i had 48,000 followers. then i vanished. 👻

how i found my voice again (spoiler: it was hiding behind the mute button)

tl;dr: i'm having a moment reminiscing about the good ol' days of blogging, when we were all just trying to figure out how to internet. spoiler alert: it was messier, weirder, and way more fun, and honestly, substack is really filling that void for me. and i’m grateful for (and to you) for paying attention. 💖

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Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

it's 2000.

i’m 13. i have just moved from puerto rico to michigan. celine dion is belting out "that's the way it is" while we're all still recovering from the emotional rollercoaster of "my heart will go on".

meanwhile, britney spears has (indeed!) done it again, serving us red latex realness and making us all question our inability to do synchronized dance moves in outer space.

and i’m sitting in a very cold basement en la casa de tio jimmy, jamming to the corrs’ “breathless” and to nelly furtado’s “like a bird”.

a chunky beige computer is in front of me and i am clacking away.

"mami, por fis, don't pick up the phone!" i yell, as i wait an eternity for my angelfire page to load. i’m shivering as i pray up to the dial-up gods that mom wouldn't pick up the phone and ruin everything.

we survived y2k (uh, remember when we thought our toasters might gain sentience?) only to willingly infect our computers with hepatitis e¹ while on napster. and it was all to spend hours downloading a possibly mislabeled "G0tta-Tell-You-Samantha-Mumba.mp3" at a whopping 3 kb/s.

ah, and how could one forget the sweet sound of an aim notification, and the even sweeter sound of pirated music… 🎵💾 (i now diligently pay for the albums and records i buy and have a spotify premium subscription… god, i feel old!)

this, mis amores, was the beginning of my illustrious career as an internet oversharer.

The AIM interface along with its most used feature - the away message. Source: Reddit, r/nostalgia.

now, fast forward a few years.

i'm 16, rocking some truly questionable fashion choices. i’ve got my spiky short hair and i’ve discovered now that if you permanently wear an oversized sweatshirt you will never be cold. and i've just discovered xanga. suddenly, i have a platform to share my deepest, most profound thoughts. you know, earth-shattering stuff like… (cue the jeopardy “thinking” theme song) … erm… i don’t remember. because i was too busy customizing my xanga theme and writing angsty poetry about my crush who sat two rows behind me in algebra ii.

the early 2000s were a wild time, mis amores. picture this: your nokia 3310 is blowing up with calls (probably from your mom, let's be real), texting was not a thing for me yet because it was extra. and you're spending way too much time crafting the perfect away message for your aol instant messenger.

but the real magic? that was happening on our blogs.

xanga, livejournal (and much later tumblr) – these weren't just websites or pieces of software, they were our digital lives.

Xanga was my preferred blog of choice, it was the one all of my friends in high school used. We grew up together on Xanga and AIM. Source: Xanga.

at least for me, it was my soapbox, my virtual treehouse where only the cool kids (read: other socially awkward teens with too much time on their hands) were allowed.

i remember staying up way too late, typing furiously about... well, everything - my hopes, my dreams, that weird thing that happened in the cafeteria, my totally original and not-at-all cringeworthy song lyrics. family drama. friend drama. church drama. my mental health. everything. it was beautiful chaos, and i loved every second of it.

and the best part? the connections.

we'd comment on each other's posts, plan hangouts, share secrets. it was like passing notes in class, but cooler and with more gifs.

this didn’t happen until 2010 for me (by then i was in college), but my tumblr even blew up at one point – it climbed in just four months to over 48,000 followers! it was fucking insane. i would interact with so many people, sharing their posts, writing back to them, asking them questions, sending anonymous declarations of love to my tumblr crushes. i remember feeling like i was basically the beyoncé of the blogosphere. (okay, maybe more like the left shark of the blogosphere, but still.) i felt very nifty.

If you had Tumblr, it could be (remotely) possible you followed me at the time. I had either this picture or a color version of it as my profile pic. My account was “thisisthewayeprolls”.

but ay, dios mío, it wasn't all rainbows and html glitter. the internet, as we've all learned, can be a cruel mistress.

anonymous questions went from cute to cruel real quick on tumblr. it just spiraled, it was coming at me at immense volumes. overnight, i was dealing with bullying, threats, and the looming specter of being outed to my family and church before i was ready. i was getting threats of doxxing, of violence, and i took in all the insults. it was horrible, and i started to spiral down a very, very awful space. it was like "mean girls," but with more keyboard warriors, more anxiety, more suicidal ideation, and less lindsay lohan.

drama with other creators became a constant, suffocating presence. i'd wake up to find entire callout posts about things i'd never said or done, my words twisted and taken out of context. people i thought were friends suddenly became vultures, picking apart every post, every reblog, every like.

my inbox became a cesspool of hate and accusations. "kill yourself," they'd say. "you're problematic," they'd scream. and for what? a misinterpreted joke? a reblog from the "wrong" person? or a reblog that i didn’t do? what?!? it was domino after domino. and i was falling down. badly.

This was me… then, circa 2010-2011.

the worst part? the constant fear. fear that someone would find my parents' facebook profiles and out me. fear that my address would be leaked. fear that i'd lose my scholarships if the wrong person saw the wrong post. it was paralyzing, consuming, destroying.

so, i did what any self-respecting millennial would do: i ghosted.

i deleted my tumblr and just like that, poof! 48,000 followers gone, along with a piece of my heart and a very detailed and thorough diary of every thought, feeling, and musing i wanted to share to the world… and it was glorious.

i felt good when times were good. people loved what i wrote and what i'd share. i developed friendships with people i've never met, friendships i still have today. but the cost... dios mío, the cost was too much to bear. it took years of therapy to unpack the trauma, to stop flinching every time i got a notification, and to trust online spaces again.

fast forward to now, and here we are on substack. it's like the universe heard my silent prayer for a grown-up version of my beloved blog days. commenting, chatting, connecting – it's all here, minus the drama and plus some actual adulting (well, sometimes). it's beautiful, really.

high school friends, family members, complete strangers who somehow find my ramblings interesting – we're all here, creating this little corner of the internet that feels like home.

so, to all of you reading this – thank you. thank you for being part of this journey, for engaging with my crazy, for celebrating the mess that is me.

you're helping heal a part of me that's been quiet for too long. every comment, every share, every "me too!" moment – it's magic. you're making me feel like that excited kid again, staying up too late to pour my heart out online. only now, instead of spiked short hair, i have long brown hair and a few gray hairs here and there. instead of algebra homework, i have... well, taxes? but the spirit? still the same.

so here's to us, to the internet, to oversharing and underappreciating how good we have it.

may your wifi always be strong, your content always be fire, and your heart always be open to connection.

now, if you'll excuse me, i need to go update my away message on aim to a cryptic lyric. (the ancestor of vaguebooking! there, i said it first.) oh wait...

con todo mi amor y un poquito de locura,

edgard 💖✨

1. hepatitis e is what i call giving your computer viruses, malware, & tons of other similar things that end up getting it really, really sick.