"When we got the computer, mIRC was already installed on it," CYN says."That's when I first started using it. We were poor then, so when my daughter went off to college we gave it to her. That's when I had serious withdrawal symptoms." Really? I ask, astonished. "You can get addicted. You make real connections here. You wonder what they are up to, what they are doing, how they are feeling. You want to...have to know."
I get a cold feeling down my spine. I'm fucking with a very real addiction. I'm dealing with something very compelling, like getting hooked on a soap opera or something. mIRC is an entry drug. I file what she tells me in the IMPORTANT folder in my brain. But that still doesn't stop me from staying behind the keyboard, typing away at frantic speed, watching lines of text scroll upwards like a rolling television screen. I don't move. I wait until I'm starving before getting up and eating. I don't leave the room. Shit, I'm fraying at the edges.
I look at the clock. It's Noon. I have until 1:00PM to leave to go to Dr. D's session. I have an hour. I'll just get in as much time online as I can. I bullshit with my friends; I laugh, I cry, I get serious. We would just experience each others lives. It's a fucking spiritual thing of sorts. I find it hard to explain, words fail me, and I'm a fucking writer who prides himself of explaining his world. I look up at the clock. It's 2:00. Dr. D's session starts at 2:00. I blew off my session. There will be serious penalties and repercussions over this. This is know. But nothing stops me, nothing reaches me. I blow off the coming storm, and dig deeper into my world.
It's funny how time flies when you're having fun...or on mIRC, take your pick. I continue to have fun. I continue to make more and more human connections until a series of IMs pop up. Oz, Betty D and OBSIDIAN. OBSIDIAN is livid because I blew off a meeting with him in Starbucks to work on the grant proposal. He's furious. He doesn't realize just how lost I am. His anger does not phase me, nor awakens me. I return to IRC like a sleepwalker. I stay on all night, until after Midnight. God, I burned down another fucking day. Simple as that. I lit the wick and watched it burn. Schoop. Right down to the bottom of the candle. I melted the entire day DOWN.
I don't know what to say. I don't. I was looking forward to fighting the rush hour crowds with my backpack, fucking with the capricious whims of the Way. Construction this, traffic that. I was just dying to do all of this shit. Just dying. I was hopping up and down for the opportunity to spend money that I don't have on coffee and expensive food and to work on the grant proposals. No. I wanted to stay naked, hunched over, with my nose one inch away from my laptop monitor. I wanted to stay on mIRC like I want to stay inside of a Victoria's Secret model...and now that shit's a tossup.
I was given a perfect computer puzzle by god to fuck with. It involved hardware and software and it kept me sufficiently busy enough to cause the outside world to go straight to Hell. My father always said that I have a one track mind, when I want something I focus all of my energy on the task until its completed. For years I've tried to prove him wrong by always multi-tasking. But at times like this, I have to say that the old man was right. I blew off every appointment that I had made, and what's worse, I didn't notify anyone, not Dr. D, not my brother, that I wasn't going to make it. Jeez.
I'm on IM and IRC now, holding, NOT one, NOT two, but FOUR conver- sations at one time. Impossible mother- fucker! How can you do that with any accuracy? Yes, I'm learning how to divide my attention and read four conversations as if they were one. Remember, people are typing, which travels slower to the brain. There are pauses enough to digest more data than having four people rifling data at you by speaking. I look around, raising my head up like a turtle coming out of his shell. It's time to make dinner.
Shit like that. That's how the world bleeds into this obvious addiction, which is getting worse to me. I know it. You don't have to tell me. Shit. When I decide not to go on IRC for a day, I get withdrawals. My withdrawals makes me anxious. When I get anxious I remember to pop my pills. When I pop my pills I mellow out, it makes it easy to then just hop online. It's a vicious cycle, or a one way ride to destruction.
I know, many of you think I'm shitting you. I know many are scratching their heads, but it's really a wild progression. I'm not being dramatic. I need a shave, I'm scraggly. I need a shower, I'm smelly. I need to do laundry, I need to make my bed at least one night or throw out the garbage. I don't write anymore. The only writing that is not suffering from my IRC addiction is blogging. Blogging is so much a part of me, is should be a second dick. There is nothing that stands in the way of that. Nothing.
Khami IM's me the other day. She has a request. She wants to buy my car, which is sitting in upstate New Jersey, rotting in a parking lot for the past two or three years. Hmmmm, just how serious is this? I love Khami, if she wants it, she's on top of the list. Simple as that. This could also be a help for me if I lose my pharmaceutical benefits. I can be able to keep the supply of necessary meds coming for quite some time. It will also boost my savings to staggering proportions...well, not staggering to you...but when you've had less than three hundred dollars a month, tops, for years, this is like hitting the fucking lottery. But I know better than to get my hopes up.
It's funny that this should happen right now though. Right when I could use it the most. Maybe it's not as funny as it is a blessing. Never look a gift horse in the mouth they say. I'm not, believe me. I'm not. I'm just amazed. Baby, I amazed.Hobobob
No comments:
Post a Comment