You were an identity that I could hide behind, but also be the person who I truly was inside.
Maybe I was an XoXoSoccerStar or SurfGoddess101 and my classmates just didn’t know it. A quiet girl chasing after the skater boys rocking bangs and a pink streak in her hair. In class, she would play on her Nintendo DS talking to friends on PictoChat. Just another gateway to an online addiction. AOL Instant messenger was one of the best social media accounts that I will claim to own.
Passion was written out as personal bios with different colored fonts and song lyrics that spoke to my soul. A secret language learned through aim includes numbers in the middle of a sentence and emphasizing vowels. *uR jUst JEALOUSS cuz were YUNG & FrEeEe* was a staple away message that described my unknown levels of sass.
There were no rules in the MSN universe, except for the fact that my bedtime was around 9 pm.
Similar to the lock emoji in an Instagram bio, AIM was the perfect place to start and end relationships. One day your bio could say, ‘Loving you makes life so worth it @xx_coolguy_xx <3’, but the very next day could be the dramatic breakup. A break up that could only be defined by Ataris’ lyrics ‘If I could have one wish tonight, I’d wish upon a satellite to bring me back to you’. Too many of my nights my away message consisted of ‘feeling forgotten…’ hoping that my computer would ping with a new chat from my crush.
What could’ve sparked this recent walk down memory lane?
Could it be the fact that I still have the same username as I did 10 years ago, maybe that my college career is eventually coming to an end or the fact that Toys-R-Us, a store that sends childhood memories rushing through my body, is closing? Aging doesn’t mean completely turning into your parents once you graduate high school, but rather experience a new sense of maturity. I realize that maybe my sad song lyrics don’t belong on my LinkedIn, but are more suited as an anthem on tinder. I also realize that as screen names become obsolete the confidence I found online doesn’t.