It’s been three years since I moved from Pennsylvania to New York City. In that time, I’ve felt the differences between my “home self” and my “city self” become glaring. And yet, I feel more connected to each of them than I have in years.
In the city, I’ve been confronted with many of the same questions that I had to deal with as a 12-year-old, living on a farm and lying to people on the internet about my age. Questions of identity and worth: Who am I? Do my parents love me? How often should I be drinking water? Is it okay to be what I think I am?
As I approach my 21st birthday and my final semester of undergraduate education, I can’t help but reflect on all that made me what I am today, and how I carry those experiences with me.
I grew up on a farm. Living in a rural, conservative area with older parents who had no idea how to use a phone meant that I had a lot of space to roam — physically and metaphorically. As the youngest of four siblings, by the time I reached the age when a kid typically starts having sleepovers and playdates, my parents were entirely tapped out. They didn’t feel like forming relationships with the other parents at school, driving me around to people’s houses, or hosting picky children at our house. So, I turned to the one place they had little to no restrictions on — the internet.
Before I started fifth grade, I illegally created Instagram, Tumblr, Wattpad, Kik, and Twitter accounts under my middle name. It turned out that I had a real knack for the whole social media thing — my Instagram account, which I used to post pictures and videos of my American Girl Dolls, gained over 4,000 followers, was quite a feat in 2015. I wracked up nearly 100,000 readers on my Wattpad fanfiction, and a group of my most loyal Instagram followers reblogged all my depressing posts on Tumblr.
I didn’t go online for “fame” (if you could even use that word to describe my small following). I merely wanted a space to express myself in ways I felt I couldn’t with my peers. I wanted to be able to post about the weirdness inside of me, the queerness inside of me — all the things that felt rotten and wrong. I wanted someone to see what I was experiencing and recognize it as “normal.”
Unexpectedly, sharing all the gunk in my bones ended up landing me dozens of virtual friends, most of whom felt the same way as me — isolated from their peers and scared of who they were. I didn’t have to travel to hang out with them, and time zones made it so that at least one of them was available whenever I wanted to chat. We would spend hours every day sending messages back and forth, hopping on Oovoo calls, and confessing our deepest secrets to one another. When I turned 12, most of my closest friends lived on my computer screen.
I don’t condone pre-teens or teenagers being on the internet the amount I was. My habits online quickly became unhealthy, and I found myself spiraling down many risky nooks and crannies on Tumblr and Instagram. It took a long time to crawl out from the depths of the web, and I’m still recovering from some of the effects of that exposure now. My dependency on social media as a shield made it harder to express my emotions outwardly and create meaningful relationships with my peers. I was constantly hiding who I was, waiting for the next time I could log in and talk to the people I thought truly “understood” me.
But how could they have understood me when they didn’t even know my real name, age, or hometown? I was a child talking to 17, 18, and 19-year-olds. They didn’t understand me at all — they were merely a glimpse of what I wanted to be. They were a way to pretend I lived somewhere other than rural Pennsylvania. They were a way to act like I was okay with everything going on inside of myself. They weren’t real.
I still think about Dakota from Canada, Juliet from California, Theo from North Carolina, and everyone else who lived on my computer. I think about them when I take the bus home from New York City to Pennsylvania, when I sit on my porch in the moist dark and listen to the cicadas chirp. I think about them when I consider what living in the city has given me compared to what living on a farm took from me. I think about them when I drive past my elementary, middle, and high schools, when I look in my rearview mirror and see my eyes glinting back at me, the same ones I had when nothing fit right and I hid from myself.
I think about the 11-year-old who signed up for every social platform she could think of to have someone near her tell her it was okay. I think about the 11-year-olds doing the same thing now, using TikTok and Instagram Reels as methods of self-exploration and expression.
I think about myself at 18, back in the closet and afraid of what it meant to be herself. I think about myself now, at nearly 21, struggling again to reconcile what I think I am with what I think I should be.
I think about them all. And I hope they’re okay.