A young woman sits at the window, looking over her balcony into the distant horizon. A wedding procession passes by down below. Colours glint off the finery of people dancing in celebration. She wonders whom this beginning might belong to, as the flashy band fades into the distance. Lights flicker across the city in scattered rhythms, each searching for another that answers at the same frequency. Her own room is shrouded in darkness, pitch black and so different from the glimmer of the city lights.

A notification ding pulls her out of her thoughts. The soft glow from her phone screen fills a corner of the room. It’s a familiar tone, one she has specifically chosen for messages that should not be checked in public.

“Home already?” she wonders.

She sits down with her feet tucked beneath her. It’s a locked notification. She unlocks the phone. The homepage springs up. She scrolls down to where the honeycomb app sits, right beside another one which she doesn’t name. She skips the former and goes to open the new message.

“Hi, beautiful. Got a chance to see what I’d sent?”
“Hmm. Cool new gear, I must say,” she teases.
“Annnd you like it?” comes the prompt response; they’re clearly not someone who doubts themself.
She laughs as she stretches her legs and types back. “Yes, a lot. You know I adore those and I only have a beginner’s version.”
“And yet so mean to make me wait half the day for a compliment.”
“Did you try it on already?”
“No, I want to show you when I try it. But I’m still stuck at work. Catch up later?”
“Oh yes! Our usual time’s fine.”
The username shines brightly at the top of the screen: SecondFred.
What a strange username, she’d thought. Who wants to be second? “It’s like the second coming,” they’d explained jokingly, “but not like Christ.” A simple name that meant something only to them. She thought it made sense.

This wasn’t her life a year ago, when evenings were spent chasing after promises of togetherness. The aisle of dating apps had led her to a dead end. Two-line bios she had tried to compress her existence into, and icebreaker questions too irrelevant to get to know her. An endless masquerade of carefully curated selves while searching for an authentic spark. She was constantly toggling through filters and trying to find a label that described her best.

How could she name something she’d never been taught to name?

The apps didn’t ask the questions she needed to ask; there was nobody to hold her hand in those spaces, nobody to guide her through them. She drifted away from them as she began spending more time in online communities. Here she found people who told the same stories as she did, and she finally let her curiosities unfurl.

She’s still in her bedroom when the notification blinks again. The city lights have dimmed now, and her bedroom is lit by fairy lights. She knows what it is before she even opens the message. She flops back on her pillow with a satisfied smile and looks at the picture for a moment. It’s Freddie showing off their gear.
“You’re gorgeous, Freddie,” she responds.
“Of course, I am, Love.”
“Can I see yours too?” A second message appears, more hesitant.
“Right now?”
“Yeah.” A third text arrives immediately.

She hesitates. Nobody has seen her wear it yet. So she picks it out and wears it. She rechecks the screenshot blocker setting before responding this time. A snap, a crop, and a version of her goes out into the digital world with the possibility of never being erased. She waits, then looks at the ‘seen’ check marks again.

“What do you think, Freddie?”
A voice note arrives this time. “You are so pretty. I think my heart stopped beating for a second there. You should give me better warnings.” Laughter follows, but she knows they meant it.
“That’s enough compliments for tonight. I’ll probably sit in this until I go to bed.”
She asks them questions about how to wear the new style, and they talk some more late into the night. It’s a wonder, she feels, how someone she hasn’t met understands her better than anyone she has met before.

She looks at herself in the mirror before taking it off. She does feel beautiful like Freddie said. Why do people think they’re so different? She doesn’t look like any of the caricatures people imagine. But when she looks into her own eyes, she finds it there: a flame that burns just a little differently. It’s always been there, she thinks, but overlooked by her usual lovers.

The night doesn’t stretch indefinitely. By morning she is rushing back to her hustle. Her clothes are nothing like what she wore last night. Another notification, unlocked this time. A colleague has sent her a screenshot of a mutual acquaintance’s dating profile. Her attention catches on the words in the bio: “..can see all colours, but I’m gender-blind. Unicorns are still mythical though.” Her colleague looks over from his desk, clearly waiting for her reaction. Is she supposed to snicker and judge in communal solidarity?

She’s glancing through her Instagram feed during her coffee break. Oh! Isn’t that a make-up look she’d like to wear? But where can she wear it? Another ad appears, something she keeps away from her main profile. The algorithm seems to be figuring out her tastes.
“Did you see that weirdo’s profile?” someone chimes in.
“Yeah. It’s not that strange though.”
“Oh, you knew? Anyway, what’s happening in your dating life?”
“Nothing much,” she says with a cryptic smile.

Another locked notification dings. She rushes aside with her phone, but her heart no longer races with the anxiety of being seen. She doesn’t know how many like her start this journey and then abandon it too soon, unable to reconcile their two parallel lives. Still, she’s curious about what she’ll find next. Faith is all that holds her right now.

Long ago, she’d asked a friend why they’d cut off their long, luscious hair. “It feels more like myself now,” they’d said. She is beginning to understand what they meant. She’s looking for her own equivalent of cutting off her hair.

Cover image by Ekaterina Grosheva on Unsplash