Ctrl + Alt + Me

writer name : Nadeem shah

I was born with dial-up dreams

and Ethernet veins,

Logged in before I could spell my name,

Taught to swipe before I learned to write—

My first steps tracked in pixels, not on pavement.

They gave me a screen before they gave me a voice,

Said:

“Be anything. Be everyone.

Just… be filtered.”

Profile pic polished,

Bio condensed—

"Just enough truth,"

They said,

"To keep you interesting, not too intense."

And so, I became tabs—

Open, endless, exhausting.

Click-click-clicking my way through

versions of me I didn’t even recognize.

I scroll to forget,

I swipe to feel seen,

And somewhere between

likes and login screens,

I lost myself

in the code.

Call me:

User_2487

Version 9.0

Status: Buffering

Identity: Updating…

Because this world moves fast,

And the pressure to keep up

Is built into every update.

Every day,

I wake up and perform—

Not for mirrors,

but for algorithms.

I filter my breakfast.

I hashtag my grief.

I measure my worth

in engagement metrics and reaction gifs.

Truth be told?

My soul’s been cached.

Fragments of me

Stored in stories that disappear in 24 hours or less.

And when I break—

When I glitch—

When I lag behind the timeline,

They tell me:

Ctrl + Alt + Delete.

Force quit.

Reboot.

Refresh the page.

You’ll be fine.

But I wasn’t fine.

See, identity in the digital age

isn’t about finding yourself.

It’s about branding yourself.

It’s marketing your mind

with just enough edge to go viral

but not enough to make them uncomfortable.

I started speaking in hashtags.

#RealTalk. #MondayMotivation.

#VulnerabilityButMakeItAesthetic.

I curated my pain.

Packaged my breakdowns in neat little boxes

with moody lighting and poetic captions:

"Lost, but learning."

"Smiling through the storm."

"New era loading..."

But no one saw me unplugged.

No one saw

the silence after I hit post.

The ache behind the ring light.

The emptiness of validation

that vanishes as quickly as it arrives.

One night—

3:14 AM

Screen too bright,

Eyes too tired—

I stared at myself

on a screen.

Reflected back

wasn’t me.

Just layers of performance.

A mosaic of edits.

A highlight reel stitched together

by someone scared to be seen

without polish.

So I did something radical.

Something… analog.

I turned it off.

Ctrl + Alt + Me.

Not to delete.

Not to escape.

But to reboot.

To ask:

Who am I when I’m not performing?

Who am I without the applause?

Without the likes, the follows, the tags, the metrics?

I wrote a poem by hand.

Felt the pen scratch the paper

like it was carving out a new path.

I spoke to a friend—without DMs,

without screens between us—

And they looked at me,

Really looked at me,

And didn’t flinch.

They didn’t double-tap,

but they listened.

And in that moment,

I remembered:

I am not my feed.

I am not a product.

I am not content to be consumed.

I am messy.

I am loud.

I am soft.

I am code and chaos,

prayer and pixels.

I am flesh made glitch-proof.

I am more than a trending topic.

Because the real me doesn’t load.

She wakes.

She walks.

She breaks.

She breathes.

The real me doesn’t buffer.

She feels.

She fights.

She falls.

She forgives.

Ctrl + Alt + Me

means I don’t have to brand my healing.

Don’t have to edit my trauma

into bite-sized posts for public consumption.

It means

I can be quiet.

I can be bold.

I can be new

without needing to tell the whole world about it.

Rebooting doesn’t mean forgetting where you’ve been.

It means remembering

who you were

before the world

told you who to be.

It means loving the girl

who thought clout equaled connection.

It means forgiving the boy

who thought fame meant freedom.

It means becoming someone

your younger self would recognize.

Now when I log in,

I do it on my terms.

I share what’s real,

even if it’s raw.

Even if it doesn’t get shared

or saved

or seen.

Because the truth is—

the realest version of me

can’t be compressed into a post.

She’s bigger than bandwidth.

Deeper than display.

She is

voice over volume,

truth over trend,

freedom over filters.

So if you see me out there—

on your timeline,

in your feed,

in your life—

Know this:

I’m not trying to go viral.

I’m trying to be

whole.

Ctrl + Alt + Me

Not to escape who I was,

But to become who I am.

Fully.

Finally.

Unapologetically—

Me.