A Tribute to AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)

OH, AIM.

WE GO WAY BACK.

How many relationships have you recorded over time? How many friendships continued, romances kindled, feelings hurt and rejuvenated and cycling all over again? How many sexbots have I encountered through you when my password was hacked? How often have I spent clicking open your vertical portal, windows popping open as the distinctive bloo-do-doop invites me to a new surprise? 

Late nights in front of the glow of my computer screen were the norm throughout high school, undergrad, grad school. Even now, in the "real world," I cling on to the bit of nostalgia that you offer--that same, unchanging sound that was there when I met my best friends, when I flirted with my first boyfriend, when I had my first kiss. I spent countless two-AMs with you, hiding in my bed and pretending to write papers while I was not-so-secretly hanging out with my friends. 

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And all the penpals I made because you exist! I met two of my closest friends because of you--one faded, the other still here. I met a community of people who loved and supported me, whom I loved and supported, where we masqueraded as fantasy-Quidditch nerds but were really leaping into a pile of friends who understood, who accepted, who loved. 

I read articles now about how everyone is addicted to screens. It's probably true, but I ignore it, because beyond the screens, I know there are people on the other side. It's like saying that I'm addicted to books, diving into the fantasy lands where things don't have to be real, where I can just close the cover and shimmy back into "reality." Not that I'm actually doing that--I'm still living in my head, and I know this. I feel--I feel--that the stories I see are reality, that the reality I live is fiction, and sometimes I can't tell the difference between the two. I blur the lines between the worlds until everything I feel is both real and unreal, the stories we create hardly any different from the fictions published between glue-bound spines. They are recorded in your chat history, stories of the person I used to be. When you close down, so will the old me.