Offline Forever

I used to count time in likes.

Not seconds, not minutes—likes.

A minute was good if it gave me thirty. A photo was worth posting if it crossed a thousand. I had a rhythm: wake up, post, scroll, post again. Eat a curated breakfast that looked good on the screen. Cry only when I was off-camera. And even then, sometimes, I didn’t.

They used to call me Sunlight Serena. I had 5.4 million followers. I sold eco-friendly water bottles, morning routines, wellness journals, and the illusion of peace. My laugh was filtered; my sadness edited out.

And then, the internet stopped.

No warning. No crash screen or glitch. One day, the apps just… didn’t open. Then the phones wouldn’t turn on. Wi-Fi died like a leaf in winter. Satellites spun above us like useless gods.

We waited. Panicked. Protested. Cried. Waited some more.

The silence was unbearable at first—like someone turned off the oxygen and left us gasping in a room full of nothing. I kept trying to refresh the feed. I even screamed into my dead phone, hoping some invisible server would hear me. But nothing came.

I lost my identity in a single weekend.

The first week after the Collapse, I didn't leave my apartment. I stared at old pictures of myself on a powerless laptop, like they were holy relics from a better time. I even caught myself posing in the mirror, out of habit.

And that’s when I realized—I didn’t know who I was without an audience.

No one told me how hard it would be to make a decision when no one was watching. What to wear. What to eat. Whether I was still beautiful without a heart button blinking beneath my face.

My worth had always echoed back to me through screens. Without them, I was just a ghost wearing mascara.

I began walking the city in wide loops, searching for noise, for anything familiar. Street corners buzzed with confusion. Small shops opened again with hand-painted signs. People talked—awkwardly, like it was a forgotten language.

Then one day, I found the letter.

It was tucked under my apartment door. No stamp. No envelope. Just a folded piece of paper that smelled faintly of lavender.

“You don’t know me. But I used to follow you.

Not just on socials—truly. I copied your morning affirmations. I wrote them on my bathroom mirror because I didn’t believe anything about myself until you said it.

I hope you’re okay.

I hope you’re still finding the light.”

I read it three times. My hands shook.

I sat on the floor, sobbing like someone had finally touched me after years of waving through glass.

More letters came after that. Slipped under my door. Taped to the front steps. Left in cracks between my window and sill. All from strangers.

People I’d never met, writing in pen and marker and pencil.

Some told me how they used to envy me. Others admitted they resented me. One wrote: “I used to hate how perfect your life looked, but now I think I just hated how lonely mine was.”

I kept every letter in a box labeled “Now.” It felt honest. More real than any curated comment thread I’d ever moderated.

Eventually, I started writing back.

Short notes at first. Clumsy. Unsure.

Then longer ones. I wrote to a girl in Iowa who had been hiding her eating disorder from her parents. To a widowed father in Oregon who used to play my videos just to feel less alone while cooking for one.

No ring light. No hashtags. Just ink and paper.

People started writing to each other. Not through me, but because of me. They left messages on park benches. On library bulletin boards. Community mailboxes became altars of human contact.

I was still offline.

But I had never felt more seen.

Now, I walk every morning. Still early. Still with a cup of coffee in hand. I leave a note in a different place each day. A kind word, a joke, a confession. Something soft. Something human.

Sometimes I get replies. Sometimes I don’t.

But I’ve stopped measuring my worth in echoes.

Because some voices get louder in silence.

And sometimes, losing the world means finally finding your own.