The Places I Never Returned To, But Still Live in Me

There are places I never stepped in again, but they still live in me.
Dark rooms lit by the cold glow of a CRT monitor.
The light of the modem blinking like a lighthouse in the silent dawn.
No one around. Just me and some band screaming things I barely understood — but deeply felt.

It wasn’t sadness. It was solitude.
But it was mine. Tamed, familiar.
I learned to talk to it when the rest of the world only wanted noise.

While the world slept, I was digging digital tunnels, searching for others like me.
And I found them.
I never saw their faces.
But they were awake at 3AM too.
And that was enough.

I don’t speak of those places with naive nostalgia.
I don’t want to go back.
But some nights, everything I am today feels like it was born there — in silence, in isolation, in the absence of applause.

There, I learned not to wait for anyone.
Not to need an audience.
To trust my own hands, my own eyes, and what I could build even when the world seemed to laugh behind my back.

A lot has changed.
Now there are people around, responsibilities, bills, meetings, obligations.
But sometimes I look at the computer screen, and for a few seconds, that room returns.

It’s not physical.
It’s encoded memory.
An invisible tattoo on how I think, how I live, how I continue.

Today I walk between code, ideas, silence and purpose.
I carry with me fragments of those places that built me when no one was watching.
I still prefer the corner of the room. I still talk more to myself than to others.
But now, I know the value of it all.

Some people learn in school.
Some learn with applause.
I learned in the void.

And in that void, I realized the world didn’t need to understand me.
I just had to keep going.