No one ever really gets to know you.

This was at first a defence mechanism put in place to protect your identity. It’s not fucking easy to build relationships when people really know who you are.

But every night on discord, while searching for your people, your appearance, height, age, accent and ethnicity change in order to protect yourself.

It wasn’t until last week that you came to realize the psychological impact that it was having on you.

The AI helps you to maintain your stories for each persona, it gets complicated. Having an AI generated face for interactions through discord has been a venture on its own. It took 2 months to hire the right team and another 9 months before it was usable. The audio portion was tricky with accents but when it was finally fixed it worked. No one could really tell the difference with the exception of a slight lighting issue.

When you sleep you dream of these other yous.

Sharing about your then girl who you adored writing anime style love and adventure stories with, was the last real time that you felt like you meeting people.

It was like a piece of you was etched in stone in that time and space.

The darkness that came afterwards consumed you into a solitary beam of triumph, fighting to be on the top of the world.

It tore you.

So seeking solace in people who couldn’t possibly have motivation to harm your ego, challenge your choices or give other negativity to you in this format was a natural formation.

Shielded yet meaningful connection.

Aaa aaaa aaaa aaa. I’m up, I’m up. My alarm is starting to piss me off. Gotta fix that.

Why was I talking with an accent? My mind has been playing tricks on me. I was up too late again, making a wonderful connection with a Canadian woman on discord.

Everytime that happens a part of me stays in that persona, no matter how much I try to shake it.

I think part of me recognizes a connection, something that is fucking painfully real and deep..