Preface
Hey everyone. As the title suggests, I recently lost my main Facebook account, which I had been using for 15 years, since 2011. And just like that, all the posts, memorable photos, messages, and relationships that had been with me from my teenage years to adulthood suddenly disappeared.
Background
It happened on a Friday night. I accidentally logged into two accounts on the same device, and boom — your account has been permanently disabled.
Putting the technical side of things aside, hmm... I want this post to go deeper into the psychology behind it: how I felt at that moment and throughout the days that followed.
It has been more than two weeks since it happened, but today is my birthday, and I want to put some of these feelings into words as I look back on the experience.
Emotions
If you've spent a long time on social media and, like me, have been using it to preserve memories throughout your journey into adulthood, you might understand the feeling. A sense of emptiness, of loss, as if a part of who you are has somehow disappeared.
I'm afraid that some fragments of my memories will never come back, slowly fading into oblivion. There are relationships that have lasted for years, even if we haven't spoken in a long time. When I create a new account, should I try to reconnect with those people? Would they even remember me?
Those cringey teenage statuses where our friend groups tagged each other, childhood trips with my family, graduation photos, and... as my girlfriend likes to tease me about, even the old messages with my exes are gone too. =))
This uncomfortable sense of loss reminded me of the same period last year, when I lost a substantial amount of money. But this time, it wasn't just about material possessions. It felt as though a part of me, a piece of my identity and my spirit, had been swallowed by the void.
And so I found myself asking a question:
If everything I have were to disappear, what would I have left? And who would I be?
WHO AM I?
Reflections
Who would you be if the pieces that made you who you are were no longer there? Who would you be if the fragments of your memories could no longer be pieced together to tell the story of your life? And who would you be if you no longer knew who you were?
Who was the person who lived through those experiences in the past? Who is the person sitting here, writing these words in the present? And when your future self reads this again, will that person still be you?
Who am I in the present?
I still remember the first time I asked myself who I really was. It was three years ago, somewhere in the mountains of Vietnam's Central Highlands, in a remote village without electricity, roads, or phone signal. There was only a small school, where children from the surrounding highlands walked barefoot across several hills just to get to class.
Out there, nobody knew who I was. I had no title, no labels attached to my name. And even if I had money, I couldn't have used it because there was nowhere to buy anything.
I think I've found my own answer to the question: Who am I in the present?
I am the intersection of the circles of relationships that give me a sense of belonging and a place where I am recognized and called by name.
The first circle is my relationship with myself: the process of self-awareness through which I know my name, my birth year, my age, my gender, and the basic facts that define me.
The second circle is my relationship with my family. It tells me that I am my parents' son, my grandparents' grandson. It connects me to my family's roots, tells me how many siblings I have, and reminds me of the relatives who share my story.
The third circle is my relationship with society. It tells me which social groups or organizations I belong to. I am a student at School X, a university student at University Y, or an employee or leader at Company Z. I am person K in a group of friends, or person H in a romantic relationship.
The fourth circle is geographical. It tells me where I was born and raised, where my hometown is, which province I come from, and where I live, study, or work. It connects me to the country I belong to, the place that nurtures my sense of pride and patriotism, as well as my understanding of race, ethnicity, continent, and even the planet I call home.
And there may be many other circles, too. Every circle that gives me a sense of belonging, a place in the world, and a name by which I can be recognized becomes another piece of the puzzle that makes me who I am and helps me answer the question: Who am I, really?
Who was I in the past?
Now that I've found an answer to who I am in the present, I find myself facing a second question: Who was I in the past, and is that person still me?
Was the cringey kid in sixth grade, hanging out with his group of friends, really me? Was the tenth grader who practiced math almost like a daily ritual still me? And what about the university student at BK who took advanced courses and started working early? Was he still the same person?
Are there moments I've lived through that have completely disappeared from my memory, to the point where I can no longer recognize them as part of my own life?
All these questions suddenly came rushing into my mind when my Facebook account disappeared. Some of my memories were no longer physically preserved somewhere I could return to whenever I wanted, reassured that they were still there and that they were still part of me.
It felt as though the things that defined me now existed only in my memory, and some of them could fade away at any moment, leaving me with no way to retrieve them ever again.
After two weeks of reflection, I've managed to find a tentative answer that I can live with.
I am still me, even if I lose some memories and moments from my life.
The moments from sixth grade were still me. So were those from tenth grade, my university years, and all the memories I've accumulated throughout my life. Together, they form a continuous thread connecting all those versions of myself and shaping the person I am today.
However, perhaps no single moment, taken in isolation, is truly me. The cells in my body and even the thoughts in my mind back then may have been entirely different from those of my present self.
Perhaps I am only truly myself because I can connect and weave those fragments of the past into a coherent story of who I am.
If one day I can no longer tell my own story, then perhaps that is when I will truly disappear.
For people living with mental illnesses that affect their memories or sense of identity, or for those who have passed away and can no longer tell their own stories, perhaps something of who they were begins to disappear when their lives can no longer be narrated by themselves.
Looking Ahead
Who will I be in the future?
I think that, in the future, I will become yet another version of myself, discovering new pieces that will help me answer the question of who I am.
I will continue to change and evolve into different versions of myself. But the one thread that holds all these versions together will be the values and beliefs I choose to pursue.
I may become nobody. I may become someone no one recognizes. But I hope that, through this ongoing journey of discovering who I am, I will still be able to bring some value to this world.
I'll stop here for now.
Hopefully, when I read this again ten years from now, at the age of 36, I might have a different answer to the question I am asking myself today, at 26.
I hope I will still be me, only a better version of myself, in the years to come.
HPBD to me — 22/09/2026 : ))