the girl i used to be

Today, for some reason, I'm thinking about all the people who cannot find me online now if they try.

I've deleted all my social media accounts and every blog that ever existed under my real name. My professional site URL now points to a three-page Neocities site containing my portfolio, my resume, and an intro page explaining what the first two are. Everything on the portfolio and resume is professional stuff that can be found with a Google search from sources who aren't me, none of whom offer contact info for me. Both use the name I've done all my professional publishing under, which is a variant of my actual legal name but not identical to it.

I'm still squatting on that name on the big social media sites, lest someone decide to make it a hobby to impersonate me. But those profiles are completely empty.

Unless someone has the twenty-year-old email address on my professional site - which points to an inbox I keep only for work email - they simply have no way to contact me. They especially have no way to find out what I'm "up to these days."

The name they know me by, as screen name, does not exist. Nor does any non-paid-for comment attached to that screen name. I don't exist to them except the way I exist to everyone: as a byline.

I did that on purpose and for a lot of reasons. And my only regret is not doing it far sooner. But I had to learn that digital "friends" aren't my friends and that my only life is the one I breathe in, and that took time.

Probably no one is even bothering to look. But it's weird to think about how much of myself I invested in The Online over the past 25ish years that is now inaccessible to people whose opinions I cared about so much.