void lover

With the internet, I could be anyone I wanted and stretch into whatever shape I desired holding, led by my own command.

I thought there would be something to be felt after I reached it—the ever-glowing blue pin-prick over the silent stage. The fickle frame. Feeling the thrill in the aftershock of inverting my privacy, unfolding it, and laying it out stitch by stitch for examination. The ability to hold myself in my hands and see how I’ve changed or failed to. With the internet, I could be anyone I wanted and stretch into whatever shape I desired holding, led by my own command. “A dancer in the dark” is how I used to joke about it to friends, but part of me has always known it to be true: the internet is the dark that looks back. It casts what it can—a small, slow, droning, cerulean-blank spotlight that’s often directionless, begging to be grabbed at and controlled.

I used to be fed by the chase: keeping my time, watching my shadow. It all felt inspiring. Letting the dim eye scan me, just out of reach, uninterested, sometimes catching parts of in its shine and returning them as anew and valuable. It saw things in me that I couldn’t, teaching me uninhibited bliss, and making me a performer.