Loving a Twitch Streamer

I wouldn’t have stayed… but she kept laughing at my jokes. Okay that wasn’t why. It was stranger than that, more real than just laughing at my jokes. It felt like love at first message, but that’s foolish, love over an internet cable?

It felt strange to stay…

I fell in love with her, the ‘Twitch Streamer’ and… she surprised me. This is the part where I take a deep breath and exhaust a big exhale. I met her online sometime in 2014. At this time video game players were just beginning to learn about getting paid-to-play, and they began joining the Internet sensation in droves. Countless donations poured across Paypal, players roared into mics, raged at their character’s death, laughed at strange in-game bugs, all the while having crowds cheer them on. The crowds donated money to watch players play video games, simple, but some of us… ended up donating our hearts!! <3

The number of viewers watching a Twitch streamer could range from thousands, hundreds, and sometimes even two digits, or in the beginning, when someone first presses stream, a single digit. That was her range. I met her around two hundred and seventy viewers and a year from then she would end up near five thousand. She looked famous, that’s why I stopped by. It was my first time surfing Twitch Tv seriously. Honestly, I thought she was Selena Gomez. She wasn’t though. She was Canadian.

I’ll tell you. She laughed a lot at my jokes.

We’ve all had our elementary crushes, remember those special notes, “Do you like me? Circle this one please. " High School sweethearts too. You get to kiss, taste, hold, hear, and see them all if you are lucky.

I want you to know or better yet, imagine falling in love with someone who loves the same thing as you. She loved this video game, the same one as me. You might imagine them loving a sport, a book, a movie, rock climbing, or what have you. I wanted to reach her. But in this imagination I was only able to use some of my senses to reach her. For me it was…like being blind and only hearing the girl I love move around me. Or only imagining what she would sound like if I were deaf. Falling in love with a Twitch Tv streamer is like having no touch, no sense of vibration, it's more like having no bones ‘sorta’. Her voice could be in my ears, but I could never feel her laugh hit my chest, or feel the first date table shake from her plate being placed down.

That type of falling in love was.. well… I’d say it’s almost like water! But it was lighter than that…It felt lighter than air, yet, my fingertips felt heavy from keyboard presses, my breath was connected to each letter, each phrase, every lol, some wtfs, and even the best types of hypes. It was strange falling in love with someone through light, sound, and no touch. That type of falling in love was difficult to feel, difficult to say, and difficult to describe.

Maybe… It is like falling in love with a best friend. It’s not allowed if you are friends. Even if best friends fall in love, it's an unspoken, ‘shouldn't do that’. At least you get to see each other, have sleepovers, watch tv in the same room, share a bowl of popcorn, and camp under the stars together.

This isn’t about falling in love with a gamer, that’s just something we both liked.

I wouldn’t have stayed… but she kept laughing at my jokes. Love over an internet cable? … but that’s foolish.

Never would’ve guessed how many messages a person could receive. If you’ve ever seen a Twitch Tv chat room with two hundred or five thousand viewers all talking(messaging) to a single person all at once, then, you know, but if you don't, it's as if your phone is receiving fifty text messages or more a minute. Or trying to read three notes from three different classmates all right before the teacher catches you.

This was my first time doing this… So I cluelessly sent, “ Wow! She looks like Selena Gomez! “ At the time I wasn’t even sure she could read the message. Actually I sorta felt like she couldn’t for some reason.

Then all of a sudden the girl on the screen spoke directly to me in front of two hundred and seventy viewers. I felt like I was in a classroom with only my underwear on…. >.<

She laughed and then said, “ Oh, no I’m not Selena Gomez, but thank you, I’ve never been called Selena before, but I get Ellen Page sometimes or… “ she named off a few actresses names.

More messages flooded the chat room’s text box, each message naming different actresses, and commenting on the Twitch Sreamer’s appearance.

I was surprised and shocked, immediately, I sent, “ Wow! Can she read this? Wait, you can read this? This is freaky. “ I had no idea how to carry a conversation with a girl over the internet on TwitchTV, and in front of a few hundred people no doubt too.

She laughed again, “Yeah! I can read what you are typing. We all can. “

At that point other people in chat were informing me as well. Which made my heart race more.

“ Is this your first time on Twitch? Really? “ She said.

I was about to reply but then she said something else, “ hue hue hue”

I used my keyboard and fingertips to speak back, “ Yep! My first time! 0.0 What does hue hue hue mean by the way? Is it like pew pew pew? “ All several hundred people could still read my message and see her respond.

She laughed and made her hand into a gun, “ Pew pew pew, that’s funny. Hue hue hue means like lol. Or hahahaha “ She said.

There were more messages about her hair, her gameplay, this-that and the other.

Mine appeared: “ Oh! Like how pew pew pew is funny. “

…

She made me laugh a lot that night. She watched out for mental health and was very open minded. She discussed her dreams, shared her art, and she wouldn’t stop talking to me? I mean the words that I typed. Couldn’t have been me, I am so much more than my heartfelt words… Is this the loneliness an author feels? Wanting to be next to every reader, to ‘be’ there with them through the story? It was like writing a bit of fate with her.

If there are hundreds of messages coming in, at what point did I start to feel like her eyes were watching, waiting, and aiming at the ones I sent? It's interesting when you message a Twitch streamer at some point a feeling like you are being targeted by them sets in.

Eventually my text took a new shape. Words, punctuation, tone, voice, all of it turned into something like this:

“ I hope you ‘sorta’ smile at this… if you get a glance.”

Here are some messages that took that ‘sorta’ smile at this if you get a glance, hope:

If you are reading this… then your nose is getting itchy.

0.0

Is it working?

Oop! I saw you itch it!

“ GOD DAMMIT! Stop saying my nose is itchy! “ She said, I watched, she meant ‘type’, and I laughed.

Did you smile? If you did, you might be a monster. (Me addressing the rest of the Twitch chat).

...

Later on that night I discovered everyone was sending her songs to hear…..

“ Wow! Can you recommend songs? You will listen to the songs we pick? “ I typed.

I recommended the Digimon theme song, or rather I put it on her song queue. Lol, her reaction was awesome. Then eventually it was every song from the Digimon Movie. I loved it all. Seeing her happy with such silliness was funny. Some of the other songs that were eventually sent blushing

>.<

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - The Impression That I Get

A Goofy Movie: Stand Out

You're The One That I Want | Grease,

Moulin Rouge! (3/5) Movie CLIP - Silly Love Songs,

Rachel Platten - Fight Song,

I Fight Dragons - I Will Wait For You If You Do For Me (Gameboy Demo Version)

and

Terrible Things by Mayday Parade

I spent the rest of the night playing songs straight to her ears. People started cheering for me, and at some points they were asking her or me if I was her boyfriend. All my favorite songs, no matter what, just to see. At the time the songs mattered and didn't matter. I didn't think to be there more than a night. I thought I'd never see her again, so why not share all the sappy love right then and there. So in a blink of an eye... I embarrassingly stayed another day.

Years went by and she answered and talked a lot to me, even when thousands of viewers poured questions and messages to her. I stood out. It was a cool feeling.

I typed, “ What do you think wisdom is? “, then pressed send.

“ Do you think aliens hate chipmunks? “ Another question I asked.

“ If you were a Unicorn, would you value a sweatshirt? “ another ridiculous question she would answer for fun.

….

I spent a surprisingly long and dedicated amount of time trying to get her to go Super Saiyan ( in order to go Super Saiyan you must fill your heart with tragedy and purpose, then scream while flexing, and at the end… you almost bring out a tear) while online with every viewer watching… >.> low and behold the day arrived after several weeks. Her acting was awesome. Plus her commitment to silliness… heartwarming!

I must’ve asked this girl if she had seen Future Diaries(an anime) a hundred times… so much that I’m eighty percent sure that was why Mirari Nikki(Japanese for Future Diaries) may have been in one of her YouTube videos. This anime is about a set of characters who write diaries, but, they become diaries that show them what they would write in the future, therefore giving them the ability to change their fate by knowing their future diary. A god gave them this power in the anime. They were all set against each other, the winner would take the god's place and the god would retire. Bloody hearts did fall in that show.

Eventually several years worth of streams blurred together…

I remember I’d get this feeling like, if I didn’t type something quick enough, at that moment, then the moment would be gone and a special train of consciousness would float away. A troll( a mean internet viewer) or hateful message might take her away. I’d blush though and whisper inside Especially for her hoping my message would battle away the terror trolls.

God! It was annoying seeing so many people troll, hate, and punish a random girl on the internet…. Worst of all… my silly overprotective Christian heart went haywire at it all. I felt the need to protect her with more distracting messages, hoping to develop a real conversation on the stream, one not about being mean to her.

In the future we might be able to sync our brains together and have telepathy. Having a relationship with her through keyboard, headphones, and microphone, felt like that. Beaming songs from the internet straight to her brain. Spelling out I’m flirting, without ever saying I’m flirting.

The sensation was like…

Two lines twisting together, her thoughts, and my thoughts? It feels like a question, I’m not sure why at times, but I’m coming to the conclusion that it is because we weren’t in the same room. Loving a Twitch Streamer, her, a girl gamer, gorgeous beyond my belief, gorgeous to my soul, not just to my eye. Loving a Twitch streamer alerts a person to a strange sense of missing our own bodies. It’s like being blind, without being blind, being deaf without being deaf, I never thought, my thoughts could feel closer than my body to someone. I grew up my whole life with my thoughts and their thoughts being expressed in person and falling in love that way. Never being near was so strange because we felt so close.

The strange ending…

She married in the city where I live. I’ve never met her in person. And the best part was that I wasn’t the only one who fell in love with… that one Twitch Streamer.

…

I read a statistic somewhere that said ninety percent of talking is body language… So what did I really get a chance to say? How could I manifest this all with a single set of letters and words? My aimless hopes, although dire, were not without help, as luck be had it, my mental need for a friend, and some love at first type, helped me get through a nasty crush-crash.

I wasn’t alone, hundreds to thousands of others watched her play the video game. I joined her as a regular and played alongside her. It was beautiful getting to watch her listen to my favorite songs and hear her commentary. She laughed a lot at my jokes.

If she didn’t laugh, if she didn’t smile, if she didn’t keep talking to my single set of messages I would have left, in a heartbeat, in a single click of a leave. Like a falling autumn leaf, or a broken snowflake. But I kept making her happy and she kept making me happy too. So I stayed with her. Keyboard, headphone, and heavy heart.

No, I don’t watch her stream like the old days. I’ve thought about stopping by.

Bye <3

I hope you ‘sorta’ smiled at this… if you got the glance.