Because I have to share it with the entire community. I recently wrote a personal essay for my creative writing class and it evolved into 'how menewsha changed my life'.

I encourage all who love mene as much as I to read it!

Kudos and much love to Menewsha! I'd marry you if I could!

HeadDesk
(sorry its only google docs rather than me posting it directly here,
but I already had it up there, so...*shrug*)

HeadDesk

Kit-kat. here kitty kitty......flea-bag. KAT-CHAN! I sigh. Can one person really have so many ridiculous nicknames? Not that I mind. Half of them were started by me and I adore all...except maybe fleabag. The interesting thing is, I only had ‘Kat’ and ‘Kitty’ as my nicknames all the way through my senior year of high school. Before my second year of high school I had no name to set me apart from all the other millions of Katherines and Kates and Katies.

I never was a social child. Not in preschool or elementary and not even now in that way most people consider. I have my few friends for sure, but you won’t meet me at a big college party or a mega study group. I’m just not that sort of person. It was always me and my four close friends who stayed together even after the 7 Crazy Writers (an odd bunch we definitely were) broke up. We were close back in high school, always meeting before class to exchange role-play spirals and eat chick-fil-a.

All of the 7 were in the band or colorguard, excepting one, and it drew us together after spending half our lives in the Band Hall together. Our one true bond was writing though. We liked the notebooks we shared and wrote in together, adding doodles to the margins of our characters and anything else. It was tactile and fun to always have ten spirals in our possession.

Things became difficult after we graduated though. One of our group was a year younger and connections faded away. Another got into a fight with my best friend and they never made up. My bond with her, the girl not from band, was severed. Two friends roomed together in Baylor, and the other two roomed together at Sam Houston. They kept a connection to each other, but I went off to St. Edward’s in Austin--alone. Email and IM became the only connection I had with old friends.

Now me, I tried for a year. Believe me, I really did, but I couldn’t make any new friends in college. Maybe I was too weird or too shy, or I’m just not that sort of person. I may be a loner, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely. So what do I do? I turn to the internet of course. Email twenty times a day, one hour instant messaging, maybe I’ll try Skype next? Nope, still bored. Oh, but those dress up doll games are fun. I feel like a dork, but I loved paper dolls as a kid and this is just the digital version. I suppose I should join an avatar site and just make dolls.

I resisted the idea for some weeks. There are a lot of avatar sites out there and I wasn’t sure which to join. Some of my friends were on Gaia in high school, always saying how amazing it was, but I resisted joining back then and was stubborn enough to keep resisting. I felt apprehensive, like I do when I stand in the doorway to a crowded room. Usually I run away in those situations, but with the internet creating millions of miles between me and any other human being, I can enter a crowded room/forum. One site drew me in, at first for the nice design of the site. So Menewsha invaded my life. I don’t know why I picked that site. I suppose the name seemed a bit familiar, though I still can’t figure out why.

It didn’t take long before I was more concerned with chatting than my avatar’s clothes. You need gold to buy clothes and a naked avatar isn’t all that cool. I could get gold with the games, but I was lonely so it only made sense to start posting around. A comment about a book here, or an anime there. Not really making friends, just sharing my opinion. I missed role playing with my friends and started some online, making my first friend with the person I wrote with.

Most avatar forums have events and barely a month after I joined, one burst up and dragged me along in its current. Celes Paradi, Greek themed summery goodness and suddenly I was making friends. I can’t even remember how it started, but when the event was over, I became a regular in GrannyJ’s Tea Room.

It started slow at first, but the obsession took over, and like any good obsession, my life changed. A simple website changed the course of my life and I’m sure you think it’s a lie, but it did. Once I started posting more than twice a day, I realized none of my social phobia impeded my crusades to collect friends when I’m online. No matter if I’ve never met anyone I talk to, I undeniably call them my friends. Because the internet is all encompassing. Because the internet holds billions of data points and people all at once. Because:

10-22-2010 08:18 PM
"you can talk to your friends anywere!! >.< i can talk you to you more :drool:"
- Krazy Kiara:

I started posting for hours every day in many threads until the pale blue borders of the site brought more comfort to me after a long day of class than flopping on my bed did. My thoughts while walking back to my dorm were filled with what I was going to tell my new friends and what unique new greeting I would use that day. I had long since gotten bored with the entrance ‘hello’ or ‘good morning!’. That dramatic, uninhibited, utterly creative side that previously only the 7 Crazy Writers knew, had found a new outlet.

I wanted to share it, this love I had become obsessed with. I had to be persistent and beg and whine for a month, but I got my best friend to join a few months after I had. She was a Gaian, but admitted that the forum had fallen into ruin. After I got her to join, we both delved deeper into this cyber world together. I now had my new friends and the old in one place. My poor lonely heart just about burst with the explosion of friendship. Eventually the five of the seven still friends were all on the site. It was a warm welcome.

09-12-2010, 01:10 PM
"Hey Kat. So you are one of Squeaky's friends that asked her to come here? She has quite good taste in friends, then."
- Silenia

haha, yep Silenia. I pestered squeaky so much she had no choice but to join.

Half way through my second year of college, my online social life was blooming, while my life at school was withering. I wasn’t satisfied being an art major at a school that doesn’t care much for its artists. I sat in my dorm room with the lights off, only my computer screen lighting my bed as I typed. There’s a safe feeling to the darkness broken only by the screen’s light in my alcove the bed in the corner of my room makes. Slowly, fingers plowed across the keyboard as I typed out a message on my still favorite website.

10-19-2010, 3:09 AM
"Hey Terrena, you go to art school right. are you the one in Savannah? I know someone I know goes there!"
- me

I’ve been considering an art school a while, but decline telling my parents until I’m sure and have an idea of where I want to go. I know there’s no good school in Texas and have two places in mind that I’ve heard good about. I figure its either a school in Santa Fe or Savannah I’ll be going to. I’ve been to both cities and like them--they have culture. The schools are similar, but I only have what the websites tell me to go by. But there’s always the all encompassing internet and the knowledge of friends.

10-19-2010, 3:09 AM
".....Where? I’m in Virginia, silly kitty."
- TerrenaAnimula

So my memory was a bit off. I could still talk to her about art, though I needed to make a decision. If I couldn’t remember who I knew at that Savannah school, I could make up my mind. A week later and a few more talks with friends, I was chatting with Terrena again.

10-25-2010, 1:19 PM
"I’m gonna go to santa fe. It’d be cool if I went somewhere I knew someone though. Thankie for talkin with me bout it!"
- me

I think I hang out with too many art weirdos around here. I decided to go to an art school because I hang out with art weirdos? I always did before, but there’s something about the internet that’s perhaps a bit too open. No one hesitates to spill their guts full of candy-induced insanity all over the screen.

11-07-2011, 06:24 PM
"CANDY GODS! I love you! *snuggles up to the candy gods*"
- TerrenaAnimula


11-07-2011, 06:38 PM
"~candy gods do not take pity on you. try again in five minutes~"
- me

Pure candy-induced insanity. And I fit right in. Like never before in life, I have groupies that understand my social phobias and the joys of chatting with people in Australia, next door, and....a cookie jar?

Pre-Menewsha friends and online ones, we’re an odd bunch. A strikingly similar odd bunch, only times a hundred with more friends and threads than the spirals I used to carry. And a more social me. I’m not the person posting twice a day, rather I’m participating in a congratulatory thread for having passed up the site’s top poster. No one can hope to climb to the top of the hill of posts I now rest on. I’m social enough that it has spilled over from online. I have college friends now and intend to meet some online friends. But it’s online that feels like family. Can I call GrannyJ ‘Grammy’, Cicadetta and Llonka my moms, and Zeapear my little sister? With all the mother-henning I receive and a group of younger tag-alongs and occasional mini-me’s around, what better family could there be?

Like a real family, I trust these people and let them influence my real-world choices, like with transferring to SFUAD. If I have a question, I ask them. I have my own Study (avoidance) Lounge. It was once a plain old study lounge, but everyone just used it to complain about and avoid doing homework so I changed the name. Even so, if I don’t know what to write an essay about, I can just ask the other flailing, stressed-out college students lurking behind the couches and candy bowls there.

11-08-2011, 03:59 PM
"I need to write a memoir/personal essay today. what should I write about?"
- me


11-08-2011, 04:00 PM
"About your time with your online friends at Menewsha and having 75k posts. XD
Honestly though...I really don't know. :/"
- TerrenaAnimula

So I’m sitting here backwards in my chair at my desk staring at the screen because what an idea that is. Not exactly normal and a bit like me. Fairywaif is telling me to write about a wacky vacation, but this...this is something else. Smells like a challenge.

11-08-2011, 04:04 PM
"I think I really will write about mene. its my life after all. it changed me!!!"
- me

Because it did.


11-08-2011, 04:35 PM
"You should put the 'headdesk' thing in there! And maybe the 'magical forest' too? But at leas the 'headdesk'! XD"
- TerrenaAnimula

I’m not a real social person. Not really anyway. I spend twenty hours a day on the internet, but I have truer friends than most people who speak verbal words do. If my real family doesn’t understand, I don’t mind. I found a place of belonging, that I understand. Sometimes people need a place that isn’t like the normal world. No, not even close. We all need our own personal insanity ward to go home to. One website, three years, 67 friends, and 75,180 posts later--Kat is a social person. And remember....

11-07-2011, 07:16 PM
"Everything deserves a headdesk."
- TerrenaAnimula


11-07-2011, 07:18 PM
"*giggles* I want a shirt that says that!"
- me

Published by Google Docs–Report Abuse–Updated automatically every 5 minutes

I love this. It shows all your quirks and enthusiasm. If I didn't already love Mene this story would have definitely drawn me in to take a try at it.

I'm glad to hear Mene helped draw you out of your shell and that you have so many friends now. Every one deserves that ... except serial killers and stuff ... ;)

I don't know if I was paying attention right nor not, but, did you end up changing schools or majors or both? I kinda got confused. Sorry, I'm on the verge of falling out of my chair asleep and that probably has a lot to do with that.

I just changed schools actually. thanks for your response.
and serial killers need friends too! :illgetu:

I'd be concerned serial killers would just forget themselves and accidentally kill their friends.

I'm glad you stuck with your major.

do you mind that I posted your story here? is the way I posted it okay?

nah, in many cases the life of the killer and the life he/she portrays to the world are separate....or I read too many articles online and watch Criminal Minds...

it's fine. It's nice that it's posted right in the thread. I was just too lazy to do it myself.

I tend to be kinda OCD about some stuff, that's why I reposted it for you.

see, I thought killers were like loners. you know, the ones where all the neighbors always say, "he was such a polite man, very quiet, never would have suspected a thing."

I haven't read any articles or watch Criminal Minds. maybe I should ;)

there are serial killers of all types! some wouldn't be loners because they lure in their victims with charm. And I find myself strange for knowing these things.

nah, some topics are just too fascinating to not want to learn more about them!

so true. I was the girl with cute curly pigtails sitting in the airport reading up on Son of Sam thanksgiving break. I like to be unexpected.

once I tried reading about the Green River killer and who they thought did it (which I totally don't agree with, unless he were to stand in front of me and bald faced admit it) while babysitting for a toddler. the parents found my reading selection ... interesting when they got home :lol:

haha, they saw what you were reading? that must be a great story!

OMG i love this.... It made me wanna cry... I was on gaia when i was in high school and it did kinda get in between me and my real life but it wasn't the site that did that... I really know what you mean about Menewsha... its different and i love it here... I know i am still kinda new to it but i think i will be on Menewsha for a while because the people here are amazing and this story made me realize that i have more online friends than i do in real like ... maybe thats why i am always so bored and lonely because i don't have anyone close to go out with when i am really in the mood to be away. but i love being here and having very deep conversation with my friends....

menewsha is the best. I've been on other sites, but only mene can be home for me. I'm so glad other people think the same way.