This is my last day as Delia and I’m feeling elated to be done and a little sad.  I’m going to miss her.

It’s been 2 months of being Delia every day, experiencing life from a different viewpoint.  Life is easier for Delia for a number of reasons.  She doesn’t have as many responsibilities as me and she doesn’t stress over the ones she has.  Of course she gets upset when things don’t work out, like the computer problems in the museum, because she doesn’t like to let people down.  However, she doesn’t take on the burden of responsibility for it.  She is a people pleaser but not a worrier.  And she is endlessly optimistic.

Perhaps because of this, people seem to like Delia (other than my friends who have been actively missing me and seem to resent Delia a little bit.)  She is just so darn nice and friendly.  She has a sweet little voice and a gracious manner.  I hope to learn from her how to be a little more patient and polite in my regular life.  I’m so focused on what I’m working on most of the time that I can be a bit abrupt or less than gracious with people when I’m busy.  Especially the people I’m closest to, because I know they will forgive me.  Delia is kind to everyone but especially people she loves.  She has her priorities straight.

She is pretty in a different way than me and it is more than the hair, makeup, clothes, lips and teeth.  She is pretty because she is sweet, gracious and kind.

I have to thank Alan for creating someone who I have enjoyed embodying.  He’s been such a sport and has hardly blinked an eye when I refer to “Jane” in the third person about one thing or another.  He has been great at playing along.  In fact, the real me is going to take him to the airport tonight, partly because I want to thank him and partly because he wants to meet me. 

What he has done is brave and very cool.  It took guts to come here alone.  On the ride back from the airport that first day I (Delia) said, “Do your friends know you’re doing this?”  He said, “Yeah, some of them.”  When I asked, “What do the think?” he replied, “Well, some of them were afraid you might be an axe murderer…”  We both laughed and I said, “Yep, that was what my friends were afraid of too.”

So I admire his courage for coming here and trusting that it would be OK.  As he said that evening, “Well, you only live once.”  And I could help thinking how normal it has become to travel miles from home to meet someone you only know online.  This is a strange project (reflecting an even stranger reality) and he has both taken it seriously and with a sense of fun.  In fact, he is a very laid back guy who seems to match Delia in optimism and kindness.  Which makes me think I’ve done a pretty good job.  He and Delia seem to be a good match, and she really likes him.  He is perfect for her.

Unfortunately, she is invented, a collaboration between Alan, the voting public and me.  I like him and am so appreciative of his participation, but I am not Delia and after today Delia goes home and disappears again into the ether.  She is an avatar who stepped off the screen for a few months.  But like everything on the internet, she is a blend of “reality” and “fiction”.  In this way, she represents our culture.