I am the friend of all, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat,
I loosen myself, pass freely, persuader always of people to give him their sweetest touches,
I want to meet every man, worst man or best man, with the open hand.
Walt WhitmanBack in 2018, I used to spend a lot of time on a particular website: penpalworld.com — A website that lets you meet new people online in an old-fashioned pen-pal manner. On the website, users could create profiles with one profile picture, and you could message other users if you pleased. At the time, you could send only 3 messages per day if you weren’t a premium member. However, you could email them if they included any in their description section, which was pretty handy.
That was when I first started using my English and was getting into learning French. During my summer break, I’d dedicatedly log in to that website, wear my ridiculously large headset, put on some music, and meet people from all around the globe from afternoon till dawn because of the time difference between Turkey and the US. It was a fascinating experience for me to meet people from different countries and backgrounds — I was in 8th grade after all.
I still have some fantastic friends (especially you, Sara, if you’re reading this by any chance) from Italy, Iran, Estonia, and Vietnam that we still keep in touch with. Additionally, I made it a habit to jot down any new words or phrases I learned from chatting with native speakers, taking the time to think and proofread my emails before replying to messages, which helped me a lot in learning both English and French and was an incredible factor in sparking my everlasting interest in world languages and linguistics.
One of these days, around Ramadan, I received a message from a particular member of the website from the States: Mychaela. Her message was notably formal, composed as if it were a snail-mail. It mentioned her interest and included a picture of her dog, if my memory is not fooling me. We quickly began exchanging daily emails for about a month, and I asked for her phone number in hopes of catching up on WhatsApp for convenience’s sake, to which she replied that she just got a smartphone and did not use any social media applications, much to my surprise.
Once she had set up a WhatsApp account, we started conversing almost daily, and it seemed like we enjoyed each other’s company — at least I know for a fact that I did. We’d talk about all sorts of things, and I learned a lot from her. She was a huge Daryl Hall & John Oates fan, she liked old music, and she was a very intellectual person.
One day, I asked Mychaela if she believed in extra-terrestrial life (I was bored), and she replied, “Do you mean angels?” I never thought anyone could think of angels when asked this question. I replied, ‘I mean UFOs and stuff, but why angels?’ She mentioned that she was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses before; however, I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time and overlooked it. (Now, years later, I know how big and controlling of a cult the JW is.)
Anyway, she wrote me an in-depth text about angels, and I was fascinated. That was the message that sparked my interest in theology. I spent days researching about angels and their significance in many different belief systems, then read the Torah, the Bible, and the Qur’an along with some of the Vedas.
She liked writing a blog, and I was a character in there. She used an alias for me, which sadly, I can’t remember.
When I started high school as a freshman, I tried sending a message to her about how my day went, but it didn’t send. I tried emailing her, with no success. It was as if she just vanished. I attempted to reconnect again when I started university, once more as a freshman, but this time I received an email from Gmail stating that the address I was trying to reach was no longer in service. Sadly, I couldn’t log in to the website that had initially brought us together anymore. A problem arose regarding setting an age limit for people who could view my profile—there were just too many creeps out there. Now, having surpassed that age limit, I find myself unable to access my own profile. And that’s how we lost contact for good.
Today was a pleasant day without much happening. We recorded an episode for the podcast of our Linguistics community, a friend of mine brought me some food that he cooked and after having a good meal, I was smoking a cigarette in front of my dormitory at my usual spot, listening to Cheryl Crow’s song “Maybe Angels”. Something about the song reminded me of Mychaela for some reason. When I tried checking her full name on Google, the only result I got was a mugshot from a county jail. It’s been so long (and because we usually texted without sending pictures or anything), I hardly remember her face, but I sure hope whatever happened to her was good.
It’s interesting how some small things can change people’s lives to varying degrees. I have no idea whether I’d be as interested in theology or listen to as much of Daryl Hall & John Oates as I do now if it wasn’t for Mychaela. In the end, we are very prone to take people we know for granted. Friendships come and go but we all affect each other in some ways, hopefully for the better. I hope all my good friends would also think the same about me someday.
30.03.24
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