Introduction + How Did We Get Here?

social media, college, and being 22

Hello!

It feels weird introducing myself to you all, though it’s only natural to do so in one’s first letter. I just feel like we already know each other! Thank you a million times over to those of you who migrated here from my TikTok. And to my friends and family who I definitely did not badger into subscribing. 

[A quick housekeeping note — nothing is paid! I’m still getting into the groove of substack, but I can tell you for certain your subscription to this newsletter is completely free!]

My name is Atira, I mostly go by Ati, though I no longer have a preference. I’m 22, I just received my English degree from Berkeley. It’s not all going to be recaps and reminiscence on the past, but today’s letter will be. 

At 22, It is both strange and immeasurably lovely to still be present in the same corner of social media that I first entered at 18.

I was much less self conscious at 18. Attending college from home for my first (then second) year plus the transporting phenomena of DracoTok combined perfectly to allow me to create Harry Potter content—and the specific fashion niche I found in that—quite quickly. I’ll get into my specific education journey in a later blog, but from ages 18-20 I was focused on two things: 1) transferring to a good university and 2) my Harry Potter TikTok, atipotter. 

Luckily, I achieved both of them, though once I had carried out the first, the second started to fall by the wayside. I didn’t spend my freshmen and sophomore years of college being out in the world—I spent it quite deep in my head, and hoped (we’ve reached the point where if you know… you know) that doing so would grant me new and wonderful experiences. There are multiple avenues I can take to expand on this but that, again, is fodder for the future. What was really keeping me online, however, was that 99% of the people I spoke to, who commented on my posts, or who messaged me, were unfailingly, genuinely kind. I’m massively lamenting the loss of my old phone right now, if only for the album of screenshots of warm and caring comments I kept tucked away for whenever I felt small and useless. The community I felt on my account was comforting, supportive, and made me feel like the luckiest girl on the planet, especially because of the beautiful people I got to meet. 

Those two years were very creatively fulfilling, especially because it was a project that was meant to only bolster my happiness. I was consistently posting, filming, and thinking of new ideas. I was content to be home even though many of my friends were away at college because I felt like I was steadily working my way towards good change, and could enjoy myself in the meantime. Best of all, I was writing. Constantly. Poetry, journals, introspective essays. My internal world had never felt bigger. I have a bad habit of thinking my feelings towards something will never change—I’m happy here, I’m comfortable here, I’m going to feel this way forever. 

My first semester at Berkeley was a new low in loneliness. There’s nothing that cushions those first months away from home, the still and sterile nights alone in your apartment. At home, with the comfort of family and friends who loved me, I could do what I wanted, not asking much of my life outside of my academics and creative pursuits. I had never been the biggest extrovert, but I realized I had developed a deep reluctance to interact with the world outside my room, and was now being uncomfortably exposed. Creating content on social media now felt less like an expression of myself and more of a retreat, all the while the community was shifting (!) and changing itself. I didn’t want to change, I just wanted to go back. 

Like with most things, my life in Berkeley was hugely bettered by making friends. It was less that I suddenly rediscovered social aptitude and more that I had the good fortune of meeting three lovely girls who I could do nothing with and come out of it giggling. My brother moved up to San Francisco. I brought up my car. I turned 21 and discovered mojitos. I had brief but exciting crushes. The world outside slowly but surely widened. I stopped posting as much on atipotter, switched over to a different personal account that had no niche. 

I got comfortable again—though I wasn’t journaling as much, or meditating, or writing for fun—and then I graduated. 

I didn’t know that being 22 was going to feel like being 14 again—in terms of feeling like I don’t know myself and therefore needing to make quick and drastic moves to figure out who I am. I’ve been prone to sitting in the same room I started so much in and dredging up mistake after mistake. It doesn’t feel like the version of me who left home to do bigger things did the version of me who worked so hard for it justice. 

I’m trying to learn from myself. To remember that at every age I’ve been, I’ve worried that it was already too late, that I missed the memo everyone else got, that this is the age hope is no longer enough. I’ve been wrong every time, wonderfully wrong. So I hope 22 is full of love and learning and chance after chance. Feelings don’t last forever and we have time and big hearts to lead us. 

Maybe you’ve read the short story “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros. It opens with the narrator telling us that when you are 11, you are also 10 and 9 and 8 and so on, “because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion.” I will end this winding first letter with a piece from my journal dated December 31st, 2022, because though I am feeling reluctantly 22, I was also reluctantly 20, and I feel like she has a good reminder for me now. 

“I think it’s time to give myself over to luck and hope and imagination and all the colorful yearnings that a hurt and gray existence denies you. I don’t want to be ahead of myself, or anyone else, anymore. I want to embrace foolishness and shame and assume better of myself and the world. I want to assume that I am well, that people mean well, that I am doing well in all I hope to do. I want to look at love this way. I want to look at all the not-so-secret desires of my heart this way. I want to stop lecturing myself about what I should be doing and accept what I am doing, what I want to do. I was almost swayed just now to correct myself from saying “I want,” but wanting is the condition of the human heart.”

Thank you so incredibly much for tuning in, and I’ll see you soon. 

With love,

Ati

P.S. It’s midnight and I finally decided on a name for the newsletter. Doe-eyed it is! I think!