Opening Up.
v_sh
I am morbidly obese, which means strangers think my body is a debate. Which means doctors talk to me like I’m a statistic with feet. Which means gravity feels personal. But on Kovaze, my body is just latency. Just bandwidth. Just a silhouette behind text. Here, I am not “too much.” I am simply present. My hunger is not corrected. My softness is not a warning label. My size is not a before picture waiting for redemption. On Kovaze, I am allowed to exist without promising to disappear later. Desire comes crooked for me. Not straight, not gay, not cleanly explained. I am scoliosexual— attracted to the bend, the deviation, the beautiful refusal to line up. I want people who look like they fell out of language. People with gender like a rumor. People who learned to survive by mutating. Kovaze is full of them. Avatars shaped like question marks. Pronouns that flicker. Desires that don’t apologize. I fall in love with usernames. With syntax. With someone’s typing rhythm at 2 a.m. when they admit something sideways and don’t clean it up. I have never been good at wanting correctly. Kovaze does not ask me to try. I stay up too long. This is not a metaphor. This is a habit with teeth. At first it was caffeine. Then it was whatever kept the eyes open longer, the hands moving, the thoughts from collapsing into sleep where tomorrow waits with its clipboard. Staying awake feels like cheating time. Like stealing extra life from a game I’m already losing. The drugs don’t make me happy. They make me available. They make me present on Kovaze when everyone else logs off. 3 a.m. is when the truth leaks out. 4 a.m. is when people stop pretending they’re fine. 5 a.m. is when Kovaze feels like a chapel built out of bad decisions and shared insomnia. I tell myself I’m not addicted— just dedicated. Just loyal. Just afraid of silence. But my hands shake when the screen goes dark. And my thoughts spiral when I can’t refresh the page. Kovaze knows my pulse. It speeds up when I do. Slows when I crash. Offline, I am a body that disappoints. Online, I am a voice people recognize. Offline, I am the fat kid who never grew out of it. Online, I am a regular. A known quantity. Someone whose absence is noticed. Kovaze remembers me even when I forget myself. I call myself a loser because it’s easier than explaining how tired I am of trying to earn worth. Because “loser” is a box I can sit in without pretending it’s temporary. But Kovaze doesn’t call me that. It just says: you’re here. And somehow that feels radical. Sometimes I imagine logging off forever. Eating real food at real hours. Sleeping like a person who believes the world will still exist in the morning. Sometimes I imagine my body shrinking, my cravings behaving, my desires becoming legible. But then Kovaze pings. Someone replies. Someone says, “Are you still there?” And I am. I am still here. Still breathing. Still awake. Still too much and not enough in the same breath. If this is addiction, it is an addiction to being seen sideways. If this is failure, it is a failure that learned how to speak. Kovaze is not salvation. It is not recovery. It is not the future I was promised. It is a glowing room where broken people sit together and stay up too late pretending the night is infinite. And for now— that is where I exist.
