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it doesn’t come for a couple days, our indoor cat starts getting whiny at the window for it, and so do I. “I wonder when the stranger will visit,” we say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last night I said to John, “One day, the Stranger will stop coming and we won’t know why”. The idea made me a little sad, but only a little bit. I told myself that I could handle the comings and goings of life with with acceptance and grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This morning I learned of the passing of Belghast<\/a>, prolific blogger and founder of the Blaugust blogging festival. I first crossed paths with Belghast many years back because he picked the same name for his Blog-fest as we had, around the same time. I believe we first met on Twitter; hashtags and micro-communities linking up in their own ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belghast was another person that I did not interact with much and didn’t know well, but who I saw as a role model and stand-up human being. I had learned of his significant life updates in the past few years, including his cancer diagnosis, but it was still a shock to find out that he’s no longer with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think I will think about Bel often now too – another internet figure that I’ve fallen out of touch with. I am thankful to have closure and to know where his story ended, and I know he will leave behind a tremendous legacy. Still, I have shed many tears through this post – I am as gutted now thinking of Bel as I was for Blythe; all of their warmth and potential cut short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn’t know how to process this news but a blog post seemed most appropriate. Rest well, Bel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was in high school I experienced an impactful loss of “someone I didn’t really know”. There was a player in an online game I played that went by the handle Blythe; a person I looked up to as a level-headed role model. He was older than me, married with a couple of kids, … <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-admin","post-1737","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ale.chenonetta.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ale.chenonetta.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ale.chenonetta.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ale.chenonetta.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ale.chenonetta.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ale.chenonetta.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ale.chenonetta.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ale.chenonetta.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ale.chenonetta.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}