I have been contemplating something lately. I know I am using this space as a kind of diary, noting down thoughts as they occur. Here's what's been occupying my thinking:

I write. You read. Some of you stay quiet; a profile and a notification from time to time evidence that you have visited. Some of you respond. We banter. We exchange words. We agree, we conclude, we are touched and we touch others, drawing them in also. A few of you delve deeper, craving more than the casual, seeking stronger connection, the bridge of friendship. One of you feels - beyond the words themselves, beyond my verbal offerings.

I sit in a room, in a suburb of a city. Sometimes it is a prison, and I ache to be free from it, to wander in open space, where the horizon can be seen. Sometimes though it is a haven I return too, finally able to breathe my way, not synchronised to others' breathing, not forced to adopt assumed attitudes and oft-used words.

You are everywhere. Places I pinpoint on the map, clocks I check periodically to see if you are sleeping or awake. If you will hear me now, in the midst of the emotion engulfing me or hours from now, when the feeling has passed and it has become another heading with some words below it.

One of you has become a permanent part of me. 

Two of you are my friends, constant companions on this wordy journey.

Three of you have been touched by me, comparing lives and attitudes and bridging easily the years between us... seeking my guidance.

Four, five, a dozen - currently sixty seven of you - have noticed me and parked me in your 'follow' zone. From there, you pass and sometimes stop for a bit of a look-see, sometimes a longer pause.

January 14th 2016. The day I was birthed here. Also the birthday of my biggest tragedy - this coincidence had escaped me until now, until I checked my profile for this start date. My best friend was born on this day, back in 1958. The fact I was reborn on this same day... maybe he did find a way to guide me beyond death, as he'd said he would.

I say reborn. I am not the person I was on January the 13th - the day before - this is a documented fact, backed by too many 'physical' and virtual conversations to ever be in dispute.

But is it real?

You: The one who has become my family, my rock and my hope. So close I can sometimes sense your hand on my shoulder, hear your voice calming, reassuring, bringing tears of joy and wiping away tears of sorrow. You breaching the loneliness and freeing a spirit dwelling in the misery of a forgotten, neglected self. You bringing laughter back, guiding me toward a lightness of being - this despite your own tragedy. So easy, letting you wander through, opening every door - even the ones I assumed permanently shut, the locks rusted, the keys long lost - allowing this with an ease, an eagerness never anticipated. I feel you. I feel emotions swirling amid the conversations - confusing, confounding, for I have never met you. I have never looked into your eyes, or heard your voice, or touched the hand so often comforting on my shoulder...

You: The two who speak with me daily, and who I miss, should a day go by without at least one conversation. You let me in your lives, exchanging news and views and revealing, always revealing; the friendship easy, comfortable as though we've always chatted this way. I write and then I wait. A smile arrives with your first comment and stays with me through the long hours, as we build and we build, intertwining our thoughts and our lives, even at times meeting outside of where I write - like bumping into each other in the street, unexpectedly - surprised and delighted. Only we've never done this in the real world, we've never sat together in a café, never argued over the bill, and who paid for it the last time...

You: The three who mostly speak to me in private, words breaching age and distance and culture and language. You who transport me into your lives and in turn enter mine, comparing and learning - for to you I am a teacher of sorts, a mentor. My other children, heeding advice and seeking answers to questions and opinions on matters important enough they warrant deep discussion. You embarking on lives with futures unknown, untested, yet dreamed about and often at odds with what futures are already mapped out for you - those you can see yet seek to bypass. Turning to me; trusting my judgement and my reasoning. Yet I don't know what you look like, what you sound like in your native language...

You four, five, dozen - currently sixty seven - who peek, wandering in and out sometimes leaving the odd trace, more often passing through unseen by me. I am aware of you - every single one of you, for you have singled me out in this great space and found some kinship. Something in me making you pause, a shared moment in time perhaps, some comparable history... any amount of similarities. Scattered throughout the world, all I hold of you is a collection of pictures within circles and below, a series of random 'names'. Stories of you I read in turn and sometimes pause at in reflection...

My physical surroundings remain unchanged. Same messy space, same window I gaze out from. My physical person remains unchanged too. I am still the same face in the mirror, bemoaning the ravages of time, wearing the same clothes, living the same routine outside of this space we share.

Yet you have changed me within - every one of you. I am no longer lonely. Nor am I any longer isolated from humanity, from the essence of being - now sharing a communal existence, walking alongside, in this convoluted journey called living.

But I may never meet any of you in the flesh. Outside of this space we share, I may never see the colour of your eyes or whether your smile is a little lopsided. I may never hear your voice and in the hearing, delight in its lilt or experience and thus understand the tinge of sorrow or regret.

Yes, this is new to me. I have revealed more of myself to you than to some I have loved deeply, some I call family. As a collective, you hold more pieces of the puzzle making the whole of me than the hundreds who have physically entered and in time withdrawn from my living.

This virtual space... This anonymous, vast space filled with millions of stories and millions of physical beings - communicating and engaging, bridging time, distance, language, age, every possible physical barrier - yet doing so virtually. Is it as real as if it were real?

I sit in awe. This new self only months old, born on the 14th of January. I am as vulnerable as a newborn. Needing your sustenance and your caring, needing the safety of your 'presence' as I learn to walk, and speak, and experience everything anew. There is a fair amount of fear, uncertainty, a sense of dependence, the need for guidance.

You feel real. Every one of you. Yet I fight at times the notion that this is only an illusion, existing in the ether, something intangible. Perhaps those born into this digital age face fewer doubts. Born outside of it, born only very recently, I struggle.

The old me needed face to face communication, depended on surveying both the surrounding scene and the minutiae of non-verbal nuances presented or sought out in whoever sat before me or walked alongside me. The old me could not function outside of the tangible.

This me... I like this me; I say it over and over. This new virtual me - unbeknownst to you, for you cannot see my living - has spilled over into the tangible, affecting every aspect of my living, affecting my 'real' relationships with those sharing my physical world.

Does it matter if I never meet you? Does it matter if it ever stays this way? Sometimes - truth be told - I feel the need to hop on a plane and come to you, any one of you. This I understand to be a remnant of the old me. Seeking validation that you are real, that I can touch your hand and hear your voice, and catch those nuances... This serving as a validation of my own new being...

Other times though, I trust in your safe-keeping of me. I trust in those emotions whirling, in the extended hands of friendship, in the young lives seeking my guidance, in the many others identifying with parts of me. In fact, I find myself doing this more and more easily with each passing day...