Love Tuesdays: Trinity Dechou

Some of the most amazing people I met in SL, I met by pure chance. Here is the story of my SL sister Trinity Dechou.

I don't know if rezzed.net, founded by SL entrepreneur Luc Aubret, ever was a success for him, or at least broke even. It started with the aim to become a social network for SL avatars, just like Facebook or Myspace or LinkedIn are in the atomic world. Having read a report about it somewhere I signed up, created my profile, and checked who else was there. To be honest, not a lot of people I knew where there, but the site also showed recent signups and there was that matrix like chick who even called herself Trinity. She was as new as I was, probably found rezzed.net the same way I did, so I commented with a "Welcome" on her profile, and she commented back. That was in early 2008.

I can't recall anymore how it happened, but we pretty soon established a close communication, meeting a lot of time in-world as she was kind of lonely while her girlfriend attended classes. We "clicked" well and - while being fundamentally different on many things - we had a lot of common views as well and a similar background. Almost from the beginning our conversations left SL and I felt secure talking about my RL with her, and she in turn had the same trust in me.

Then came the day when my SL partner Gina Glimmer was forced to leave SL by her RL partner. The whole process took 3 hours from her breaking the news to me until she said goodbye - forever, as it seemed back then.

My world disintegrated around me, and I fell in a deep black hole. And Trinity was there and caught my fall. Trinity, who lost her RL partner less than a year ago, was at my side. Listened. Understood. Held my virtual hand, and dried my tears. And was there. More than anything, she was there. And understood.

During that time, a bond was forged that was extremely strong and durable. A friendship, based on trust, integrity and understanding. A friendship that clearly goes beyond friendship. A friendship, that became a special kind of love. And some time later - under tears - we became siblings in SL. Being both only-childs, at least for me, I felt for the first time what kind of love one might feel for a sister.

We still disagree on some things, sometimes even fundamentally, like the political spectrum we favour. We also say us inconvenient truths if we think it is necessary. Only the other day Trinity brought up an issue where she thougt I did wrong, and I - even though I did not see the problem as such - apologized. The friendship is strong enough to not mind little bumpers. The trust and honesty does not only mind such things, it actually needs such incidents to be fostered further.

On Saturday, my SL sister Trinity celebrated her 3rd rezday, and her SL/RL partner Aimee, her friend Voodoo and I arranged a surprise party for her. Would SL vanish tomorrow, we would still be friends. But it won't vanish too soon hopefully, and I wish Trinity a lot more SL rezdays.