I was playing a game, one I didn’t think would cause much pain. I went AFK for a while…just a few days. I wanted to see who would miss me. Quite honestly – I didn’t think anyone would notice I was gone. I kind of just expect to fly under the radar. I’m used to it.
I broke my fast and decided to check on things – and it turns out, people did miss me. And they were concerned they hadn’t heard from me. Which made me feel awful.
I almost decided not to respond and let them know I was alright. I wanted to see how far they’d go to check on me, but then I was reminded of just the other week when I didn’t get a response to a few messages I had sent. And last year when a friend of mine had disappeared off the face of the earth for a couple of weeks (turns out he was in a hurricane, but that’s besides the point). And I remember how scared I felt, wondering how they were doing and why they couldn’t answer me.
I forget sometimes that people actually do care about me. That I’m not just someone that kind of hangs around and if I disappear, they’ll notice. They did notice. And it made me feel so GOOD to know that they cared, and so bad to know that I put them through unnecessary stress. I should have, and could have, told them that I was going offline for a while, but I didn’t, because I didn’t think it would matter.
The fact that they care, that they want to know how I’m doing and if I’m alright – it warms my soul.
I guess the guilty part of this is that I also wanted them to worry. I wanted them to fret and wonder if I was okay. Knowing that someone worries about you is such a…grand feeling. But like I said – then I remembered how I felt those times when I couldn’t hear back from them, and then I feel like the worst person in the world for wanting them to “suffer”, even if it was just for a few days.

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