I Miss My Online Friend
Hi. I feel weird and a bit pathetic even writing this out right now. But, I really, REALLY miss my friend that I met on Discord last year. He lives in New Zealand in Wellington. I live in America in the northeast area. We are 9,000+ miles away from each other which is just absolutely insane to me to even think about. Yet, here we all are with technology in our hands (smart phones) that allows us to communicate with people all around the world INSTANTLY. It really is fascinating to think about. Anyway, I think I’m experiencing severe separation anxiety maybe? Last May of 2025, we became really good and close friends very quickly because of how similar we were ie humor, life experiences, politics, ethics, favorite foods, our taste in women, personality types, etc. We would often joke and say that we are basically the same person just separated by a metric frick ton of water. We bonded right off the bat and became the goofiest duo on the Discord server we met on. We would hang out literally every day and spend hours on end talking to each other about a plethora of subjects and we would almost always be laughing our asses off at the jokes we would make and the impressions of people we’d do that we found silly like Donald Trump, Borris Johnson, Alex Jones etc. So, so many good memories we made in such a short amount of time. I have a lot of health issues IRL, physically and mentally, which often makes everyday life difficult for me and I’m extremely prone to severe depression and anxiety as a result. I’ve also been through so much loss over the years regarding family members and friends. He was the one person I met online who, when I would be hanging out with him in our voice chats (along with others who would join us sometimes), would make me feel so much better and help me almost completely forget about all the problems I had and the terrible, nasty ways they make me feel. My laughs were genuine and my heart seemed to weigh lighter. He became my best friend, essentially. He abruptly left Discord around the middle or end of November 2025 and then popped back up again roughly 5 months later on the 30th of April of this year, just two weeks ago. I missed him so much when that happened. The sudden nature of it hurt a lot too. As I said, he came back around two weeks ago and I was absolutely ECSTATIC to see him again. It felt like I was finally rejoined again to my other half—just not romantically lol.. more in a friendship and brotherhood sense. We went straight back into talking like we always did before and hanging out every day again without skipping a single beat. Life got a little bit easier again. Then, just the other day, while I was sleeping (different time zones as he’s 16 hours ahead of me), he messaged me on Discord and said he was going to dip out for a few months and to take care of myself. That was it. I didn’t have the opportunity to respond in time and ask him if he had WhatsApp or any other means of staying connected with me. Hell, I would’ve paid the extra $15 a month on my phone bill just to add international calling if it meant I could keep in touch with and hear from basically my only real friend in the whole world… But, just like that, he was gone again. I haven’t heard from him since. I’m beyond depressed about it and I’ve been having a lot of really bad anxiety symptoms too. It’s even worse this time than the last time he left Discord. I feel all alone and completely isolated all over again. I feel like a lost puppy that’s been separated from his litter. I just feel so.. low.. and crushingly lonely now. I miss him this much already, so I can’t imagine what the coming days, weeks, months etc are going to be like… it sucks. It just flat out fricking sucks. I don’t like this lonesome pit in my stomach all the time feeling. It’s so intense. My mind has been teeter-tottering in and out of some pretty dark places since I got that message from him the other day…
Is this normal? I don’t really have friends IRL, especially not to the extent that me and him were/are. So, apps like Discord are where I do the vast majority of my socializing and all that sort of stuff. And even on there, I don’t have what I would consider “friends” or just people I talk to regularly every day. He was always the one exception.
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I thought myself to be pretty pathetic writing this out and now venting about how all of this is making me feel. I just don’t know if this is normal or not. Have any of you ever had similar experiences with people you became really good friends with online and then one day they just suddenly up and vanished from your life? How did it make you feel? What did you do to cope? Were you ever able to reach out and connect with them ever again?
I find myself Googling things like how many miles away is Wellington, New Zealand from where I live, or looking up and watching YouTube videos of people visiting there so I can vicariously learn about where he lives through them. I don’t know why I’m doing things like that. I think it’s fairly strange behavior and I’m the one doing it. I just feel so out of place now that I’m by myself again. Because of how chaotic and restless both the world and my life is and has been for so long now, I guess he helped provide a more stable foundation for me to stand on, if that makes any sense… I don’t know.
Thanks for reading this if you did and thank you for taking the time to respond and share any experiences or advice if you do…
Be well and be safe out there, everyone. I genuinely hope you’re all in a good place in life and that all of your dreams come true…