On friendship and growth

The emotions of childhood never go away, I think, they remain with us in later life. And when we are again in a situation that we experienced as a child, the same feelings leap out at us with the full strength that they had then.

I was ten years old last night, watching my best SL friend meeting her friends and hearing of things they had done together without me. I felt jealous and envious and lonely. I felt that she had grown and moved on in SL in a way that I have not, and that she is moving away from me.

The oddest part is this: a mutual friend turned up, who also knew the others, and I felt the same sense of being — what? "excluded" is not quite right. But I realized that it was nonsense: She had been introduced to them at some stage, just as I was now being introduced to them. It is open to me to make them my friends too, as it was for her after she first met them.

I wonder whether I am using my few good friends in SL as I have used their equally few RL equivalents: as a shield for my emotions, to avoid the risk of forming other attachments?