Hi fellas! I'm Brian, and I want to tell you how my girlfriend
went missing, I almost went crazy, and two years later, I received a message from her. Since childhood, it's been hard for me to
communicate with other people, I felt uncomfortable in the company of other people, and I`m afraid
of big crowds. This is called Social Anxiety Disorder or
simply social phobia. The modern world allows me to live comfortably
with this disease. Everything I need can be delivered to my house,
I can take college classes at home, and communicate with friends via the internet. By the way, chatting with friends is not a
problem at all, because I don`t have friends. The only people I communicate with is guys
from a group with a similar problem as mine. Through this group, I met Alice. She's 17 years old, she is very beautiful,
and she's also funny. Sometimes, I even wondered how she might have
problems with communication, because she is very energetic and joyful. And I was even more surprised about why she
wanted such a weird long-distance relationship with me. She lived in New York, on the other side of
America. But I didn't complain. We spent a lot of time together, chatting
with each other and making video dates. In general - we had as healthy a relationship
as two social phobic people could get. One day, she told me that her parents were
going to move to China, and that they were taking her with them. She convinced me that the only thing that
would change in our relationship was the time zone, but I still felt something ominous,
as if a really close person was leaving me. The day of departure arrived. She literally informed me about every step:
“We left the house,” “We got into the taxi,” “We arrived at the airport.” The last message I received from her was,
"We just boarded the plane, going to turn off the phone. Next message you'll get will be from China." The flight was long, and I waited a long time
for a message from her, but nothing came. Not even the next day. I became worried. What if something happened to her? I checked all the flights from New York to
China. All the planes had landed successfully. Then I spent the whole day reading the Chinese
news and looking for headlines with accidents. But I didn't find anything, and this made
me even more nervous. One day later, I decided to take action: It
was scary but I overcame my social phobia, left the house, and went to the police. I didn`t even know what I was going to do
there, but I couldn`t stay at home any longer. When I entered the station, I asked the on-duty
officer: “Sorry, this is very urgent, my girlfriend is gone, you have to help me!” - I began to get very nervous. The policeman sat me in a chair and calmed
me down. He asked her name and where I last saw her. "Alice. She was in New York, I dated with her online,
and a couple days ago, she flew with her parents to China, and since that time she hasn't gotten
online. Something happened to her!” The policeman must have thought that I was
just some weird guy who was duped by a girl he met on the internet and he said that they
couldn`t do anything because she flew away with her parents, so, technically, she's not
missing. But if something happened to them in China,
then this can be found out through the US Consulate in China. That was my next step. I wrote a request to the consulate, but due
to the fact that I am not a relative, it is prohibited to give me any information unless
I prove that I am not a stranger to their family. That was the problem. We were in a relationship for one year, but
all we had in common was a Messenger chat with a bunch of memes and thousands of minutes
of FaceTime calls. No pictures together, no other contacts, I
don't even know what her parents look like. This was first time that I realized we were
just ghosts in each other's lives. The consulate refused my request. At that moment, I was angry at everyone on
Earth. Nobody cares about anything. That’s why social phobia exists. Because people are evil and selfish! I was desperate. My last chance was a private detective, he`d
at least do it for the money, after all. I found a detective online, described my problem,
told him everything I know. He assured me that everything would take a
week, max. Every day I was on pins and needles. I was nervous all the time, I slept poorly
and completely lost my appetite. I felt like soon I'd at least find out what
had happened. The detective's call woke me up early in the
morning. He told me something I didn`t expect to hear
at all: Alice and her parents did not leave America. I asked the detective “What? Are you sure?” “Absolutely. They flew to another state, but returned two
days later.” I was shocked. Why then is she not appearing online? Why did she lie to me? What`s going on? I was very angry and I wasn`t going to leave
it like that. I wanted an explanation, so I bought a ticket
for the next flight to New York, and at the very next day I was there. To be honest, I didn`t even think about what
I would say to her. I just wanted to see her, and look into her
eyes. I took a taxi to the address that the detective
gave me. When I arrived, I felt like my heart began
to beat really fast, I was very nervous. Here it is - the moment of truth, now I will
get my answers. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I knocked again, but nobody was there. I was getting very angry, and just started
banging on the door. An old lady from the next apartment heard
the noise and walked into the hallway. I asked her: “Are your neighbors at home? I'm looking for my girlfriend, Alice. " The woman told me that I was too late: her
parents took Alice to the airport this morning. She's going to go to college in another state. I felt so bad at that moment. How could she do this to me? Couldn't she just tell me the truth? Why did she make up this story? There were so many questions and I had zero
answers. I decided to just go back home and forget
the last two weeks, like a nightmare. It's now been two years. And a lot of things have changed. Now I`m studying at college like a normal
student, I have a girlfriend, and no - not an online girlfriend. She is my classmate. Why am I still telling this story? Because it's not over yet. Recently, I received an email from her, it
said "It`s Alice, read this, please." I was very surprised, and at first doubted
whether I should read it. But I decided to open it. In the letter she apologized for having disappeared
like that. She wrote: “I couldn't just break up. I felt so sorry for you. So I decided to just disappear. I thought that if you believed that I was
in another country, you wouldn't be able to look for me. I decided to do this because it was a chance
to start a new, healthy life. But I felt guilty about it.” This time I wasn't angry. On the contrary, if this hadn`t happened,
I would still be sitting at home with my social phobia. But I overcame it because I wanted to find
Alice. I don't feel offended by her or mad at her,
I even feel grateful to her, because now I have a great life and I'm happy. I hope you enjoyed watching this story. Do you think it's better to break up or just
disappear? Did Alice do the right thing? Write about it in the comments!
