Becoming Jasmine Star

It was the winter of 2014 when I made my first Facebook account. I was sixteen years old at the time, and very eager to have my first real online presence. I was going to make friends! And we were going to be friends when I'm an adult and move out of this hell hole and debuted into university life. I couldn't wait until the day came. Oh, the internet was a magical place!

By now you must be sensing how naive I was when I was a wee teenager. With my older sister's laptop in tow, I pushed my bedroom door open before closing it with my foot. I hoped, skipped, and jumped onto my bed and opened it, and made my way to Facebook's register page. In about five minutes, I filled in all the information, well, except the slot where I was supposed to put my name. Obviously, I was supposed to put my name in there, but my name was awfully generic, and could possibly scare away any possible cool people. God, why did you make my parents name me Samantha Smith?

Why couldn't I have a cool name? I definitely couldn't introduce myself on the internet as Samantha Smith. Right? I mean it is the internet, people make up names all the time. That's how I came to a conclusion, that I should be like all the other people, and fake my name, for a fairly stupid reason. But, that was the very mistake that started my life shaking roller-coaster ride of existing as Jasmine Star. Sixteen years old me didn't even know what was coming.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

It's been a few weeks since I made my account. To my surprise, I wasn't on it every day like I planned to be. After two days of thinking of a witty, cool thing to post on my bio, I thought I should think about it offline, as my sister didn't appreciate me hogging her laptop and not even doing anything she saw worthwhile. It's not like I had anything better to do while I waited for life-long friendships to magically arrive in my inbox. Actually, after a few weeks of nothing being there being there I grew frustrated and stopped checking. I somewhat forgotten about it. Until today, when I was minding my own business when I got a funny Idea.

'Why don't I check my Facebook page and see whats there?'

Brilliant.

I slipped into my sister's room and opened the laptop that was on her bed. I made my way to the page. Why where my hands shaking? I'm just going to login and see nothing there again. Forcing a nervous lump back down my throat, hitting the login button, the familiar page loaded. It took only a few seconds but that was enough time for her to contemplate slamming that thing shut and running out of the room.

Small me was so anxious about the cutest things.

I poured over the screen. Everything was the same as I left it...wait, that wasn't there before.

"One new message"

'Wait I have a message?'

Butterflies filled my stomach Immediately. I was so flustered all I could do was reread that over and over again. Until, finally, snapping back into reality and decided to actually open it.

Would the message be from a girl my age with the same tastes as her? Or a super cute boy who thought I was super cute too?

"Oh God I hope so!"

I exclaimed as it loaded.

as soon as it did I read that message at the speed of lightning. This was the most excited I ever felt about something I couldn't wait to find out about some person who liked the same anime as I did. But wait, what was this message?

"Someone I know has the same name as yours, but she died recently.... Are you really her?"

I stared at the screen in awe. Who? Who was dead? I'm not, I'm still alive and well. I didn't know this person so why did they say they knew me? At the time it didn't occur to me that the message had been sitting in the inbox for two weeks. And the person who sent it was sitting on the brink of giving up on everything. I had become the last hope to a person I didn't even know.

If I heard that then, I'm sure I would've freaked and deleted my whole account and vowing to never trust the internet again. But, if that had happened I would've never known that person, and I would probably ignore his story as I skimmed through the TV channels while I innocently ate breakfast. So I'm actually glad that that didn't happen. At least I am now.

"What the heck is going on?! Ugh internet trolls are the worst!"