The Roleplayer - Part One

  If I told you that one of the best things in my life started on Reddit would you believe me?

I love writing roleplays and found myself at a loose end one day. I met someone who went by the nom de cyber of "DarkDiva." We did a couple group RPs and then we started chatting more and more. Then one night I got a Discord Server invite from her and jumped in. It was a server for just the two of us. Over the course of the next year we spent a lot of time RPing and chatting.

I worked second shift and to my amazement she was online 7 days a week to RP with me. On my days off there were a few times we RPed for almost 14 hours straight. I enjoyed it immensely and she was there for me during a difficult breakup and while I was trying to salvage my love life.

You can't spend that much time talking to someone where you both share common interests and enjoy each others company without learning a lot without the other person. Sometimes we used voice channels and talked that way so I knew her voice. It was a nice voice, almost tentative, soft, and she ran out of breath quickly.

After fifteen months I realized I didn't know much. I knew her first name: Kelly but she preferred Kel, I knew she was unemployed, on disability, lived at home, and that she had severe social anxiety. I knew she'd been bullied and I knew she was 28, three years older then me. She lived in Ohio, about 5 hours drive from me.
But she knew so much more, including my preferences about larger women. I'd dated a BBW and I'd vented to Kel that my GF had broken it off because I wasn't supportive enough of her loosing weight. And during a couple RPs she even played heavier female characters. And we RPed intimate scenes, including one where a character made love to a massive immobile alien queen. But she never seemed to enjoy those characters as much as some of the others. She loved it when my characters took in outcasts and her favorite RP was a platonic one, where a woman with a birthmark on most of her body and is rejected by everyone finds love with a normal guy.

I'd been assuming that she was disabled, probably some variety of paralysis or a degenerative disease. Once for two weeks I was convinced she had cystic fibrosis, and that's why she spoke like she was out of breath and never went anywhere. There were times she'd say "Brb bathroom" and be gone almost a half an hour. In case you couldn't tell I had a pretty serious crush on the person who RPed with me daily. I even imagined her as fat more then a few times but never as fat as she actually was.

One day I couldn't resist it anymore and asked her "As your friend; you don't have to answer me if you don't want but I'm curious. Why are you online all day? Like you said you don't work, and I understand that, but you need to get outside sometimes."

There was a long long pause. Nearly ten minutes. So I posted "You don't have to answer me, please don't be angry."

Immediately "I'm not angry." Then. "Just... Embarressed." Then she spilled out her life story. And it was delivered in the most cynical and bitter way.
 

"I was born fat, to a fat family, in this fat town. That's what's wrong with me. I'm so fat that I never leave home. I can't work, I did when I was a teenager but not anymore, I didn't really quit because I was too fat but because I couldn't stand people. So I hide at home and I eat a lot and I don't really leave."
It went on. She'd never had a boyfriend, been bullied in high school. Her mother badgers her about loosing weight constantly, has since she was 8. It was like popping a cork.

One paragraph made me, much to my shame rock hard. I'd replied "I understand being overweight is terrible when it hurts your self esteem, but you know I find chubbier women attractive, and there's lots of guys out there like me who find a bit of extra curves, a bit of a belly, to be really hot." I was convinced she was probably more like 400 pounds.

She replied with: "My BMI at my last doctors appointment was 104.5." Followed by "I'm 5'3 inches tall and I was 590lbs then. That's the last time I left the house, and it was so hard. That was last October." Almost two years ago. "Now I haven't left my bed since June. I couldn't get up. They have a scale under my mattress but I won't look at the display or let anyone tell me what it says."

I begged her to call me. It was my day off, around 10pm. She did. I heard the breathy voice, and I could tell she was crying. "I'm sorry I asked and upset you" I said. "I was just curious."

"No it's fine." She said. There was a cough. "I should have told you long ago but I was enjoying this so much. Like, I can't get out and enjoy these things so I live them in RP. And I loved RPing with you so much!"

I tried to calm her down. I assured her that I didn't care about her weight. I promised her that I'd never ever pester her to loose weight. I told her that I didn't judge her on looks since I'd never seen her, but her writing was incredible. We stopped there that night but I made her promise to RP the next day.

I said nothing for a couple weeks but then I started to circle back in on the conversation. I tried to get her to realize that it was okay to open up with me. Mostly I wanted to hear details about her daily life and I started to get them after a while. She told me she really didn't dress anymore other then a shirt or gown because she spent so much time in bed. She was convinced that her immobility was due to swollen legs, making it too painful to stand, rather then just being fat. After none of that phased me she told me how her mother, father, and a couple rotating aides helped her with most everything. One day, after we'd been talking about two years she mentioned that her 30th birthday was coming up. And she complained about how she was going to "die a virgin." The death talk had cropped up a lot. She wasn't suicidal, according to her, but she would say things like "I don't think I'll live to see 40." But all I could get out of her was that she had "some health problems."

This time I stepped up. "Would you like to change that?" I asked. "I'll come down there, and we can have a romantic night. Watch a movie, and hang out. We can be close."

She blew me off at first, including with the line "No one could fuck this. I'm so ugly." But then one day she sent me this: "My parents are going out of town. The aides come by to care for me of course but that's only twice a day. Most of the day and all night, I'm alone. Do you want to come spend time with me?"