I remember the first person I talked to on Elftown. It must have been somewhere around June 2004. I was here under another identity then. With my almost 40 years of age, I was considered ‘old’ then by most other Elftowners. I’m older now... ^__^

She was an average American teenager, I don’t remember exactly how old she was, perhaps 16 or 17. I don’t know which state she was from. There’s no way to tell anyhow, she could have easily made up a fake identity. Like mine is fake too, the one I’m using now, I mean. At that time, my identity wasn’t fake. At that time I didn’t have any reason for telling lies about myself. I guess I have no reason to lie about my identity now either, I have nothing to hide finally. But anyways.

This girl, perhaps she wasn’t so average after all. She seemed to belong to some subculture, perhaps she was Gothic, I’m not an expert on subcultures that exist these days. Things have changed since I was a teenager. Or perhaps things haven’t changed at all. Perhaps only the names of subcultures are different now. But the adolescents don’t seem to be different from the adolescents I remember from my adolescent years. Or from the adolescent that I used to be. The adolescent that still seems to exist somewhere deep inside me.
She was rude. Excessively rude sometimes. What had gotten into me? How on earth could I have thought that Elftown was a place for old people? She used the F-word a lot. She was aggressively defensive. But her rude behaviour and rude language didn’t bother me in the least, because even at my age I could so easily identify with her. She was so very, very vulnerable. And this is something I remembered from my own youth: if society doesn’t understand you at all, if society tries to manipulate you, if society represents the ‘authority’ and wants to control you, and tell you what to do, what to think, what to feel, while you only feel this strong urge to get out of its claws, to break free, to find your own way, to be free, to be loved, understood, appreciated...if society is full of prejudice and doesn’t even try to understand or get to know the person that is really inside this rude and rebellious teenager...then what other option do you have as a teenager or adolescent than to be rude and rebellious and rejective and aggressive? It’s the only defense strategy that you have.

Within a very short period of time, I grew very attached to this girl. She probably hasn’t even told me her real name, but I cared so much about her. She reminded me of myself, and of my own teenage daughter – who is now a young woman. I’ve felt a great need to protect this girl, to love her, unconditionally, and to offer her some shelter, to offer her a little security in the tough and uncertain period of her life that she was living. I’ve wanted to tell her: “You are perfect. You are unique and just perfect the way you are, and don’t let anyone make you believe that you are not. Life is there, right before you, so step into it, chin up, because you can.”
Our contact was just a brief interaction, it didn’t last long. But long enough for her to give me her confidence. Long enough for me to grow attached to her. For telling her that she was beautiful, beautifully unpolished, a rough diamond, like all teenagers and adolescents. And the interaction was long enough for her to tell me that I was ‘okay, even though I was old’... Girl, if only you knew how much your words meant to me, and still mean to me. It was perhaps the biggest compliment I ever received.
Whatever direction she has chosen, whatever she has done in her life since June 2004, I hope she has found her way, her own way, and I hope that she’s very happy.

It's true that you may be deceived when you trust too much. But you'll live in agony if you don't trust enough. Distrust is expensive; if you have no confidence, and can't recognize something that's truly good, you'll lose it sooner or later. Think twice, before you accidentally kick away the gems that lie on the path at your feet: your mistakes might well be your own mistakes, instead of someone else's.