#elle+

There was a time when the internet was confined to a stationary desktop in the corner of the living room in our childhood homes. Every time I turned it on, the machine would groan and whir to life, the sound sometimes deafening as I waited for it to calm down so I could click on Internet Explorer and play Club Penguin, go on Mathletics for homework, or watch a few videos on a prehistoric version of Youtube. And then I would press shut down, go up to my room, and leave the online world behind. My room was my favorite space in the whole world—it still is—and as soon as I shut the door behind me, everything within the four walls became mine and wholly mine. From the bowing bookshelves against the walls in a state of near collapse due to the number of books they were holding, to my paintings scattered all around the room, to my piano, to the loose leaf papers holding scrawls of a story I was writing—everything belonged to me and was a product of my own imagination. Owning something in its entirety like that can only be born of a complete vacuum of outside noise, and when was the last time any of us truly felt that way?