Internet Time Machine
Blogging Ourselves to Live
A eulogy for our former online selves
This story is part of the Internet Time Machine, a collection about life online in the 2010s.
The air was surprisingly thin for a beach town and I was 2 A.M.-drunk (in the real world, it was about four in the afternoon). I stumbled through Rockaway, Queens looking for my friend Matt’s house, physically and emotionally lost. “Green Eyes” was looping on my iPod in remembrance of the ex who’d broken up with me 20 hours prior and who did not have green eyes, but close enough.
Matt, a college friend, had invited me to his hometown’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration after my boyfriend abruptly put the kibosh on our relationship the day before. I was open to distraction, so in the morning four of us piled into Matt’s car and drove to his house where his mom made us breakfast and took our picture, all colleged and cute. Cut to six hours later: me, rip-roaring wasted, wandering around Queens under the influence of Coldplay. Eventually I found Matt’s house (and my friends), and after a group Chinese food order was placed, I crawled upstairs to my accommodations — Matt’s little brother’s bedroom — where a bunk bed and a desktop fought over me. Which would I give myself to?
