Finding Grace

"Today's the day," I said wiping the sleep from my eyes.

For the first time in 2 years, I was going to see her. We'd been chatting since we were 14 and had yet to actually meet, even though we only lived 30 minutes away by train. Neither of our parents were very trusting of the internet, and even less friendly towards, well... People like us.

We first met in a chatroom. It was a pretty normal chatroom, just a handful of weirdos in their teens mostly. I only went there out of boredom one day, and so did she. I didn't think I'd ever go back when I first created my account, but then I met her.

Somehow we just immediately clicked. We both were obsessed with anime. We both played Pokemon way more than we should. We both... Liked girls. It was such a relief finding someone else like me. After all those years of hearing how evil and ruinous we were to society, finding someone else who understood absolutely changed my life.

Grace's parents knew about her, unfortunately. They weren't happy when they found "girls kissing" in her search history and got much more strict with her online time. Of course, as her parents grew more strict with her, she grew more clever, outwitting their inexperienced attempts to monitor her on the computer. Ironically, I kind of am grateful to them. If they hadn't been so strict, she might have never found her way into that chat room on the same night.

Over the past two years, we've grown closer and closer. A month after we met, she made the first move.

"Hey, umm..." her DM read, "I think I might sort of kind of have a crush on you."

I remember the surprise and relief I felt. I had been too scared to say anything to her for so long. I knew I liked girls and I knew I liked her, but it felt like a dream that would never be real, it was too perfect.

"OMG I LOVE YOU TOO" I responded faster than I could think. I can only imagine her face when I went flying right past "like" and immediately into "love."

Shortly after that we decided it was probably time to actually send pictures of what we looked like. It seems strange now that we hadn't even seen each other's faces before, but at the same time, it felt like we'd already seen each other's souls, a picture was just a formality.

She was pretty. Like, really pretty. I was so nervous to send my pic back, but she spent just as much time gushing over me as I did over her. I'd say it was love at first sight, but we already were in love. It felt so strange hearing all of these compliments about every part of my face from another girl. It was strange hearing them from anyone actually. My parents always assured me I was a beautiful girl and would have the boys all over me, which always prompted my dad to warn me to stay away from boys until I was much older. The joke's on him, I guess. Yet hearing "your eyes are so pretty" from Grace was so different. It didn't feel like she was just saying something nice, or trying to shape me into some "perfect" version of me. Every word she said felt so pure and heartfelt. She saw me for me, and loved me for me.

After a year of our quiet, secret, online dating, Grace had managed to secretly buy a webcam with money she'd been saving and we got to have our first video chat when both of our parents were out. Hearing her voice along with her beautiful face was so magical, I almost cried, and so did she. Every day we could after that, we would video chat together, always very careful not to get so lost in our talks that we'd miss our parents coming home. There were only a few close calls.

Once my mom came home in the middle of a video chat. I often would use headphones, but at that time I realized that if I let her voice come through the speakers, it might feel more like she was in the same room as me. I had her voice turned up a little loud and didn't hear the car door close outside. My heart skipped several beats when I heard the front door close and my mom yell out towards my room asking who was in there with me. I quickly closed the chat and barely managed to convince mom that it was just a video I was watching and talking along to. I couldn't let her start trying to guess who I might be chatting with online that she didn't know.