All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

This is not a cry for help, but a recording of someone who may have never really existed at all. This is me etching my thoughts into the recesses of the internet as something concrete, as if to point to it and say “yes, I existed. Here’s the proof.” Ultimately though I know this is a contradiction because I’ve lived my entire life through the internet and feel that I have no concrete existence within it. All of my friendships and relationships have been propelled through the digital world, but there’s no authenticity within this world. Every time I try to establish some sort of concrete event to anchor the digital to the physical, I fail. I tell my best friend online that I would like to meet him and he brushes me off. He doesn’t trust me with his address, his phone number, very little personal information, nothing concrete. If he were an artificial intelligence completely devoid of humanity, I wouldn’t know the difference. He could completely remove me from his life with a few easy clicks. The same can be said for any relationship that I’ve held online. The simple solution is to stop searching for fulfillment in cyberspace, but it’s far too late for that. In waking life I’m much too scarred and scared to change. It would be easier to melt away into obscurity. I can only have the semblance of being alive through the internet. I’m trying so hard to keep coming back, to keep searching for authenticity, to validate my existence, but I keep coming to the conclusion that nothing is real and everything I know is a construction. That I can be easily replaced by everyone I care about and I can because I’m nothing but text or a voice through the digital void. In many ways I do not exist. My real personality is here, what I do in waking life is not me. Both are inherently fake though since I’m so easily replaceable online. As my friends and relationships age we will all drift apart in cyberspace and all that exists now will melt into air. I will be replaced and forgotten within the decade. I'm numb to the idea.