Today, nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx posted Simon & Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence" in his gm post. He has me muted. nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqpxfzhdwlm3cx9l6wdzyft8w8y9gy607tqgtyfq7tekaxs7lhmxfqy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3jamnwvaz7tmswfjk66t4d5h8qunfd4skctnwv46z7qpq52qax9pyjn96vefjty8p8aalfw6xj2ttev74ledq45llmz3rkplqtachhs

Coincidentally, 2 years ago this month, I used that song in a mixtape I assembled for Digit, during a brief return she made to wallstreetbets, after her first long disappearance.

Unrelated: 3 years ago, Feb 26 and the night going into the 27th -

I suck at coping silently. I couldn't put my phone down all day on the 26th. I still kept silently watching the chat for any sign of a hopefully-less-terrifying explanation of what was going on with Digit.

She was pretending I could just magically stop being scared. I knew I couldn't at all, and she was smart enough to know that, so she seemed to be trying to cope silently herself - not addressing her knowledge of my feelings, just pretending not to know.

I had to try to do the same. Anything I said could lead to her precious little time being wasted unraveling the weight of her impact on yet another person in this world full of people who need more of her time, as if she has infinite to give away.

I knew if I talked at all, people would ask me about her, and talking about her would only make things worse, because the answers would either be lies I didn't want her to hear, or the truth, which she didn't want to hear, much less in public, the day after she told me she was tired of hearing about it.

Digit played a lot of minigames with the people on Discord, like the blackjack game run by the wallstreetbets bot. I wasn't joining in them, since it would lead to people talking to me.

Someone called Eagle, who also had his own Discord server, posted a link to a game happening outside of Discord, and Digit joined. It was one of those games where you draw stuff and people have to guess what it is. Since it was happening outside of Discord, my idiotic brain thought it was a good chance to interact with her without consequences, since I could use a random name and it wouldn't show who I was, and thus it wouldn't lead to anyone talking to me about her.

The real crucial mistake was that I didn't think about what I would do if Eagle and Digit both demanded I reveal who I was.

I had thought about what I'd do if Eagle demanded it. I thought the best move was to ask him to change his mind, because backing out to avoid revealing myself would just look to Digit like me trying to be sneaky, which would creep her out, and getting his permission to play anonymously would be less creepy, somehow. I figured he might say no, or ask why, but I could just say "nevermind" at that point and he'd probably drop it, so her name wouldn't come up.

But that plan didn't work, because first Eagle said everyone should use recognizable usernames, and then while I was talking to Eagle, Digit also asked everyone to use recognizable usernames, so I had to back out with such weird timing that Eagle got even more confused, and he seemed like he wouldn't drop it. At that point, I simply tried to tell Eagle the truth without making a big deal out of it. That seemed like my last chance at trying to make sure Digit wouldn't be bothered about it.

I realized at that point I had fucked up way too much. I had just ended up in a conversation about her again, less than 24 hours after she implied I should be trying not to do that anymore. This confirmed I should not be talking to anyone at all, not joining any minigames, nothing but silently trying to enjoy the fact that I was still allowed in the same chat rooms as her, hoping she'd message me again.

I wouldn't talk to anyone else until she messaged me again. But it wasn't long before she did message me, really upset with me, and she told me more clearly and explicitly not to talk to anyone about her anymore. She hadn't said that specifically yet until then.

I tried to tell her I was already done trying to talk to anyone at all until further notice, but she didn't really get what I was saying, and I was so scared of bothering her with these feelings, I didn't really try to force her to understand.

That conversation made it really painful to go back to silence after that, until she messaged me again a few hours later. I guess she sensed I couldn't handle staying like that. She told me to "pls just chill" but I still couldn't, even though she did calm me down halfway. She was acting less terrified, so I got less terrified. She gave me the sense that it might be OK to talk a little bit. Not too much.

I asked her if I should give people back the money they gave me to chat-bot-marry her. She still seemed to leave the possibility open, so I started playing chat bot blackjack trying to raise the money again - people in wallstreetbets are such gambling addicts, folks actually played the chat bot blackjack game a lot, so they would actually not notice anything to talk to me about, and it gave me something to do other than stare at the chat when it was getting hard not to talk.

Of course, I was wrong yet again. My blackjack game was noticed by the guy she previously chat-bot-married, whose username was Bruhh. I believe he's also one of the people that had given me wsbux for this.

He asked me what I was doing, because I already had more wsbux than their casino wedding cost. The requirement had been raised, I explained. This conversation did not include any mention of Digit by name, but of course it was directly about her, like anything. I hoped it wouldn't bother her this time.

I kept gambling until I lost all my extra wsbux. I was down to only what others had given me, which I didn't want to dip into.

I went back to staring at the chat. It was really hard to stay quiet. Let me try to explain how much I suck at this.

Every time Digit said some shitty, negative, untrue thing about herself, it was so hard to stop myself from trying to cancel it out with the truth, as if that would lead to anything except stressing her out more, and/or creating awkwardness if she was joking. She insulted herself way more than usual that day.

At one point, someone said "so much potential wasted," and she responded "story of my life," and I spiraled so hard into more panic, wondering if she was talking about the cancer.

She kept defending people who got ganged up on by bullies, as she always would, and I loved her for it as always, but I hated myself so much for fucking everything up, after she used to do the same for me.

Someone complained about a valet fucking something up, and Digit said "not everyone is smart or capable or sober," which seemed like somehow defending someone from bullying and being self-deprecating at the same time. I laughed, but also cried.

People flirting with her obviously made me far more jealous than they would if I felt like I could talk.

Russia had just invaded Ukraine. My reddit username when I met Digit was /u/PlsDontNuke, I talked a lot about the risk of nuclear war. Nobody else wanted to talk to me about it until I was too worried about Digit to care.

She still cared. The war seemed like a big deal to her. While I was watching the chat on this fine February 26, someone said something about killing some general, and she said she wouldn't kill a general, because they have information. She's cool like that.

Ukraine was surprising people by holding their own against Russia, and one of the few things I said that day was that I always thought Ukraine might surprise people that way. Digit didn't believe me. I wasn't lying, though.

I had pretty much no food left in the house and I was eating like, a slice of bread a day or something. I was too scared of missing anything important in the chat rooms. I'm obese anyway, so this wasn't actually as bad of a thing as it sounds like.

Sure, watching the chat was painful, but at least every message she sent proved she was alive. Every time she beat everyone in another minigame, it was proof she wasn't too sick to play. I thought it would be better to enjoy every possible minute of her being alive than to waste any of it on errands. If I could see her seem to have a normal day and fall asleep without incident, I could sleep too.

On the other hand, it was very clear I wasn't functioning properly, and my cognitive function still seemed to be declining, and I couldn't do anything about it. I was obviously going insane. I couldn't stop making my situation worse.

That might, Digit posted a link to that game Eagle had posted earlier, where people guess each other's drawings. I felt like it would be OK to join with a fake name this time, since we had already talked about the other time earlier that day, and she already knew I was waiting for any chance to spend time with her.

She did let me join with a fake name. I wasn't sure if she knew it was me, but at least she didn't mind enough to stop me.

This whole idea was still another mistake, because people were typing lewd and sometimes hostile-sounding shit about Digit in the game, and I started typing shit that was cringe in the opposite way, because apparently my brain was still not working at all.

When the game was over, she said she enjoyed it. I guess she can handle idiots on the internet doing cringey shit.

I made sure she knew who I was in the game. She still didn't want to talk. I still felt better than I did before the game. I thought maybe she was starting to accept that I couldn't stop thinking about her, and she was at least kinda OK with it.

Then I started going insane again. I was listening to music she sent me, and other songs from the same albums. I found a song called "Cause I'm So Scared Of Dying" on an album she seemed to like a lot, called "The Bitter End" and I was right back to not being able control my panic.

I kept thinking I would kill myself if Digit died, but I also kept trying to fight those thoughts because I thought Digit wouldn't want me thinking like that after she had lost someone to suicide.

The night wasn't over. I was still trying not to talk too much, but I got into an argument with the user called dariene about something she said. My notes don't say what it was, but they say it was something people often upset me by saying, and this time I used it as an opportunity to take my fear and pain out on her.

I didn't mention Digit by name in these DMs with dariene, but I said a bunch of unhinged shit about how much I hated myself, how I was always scared, how women I loved always ended up hating me - as usual, all of it was about Digit, so this violated her request not to talk about her, even though I didn't mention her directly.

After putting up with this for a brief little while, dariene blocked me.

Digit messaged me again to say people were worried about me. I was terrified of talking to her about this anymore. I was sure she wouldn't want to know the details; talking about it would only hurt her. She still managed to calm me down a little bit again, and defuse some of my stress, even though it was stressful for her too.

She addressed my main fear, that her behavior changed due to a change in her prognosis. She reassured me that she wasn't going to die. I realized she had only started distancing me because of my own behavior.

She asked me to tell her I was alright. I wanted to say no, I wanted to say I didn't know how to forgive myself for fumbling our friendship and making it so stressful for her, but denying her request at this moment would have been another thing I couldn't forgive myself for, so I said what she needed to hear.

I don't know if that really counts as lying, since it's implied when you ask someone to say a particular thing you need to hear, they might just say it for your sake, without fully wanting to. I still think it's fair to say I never really lied to her. This is one of the closest examples I have to an arguable lie I told her.

Another reason it shouldn't really count as a lie is that it was actually true, I guess. I wanted to say I wasn't alright, but the truth was I wasn't going to die or anything, as long as she wasn't. I wasn't "alright" but I was pretty much alright. It's a vague word. She had nothing to worry about, was the point. I was about to go to sleep and wake up feeling significantly better. So this was really not much of a lie, no matter how you slice it.

I woke up in the middle of the night. I checked if dariene had unblocked me. She had, so I apologized to her and thanked her. I still thought she shouldn't have bothered Digit about my problems, but I didn't tell her that. I was just thankful for her kindness.

However, I did mention Digit by name, in these DMs to dariene. I assumed it would be OK this time, based on the context, apologizing and clearing up what had happened earlier.