“the quiet right before I meet myself”

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The shift began quietly.
A slow withdrawal I barely noticed, something like identity loss in its earliest form.

For years, my life lived on the screen, curated and filtered for an audience I couldn’t see but always felt.

Every moment became a potential post. Every joy, something to polish. Every version of me… a performance I knew by heart.

I was the girl who was always on.
The one with updates.
The one who looked like she was doing life.

Posting didn’t feel optional.
It felt like proof.
Proof that I had made it somewhere brighter.
Somewhere bigger than where I started.

I became that friend,
the one with the camera,
the one who posted first,
the one typing captions at four in the morning after a night out, tagging everyone so no one got left out, documenting the night before it had even ended.

Sometimes I said yes to things I didn’t even want, just so I had something to show.

Then California happened.
The place younger me would have screamed over.
And somehow… I went quiet.

One day, I just stopped.
No intention. No announcement.
Just silence.

It started small, a missed post, then another.
Then the unexpected peace of not explaining myself at all.

I put the phone down.
Stopped performing.
Stopped trying to be seen.

Somewhere in that stillness, I realized I didn’t even know who I was posting for anymore.
Half the people watching do not speak to me.
Just silent observers.

The quiet felt strange, like hearing my own breath for the first time in years.
My fingers still twitched with the old instinct to capture, to caption, to prove I was living something worth following.

Sometimes I’d see friends posting and feel that flicker of panic.
Like… would I disappear without the updates?
Would they forget me?

Then the messages arrived.
“Hey, you okay? Haven’t seen you post.”
“Are you still alive?”

Life without social media feels different.
Quiet. Present. A little disorienting.

Without the performance, everything slowed.
The space I used to fill with frantic updates is simply empty now.

And in that emptiness, a kind of identity loss surfaced,
softer but sharper than I expected.

The persona I had been maintaining for years lowered itself like a curtain.
Unhurried. Almost tender.

And underneath it is someone I am still learning to recognize.
Raw. Unedited. A little unsure.
But real in a way I haven’t felt in years.

I don’t know what comes after the silence.
But for the first time in a long time…
I’m curious instead of afraid.