My Thoughts

Falling for a Star

When I was fourteen, I was bored at home and decided to search for new music on YouTube.I stumbled upon the Billboard Top 100 and came across this video called "Rewind" by an artist named "Skye Stevens". The guy was so hot! His moves were amazing. The way his tongue rolled when he sang, ugh... I fell in love with him, at first sight. 

I searched his Twitter and followed him. It made me so happy when he followed me back, within 2 hours, considering it must have been only 4 am in his time zone. He was not some big star like Britney Spears or Maroon 5. He was an upcoming artist, with around 2-3k followers, and so much talent.

Thinking about those days, now at the mature age of twenty and six, is humbling. Oh, how I had fallen head over heels for a guy who would never be mine, never considering the timezone difference, or the fact that, no matter how small of an artist he might be, at the end of the day, he is still a star, an artist, always outside the reach of common people like you and me.

I vividly remember the excitement of that first week after following him. On Saturday he posted a tweet that essentially said "Sunday with Skye tomorrow at 11 am! Catch ya there!" And I got so intrigued about it. His 11 am was 9 pm for me; I used to have dinner with my family during this hour, study for a bit, and then sleep by midnight. I was in the 9th grade - I needed to have a strict study schedule so that I could excel in my boards, which were to be held next year. My parents used to keep my tablet with them most of the time, giving it to me for just an hour in the entire day. Nevertheless, I begged my parents to hand my tablet over the next evening for 1 hour, from 9-10 pm, so that I could understand what this #SundayWithSkye phenomenon was all about, since the people I had followed who followed Skye were going crazy about it. 

I remember being oh so excited for the next evening. I couldn't focus on school, friends, or even food, my thoughts were focused on this new obsession of mine. The evening rolled around and I took my tablet to my bedroom. The first thing that surprised me was that this celebrity was reposting normal people's tweets! This was very new to me, since I had only seen celebrities being involved in their own shit till now. He was also replying to these people like they were his long-lost friends! This was so incredible! I tweeted some questions and I got a reply on almost everything I asked him. He also favourited some of my tweets, which meant that he didn't exactly get time to answer them today, but might get back to them the next day. The entire scenario was so astounding to me, that I might have been on cloud nine that day.

The more I got to learn about this guy, the more I started convincing myself that I was growing real feelings for him. In hindsight, it sounds like extreme obsession, but at that young age, I did not know any better. I used to wait eagerly for every Sunday With Skye, begging my parents to give me my tablet for 30 more minutes than the original time I had asked. I used this time to read every tweet of mine he favorited, and repost all the conversations he had with me within that hour. And it was all so intimate! He used to ask me how I kept switching between two countries every now and then, how I was preparing for this coaching for 11th grade, talk about how his life felt different after moving to Los Angeles from Canada on his own, all of it. We even began texting each other over DMs, and somehow that fed into my delusion even more. Even though I knew that if he was messaging me, he might be messaging so many other girls too, but it felt like he had all the time in the world for me and only me. 

I even remember an incident where I was fighting with a fellow "fan" (although I did not consider myself a fan but rather Skye's closest friend) over something very trivial, and I got enraged and carved "SKYE L<3VES DIVA" on the back of my hand, with a safety pin. I just wanted to upstage this fellow Skye Society member; what I didn't realize was that that carving would not go away for weeks, and I had a life outside of this internet world. Which meant, all my school friends and teachers could publicly see my obsession with the artist. I did my best to keep my hand hidden from all the teachers till the carving marks faded away, but my friends openly teased me. I don't think I've ever felt as humiliated in my entire life. 

This obsession of mine kept growing exponentially into delusion territory, as did Skye's fan following; but he still made time to connect with as many fans as he could. He would have his manager tweet that "Skye reached the tweet limit, he would DM as many people as the limit allows, tomorrow".  I started performing poorly in school as all my thoughts were fixated on this one virtual person. I used to sneak out of bed and into my parent's room after my designated sleeping hours, take my tablet into my room, and keep talking to this luminescent human for what seemed like hours and hours. This would, of course, lead to me having very little sleep at night,  and I would not have enough energy to keep my eyes open during classes. My parents reprimanded me for this behaviour, but I would not pay any heed to them. I remember hugging my mom and crying at 3 am, for some board paper that was to be held the next morning at 7, because my notes were half empty and I did not know what and how to study for the exam. Looking back, I somehow believe this intense infatuation was also one of the causes that led me to not be able to concentrate on my 11th and 12th coaching, and almost flunking my classes till my mother came to my city for two months and basically forced me to score at least the bare minimum marks required to pass the grades. Of course, I ruined my chances of getting into a top-tier university, as I could not crack even JEE Mains. 

I believe I started outgrowing this phase once I reached college and started interacting with real humans, real boys. Till then my brain believed that the attention that I received from a person sitting oceans away was all the attention I could ever garner, and boy was I wrong. I did have a tumultuous dating life in college, but that is a story for maybe another time. The more I started interacting with my hostel friends as well as day-scholar friends, the more I started to forget this virtual love of my life, checking his twitter from once a month, to once in three months, to biannually. 

One day during my summer holidays, I had opened his twitter account, and noticed these strange pictures with the words "The End", "The Beginning". I was super confused, but could not receive any answers since I had lost touch with the Skye Society too. I tried messaging him, but he did not pay any attention to my tweets. The next day, I learnt that those words meant that he was transitioning: from a pop artist to an EDM artist. In the following days, I would learn that the artist I had come to admire and love, for being so down to earth and interacting with his fans like he lived in the same plane of space as us, had transcended into the snobby plane of celebrities; he would not respond to any of his fans, not interact with tweets or DMs, nor would he have the regular Sunday sessions. I guess what ended the deal for me was when I messaged him on Snapchat once or two times, asking for a reason for this sudden change, and the next moment I realized I had gotten blocked. 

I learnt that people could change in the snap of a finger, whether continents away or right beside you, be it a normal human or a celebrity. I'm sure he must have had his reasons for the change, but it felt very disrespectful that you would not speak about the transition to the people who basically built you from the ground up. Whether I learnt an actual lesson from the experience is debatable; but this was the story of how I fell in and out of my first love.