Alberich Lichtenberg (@Germanien)

—BETWEEN MEMORY AND ABSENCE: I HOPE YOU'RE STILL ALIVE— (PART 1) I do not know whether the echo of my words will ever find its way to you, or whether you still linger somewhere within the vast digital world we once shared. For all I know, you may have vanished completely, leaving behind nothing but scattered traces and fading memories. Perhaps you are still out there, hiding behind an account on #Gab or #X, sheltered beneath a different name, carefully constructing a new identity to escape the ghosts of your past. Perhaps you have erased every trace of the person I once knew and become someone entirely different. The truth is that I have no way of knowing. And yet none of those uncertainties compare to the one question that has haunted me more than any other. I do not know whether you are still alive. I do not know whether you continue to wake up each morning beneath the same sky as the rest of us, carrying your burdens and your hopes into another day. I do not know whether you found reasons to keep going when life became unbearable, or whether you ultimately fulfilled that tragic promise you spoke of so many times, for so long. The possibility that I may never know is a weight I have carried for longer than I care to admit. There is something uniquely painful about not knowing whether a person who once occupied such a significant place in your life still exists somewhere in the world. The silence you left behind has always felt heavier than any goodbye. And despite everything that happened between us—despite the anger, the disappointment, the lies, the hurt, and the scars we left on one another—there remains a part of me that cannot help but hope. From the deepest corner of my heart, where the remnants of what we once were still lie buried beneath months of distance and time, I hope that you are alive. I hope you survived whatever darkness surrounded you. I hope you found reasons to stay when leaving seemed easier. Even if you have become a stranger. Even if the person I once knew no longer exists. Even if you wear another name, tell another story, and present a different face to the world. I only hope that you are still here.