A few comments to add before going to sleep. (Hah, sounds like a WW-game -post...)
It's clear the problem is born when people load emotions into your person, which person is not what you let us believe it is. So when you said you had a tough time at work and it was insecure whether you had your work in the future (I don't remember the details now - which just shows I was not that fully tied into your person as
Boro), I remember feeling bad about it and sympathising with you, really hoping for the best and thinking about it a few times feeling sad about your possible ill fate.
But with those you had made much more closer friends, it would be really bad. Just think how they would have actually felt sad and had worried about you - for no actual reason. Well, you surely have done that already and I guess you have already received a few PM's of that sort. And if you deserve any "punishment" let those PM's be that.
And I do hope you are able to settle things with those people as I still like you a lot and would love to see you keeping up posting here in the 'Downs.
But you really did well posing as a person a lot older you are (take it as a compliment if you wish). There were situations I was a bit insecure about the way your mind worked though - assuming as I was that you were about the same age as I am. Now I can see why it was so. Or at least think I might see it.
The question of trust and the internet being the "wild-wild-west" where you shouldn't trust anyone... That's a topic for a gazillion of pages. And even if I'm one of the first to remind people that anything you encounter in the web can be virtually (in both senses of the word) anything, then again I have met a handful of 'Downers in RL and they have all been more or less what they have appeared to be around here - basically just more charming and more lovable (even the "grumpy Rune"
is the most hilarious person you could imagine to meet anywhere).
But the basic trust has been built over years of discussions around here. Now your case
Boro, even if there wasn't anything malvolent behind it (which I do believe there wasn't), kind of readjusts the table a bit as you were able to keep up the appearance for so long.
Although I must say that's only a bit, to me at least. Those people you can call "predators" or something like that lurking around the internet looking for a pray rarely have the patience to wait for five years, and rarely hang around this kind of sites (I hope and pray that is correct)... So I wouldn't either suggest that you should not meet a fellow 'Downer the next time you have a chance to.
We should not give up good things from life just because of fear of something possibly being not safe (which doesn't mean one should be a fool of a Took).
Okay... Too much babbling already.
I hope we can discuss all that pains anyone, either publicly here or via PM's. And I also do hope we have
Boro or
Kent around in the future - but not both.
And when I finally manage to travel to the US one year or another I'm looking forwards to meeting you John(?). It may take years, a decade... whatever. But you are one of the persons I'd love to meet if I travel there.