i can't fault you for feeling lonely

i spent half of my life on the internet. having an extensive archival of our lives online — the moments that we so obviously lusted for belonging — our memories have become so accessible.

in a swipe, we see how far we’ve come. we don’t have to regret not having pictures of us taken before; now the only concern is the picture’s resolution. even then, the blurry images taken in bursts are intimate, neglected moments. 

in a way, our echolalia for the “good old days” diminish their value. if they were truly so important, we wouldn’t have to justify them all the time. i look at an unflattering image of myself when i was thirteen, and in the crevices of my brain i’m initially hit with a wave of regret. “it could’ve been so easy. why don’t you make things easier for yourself?” 

it could have been so easy to just walk up to someone else to start a conversation, but somewhere in my heart, there was a blaring alarm that told me i was “not yet ready” to make friends. my mother made me look like a laughing stock — my shirt was two sizes bigger and buttoned all the way up; i was wearing velcro shoes when everyone else had laces. it was the same burning sensation that ached my heart when i brought a baby bottle as my water bottle to kindergarten. we were all already five by that time.

as i’ve gotten a bit older, i rarely like to take these situations seriously anymore. these moments of discomfort i consistently broadcast as a form of exposure, hoping to form detachment from others’ perceptions of me, just because I willingly take “ownership” of my awkward nature. because there is an intention to debilitate my insecurities towards an audience, i feel like i can make any painful experience a performance. however, oftentimes this feigned confidence plummets down to continuous cycles of self-deception, and this penchant for nostalgia turns out to be a silent killer of a real memory.

nevertheless, this newfound sense of control over my previous and original narratives made me feel like the internet was the only place where i wasn’t endlessly infantilized. a gateway to a double life. when i was going through intense periods of isolation in real life, i was a magician in the virtual sphere. when i was grieving the loss of my grandfather, i was a comedian somewhere else. it was not only after i turned nineteen that i became so tired of it all. when i started to make more art (because i was studying it anyway), i was so desperate to combine these two worlds together. the question now is — how real can i get?

as much as it is a curse — the psychosomatic stress life (and concurrently the internet) has created for me as a brown woman in my formative years — i find myself constantly thinking that those documented moments of struggle mattered. it mattered that i felt catastrophically ugly. it mattered that i hated wearing skirts or going to church. 

i won’t say that i loathed my younger self for being so helpless, but i still do slightly blame her for being the driver of that burning sensation. the shame that floods my whole being for being strictly raised as a puritan, a filipino, and a woman. an identity that held so much weight, that it was hard to imagine its lightness. and so floating in a fantastical portal of everything that was not that emancipated me greatly. but now i feel like breaking these walls and stitching them together at my own pace.

i feel for every stage of my life where i felt at my lowest. i embraced her when she felt lonely and could only express it online. when online escapism was a pipe dream, but also one that alleviated the heaviness of my morning walks to school. no one truly knew how lonely i was, just as much as everyone else felt. what it felt like using my affliction as a performance, and how misguided were the ways that i displayed them before.

i thank the internet for being a soulless space, one that is only activated and humanized by our inexplicable loneliness.