(no subject)

[dolari]

In 2011, I had been in Second Life for five years. I'd spent a lot of time in there, mainly because it was a great way for Emily and I to spend time together despite being thousands of miles apart.

I'd spent a few hours in that world, almost every day, for five years. I had a group of close friends who followed me out of the grid into meat-space. I'd gotten involved with the Second Life Railroad with Emily, I was involved in an informal community planning area in Celerio Sim, where my Nature Preserve Park was.

It got to a point where several of my creations, a river that ran through my property, and a railroad station I'd illegally built on public property became official landmarks. The train station is still there, even though my property isn't. And while the river is gone, the culvert the Lindens built for it is still there.

Shortly before the Great Unpleasantness, I'd really bought into this world. I wasn't someone who was there for the then-legal gambling, or the cheap kinks - I was a Citizen of that world.

Then The Great Unpleasantness happened, and it's ramifications were large and far reaching. And it destroyed my Second Life. With Emily out of my life, suddenly Second Life where we were actually married, became a very painful place to be. In very short order, I took off my ring, sold my house, and property, and disappeared from the grid.

In time my friends stopped going online. My extended family on the grid remained, losing yet another family member to abandonment. Second Life's dalliance with corporations ended, and it's fifteen minutes of fame ran out. I attempted to come back to the grid many many times. But each time, the pain of "This is where Emily and I spent time" and "The Grid is so empty now." For the next four years, I tried to become that citizen again, but instead I felt like a ghost haunting the Grid.

And in 2015 I embraced that. I became that ghost I felt like. And it allowed me to feel the sadness of the empty grid, and the pain of "This was OUR spot." And, in time, that sadness and pain, finally expressed, went away. I came back quite a bit, and reacquainted myself with the grid. I did my longest walkabout - completely traversing the grid from one end to the other. I finished it a few weeks ago - and that's when I realized, I was back.

I now realized what happened to me in-world. After the breakup of her marriage, the loss of her properties and cash flow, all within a VERY short time, Carrie Talaj, Citizen of Second Life, died. After several years in purgatory, her soul was sent back as a phantom, to haunt the grid. And she's okay with that, because in the end, it's a second chance: Carrie Talaj - Phantom of Second Life.