StumblingPoet
New Here
Hi, all.
I hope you are well. I joined a little while ago, then panicked and asked them to put my account into hibernation. After all that, I think I need to be here.
I am currently dealing with the fallout from a bizarre online friendship that consumed eight years of my life. I supported an online friend through an eating disorder for three years, which ultimately claimed their life. That threw me for a loop, and I grieved for five years.
Following her death, her family sent eight emails full of photographs and YouTube videos that they claimed were her. The descriptions on the YouTube videos didn't match up, so I Googled the photos, only to discover that they could be found on other websites that were nothing to do with the people I was supposedly in contact with.
My friend's fiancé, her mother in law, and my friend herself all passed away within a few years of one another, supposedly...but I can't find a single death notice for any one of these three people.
Slowly realising that I've been duped, rather elaborately. Each time something happened with my friend's health, I would receive in depth emails full of medical information that I had never asked for, and was ill equipped to deal with - given that I was grieving the very real loss of another friend at the time. These medical emails, up to and including a detailed account of the non-existent friend's death, are fodder for intense flashbacks which dominate my nights. No sooner do I lie down to rest, than I am back in a bathroom in the United States.
Apart from the electronic exclusion, the DSM diagnostic criteria are a checklist of my day to day experience. Now have very good help in dealing with this, but wanted to find some people who might understand.
I hope you are well. I joined a little while ago, then panicked and asked them to put my account into hibernation. After all that, I think I need to be here.
I am currently dealing with the fallout from a bizarre online friendship that consumed eight years of my life. I supported an online friend through an eating disorder for three years, which ultimately claimed their life. That threw me for a loop, and I grieved for five years.
Following her death, her family sent eight emails full of photographs and YouTube videos that they claimed were her. The descriptions on the YouTube videos didn't match up, so I Googled the photos, only to discover that they could be found on other websites that were nothing to do with the people I was supposedly in contact with.
My friend's fiancé, her mother in law, and my friend herself all passed away within a few years of one another, supposedly...but I can't find a single death notice for any one of these three people.
Slowly realising that I've been duped, rather elaborately. Each time something happened with my friend's health, I would receive in depth emails full of medical information that I had never asked for, and was ill equipped to deal with - given that I was grieving the very real loss of another friend at the time. These medical emails, up to and including a detailed account of the non-existent friend's death, are fodder for intense flashbacks which dominate my nights. No sooner do I lie down to rest, than I am back in a bathroom in the United States.
Apart from the electronic exclusion, the DSM diagnostic criteria are a checklist of my day to day experience. Now have very good help in dealing with this, but wanted to find some people who might understand.