I joined Second Life seventeen years ago because I wanted to become a mermaid, which is probably not the most serious reason anyone has ever entered a virtual world, but at the time it was completely serious to me.

 

Before that, I played The Sims a lot. I loved building houses, creating characters, dressing them, and inventing little lives for them, but I was always frustrated by how limited everything felt whenever I wanted to make something very specific. Mermaid Sims, for example, were mostly a modded fantasy with very little real play value, while the houses I wanted to build were often far more complicated than the game would allow.

 

There was another thing that bothered me too, though I did not really understand it at the time: it was lonely.

 

I could build an entire town, make everyone friends, marry them off, give them children, decorate their houses and arrange their lives exactly the way I wanted, but there were still no actual people behind those characters. They were mine, they did what I told them to do, and somehow that made the whole world feel a little empty.

 

So one day I Googled where I could be a mermaid online, and somehow I found Second Life.

 

I learned that I could create an avatar, find a mermaid tail, actually swim with it, explore underwater places and meet other people doing the same thing. That was enough to convince me, so I joined and immediately began what I considered a very important mission.

 

I was going to become a proper mermaid.

 

There was definitely a learning curve at the beginning. I had to figure out how to dress myself, customize my avatar, send an IM, teleport, use animations and generally understand what all the buttons were doing, but it was fun from the start because every new thing I learned opened up another possibility.

 

I hunted for the tail I liked, then the hair, then swimming animations because there was absolutely no point having a beautiful mermaid tail if I moved through the water terribly. Once I finally looked the way I imagined, I needed somewhere to actually be a mermaid.

 

That search led me to a medieval fantasy roleplay community, and for a while that became my world.

 

I spent my free time getting in and out of the water, changing between a mermaid and a human princess depending on what I felt like doing that day. I explored forests with my fairy friend, talked to strangers, wandered through castles, danced in ballrooms, and occasionally disappeared back into the water when I had had enough of being human.

 

I even rented a tiny house made out of shells.

 

I decorated it exactly the way I wanted and could literally swim out of my front door to talk to my mermaid neighbors. It sounds very funny now, but I loved it.

 

There was something unexpectedly comforting about that little digital world because suddenly it was not empty anymore. The person standing beside me was another real person somewhere in the world, with their own life and personality, and I could swim outside my shell house without knowing who I might meet or what might happen that evening.

 

The ocean was digital. The landscape was digital. My shell house was very definitely digital.

 

But the happiness I got from being there was real.

 

Eventually, I began wandering farther away from the ocean because I have always loved fashion history, and Second Life turned out to be perfect for that too.

 

I would choose an era, find the clothes, the correct hairstyle, the makeup and the shoes, put an entire look together and then search for somewhere that matched. One day I might be dressed for the 1920s, another day Victorian, and another I would be in seventeenth-century clothing wandering around a recreation of Versailles.

 

That was when I started to understand how enormous Second Life really was. Almost every oddly specific interest I had seemed to exist somewhere, usually because another person had loved that same thing enough to build it.

 

One of the places I visited often had posters and flyers advertising a modeling pageant. I kept seeing them, and eventually curiosity became a very simple thought: I want to do that.

 

There was only one problem.

 

I had no idea how to model.

 

So, I learned.

 

I enrolled in a modeling school and learned how to walk a runway, pose, style outfits, photograph my avatar and present a look properly. Somewhere along the way, without making any dramatic decision about it, I stopped being a mermaid because I had found something new that I wanted to chase.

 

I graduated, entered the pageant and won.

 

That pulled me deeper into the fashion side of Second Life, into shows, events, photography and styling, and it was through those fashion shows that I eventually met my partner.

 

We live far apart in real life, although we do meet in person when we can. In Second Life, though, the distance becomes much smaller because we can sit together, go somewhere, decorate a house, attend an event or simply hug.

 

Yes, it is a digital hug, but there is still a real person on the other side of it.

 

Over the years, Second Life also became somewhere I could go when real life had been difficult, busy or stressful. Sometimes I log in because I want to create something, but sometimes I do not want to accomplish anything at all.

 

I might walk around somewhere beautiful and listen to the music, go to a party, sit quietly by the water or stay home and spend an absurd amount of time experimenting with makeup on my avatar. There is something wonderfully relaxing about having a space where I can change the scenery, change my clothes, change my face, rearrange the furniture or simply wander around until my head feels a little quieter.

 

Eventually, I discovered another love too: landscaping.

 

The person who once struggled to decorate a tiny shell house learned how to shape entire environments. Now we have several homes for different times of the year, all fully customizable and fully decorate-able, and I can quite happily lose an entire day moving trees around, changing a garden, redecorating a room, choosing furniture or getting dressed for a party that night.

 

Second Life itself has changed enormously since the first day I joined. The avatars are more detailed now, the clothing is beautiful, the houses and furniture can be incredibly realistic, and the landscapes are sometimes so good that I forget for a moment that I am looking at something built inside a virtual world.

 

But after seventeen years, the thing that has kept me here is not really the graphics.

 

It is the freedom.

 

There has never been one correct way to be in Second Life, and nobody decides what your life inside it is supposed to become.

 

I joined because I wanted to be a mermaid. That led me to fantasy roleplay, which led me toward historical fashion, then modeling, photography, events, friendships and eventually my partner. Somewhere along the way, I also learned how to landscape and started creating places of my own.

 

I have come very far from that first little shell house, and yet I think that is exactly what I still love about Second Life. One small curiosity can lead you somewhere you never expected.

 

You might join because you want to build something, dress up, dance, listen to music, take photographs, make friends, explore fantasy worlds, visit historical places, go to parties or simply find somewhere beautiful to sit for a while.

 

And years later, you may look back and realize that the thing that brought you in was only the beginning.

 

Mine just happened to have a tail.