Confession of an Addict (Эссе)

I am lost.
I AM lost.
I am disconnected to the internet.
To my life.
To my reality.
To myself.
I am lost.
I am an awfully lonely actor on the stage facing the dark empty hall with folded chairs and the lights turned off.
I am lost.

I’m deeply ill. Accused. Doomed. Condemned and my sentence is carried out.
I’m an internet addict.
I’ll come back to those old times when my life was still somewhere to bloom. When the horizon meant a lot, when I still had time.
Time to live.
When there was no addiction.

It’s like a fall from the highest mountain, like a flight to the farthest star of the universe.
It’s just… plunging into the world of mass-media.
Please let me surpass the limits of something trivial and let my flight of fancy wriggle its way through the ambiguous world of television-internet-and-me-caught-in-their-nets.
TV and internet – rivals or co-workers?
To say it right – integral parts of one mechanism, powers of one system, strings of one instrument, first steps of one’s downfall…
…somewhere in the depths of nowhere two people gave birth to a child. A child ignorant of the world’s diversity, of the goggle box, of the idiot screen, chewing gum for the eyes, moving wallpaper. Ignorant of regiments of soap-operas and talk shows. Ready to see, hear, taste, learn and digest something already chewed up by others…
It’s television that constitutes the main part of my childhood memories: a striking and shocking cartoon about children in the world of indifferent adults: a nice sunny TV show to make remarkable one of those holidays; a stunning movie about love and death, like a shot catching me in the adult life…
Even my first childhood memory will forever be tied up with the theme tunes of the first soap-opera (the one about slaves, you know)…  

Now it seems to me I sometimes can hear ITS voice whispering:
“I am the god. I am the devil. I am the flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood.
I will close your eyes, I will grip all your attention and mind , I will become your will and your only desire. Don’t stuff your head with the universal problems. I will think them over for you”.
And every evening at an appointed hour (or may be I’m just dreaming) the face will look at me, tempt me, take me to its make-believe reality.
…May be there are no other cities and countries, no people except those I see every day crowding the streets and houses, looking at me without ever noticing me.
But I have found a way out. I have created my own various and never-ending world (sometimes I even used to think I was its Mistress and Goddess).
In some newspaper article I read that dry strictly scientific explanation of my lifestyles: TV supplies me with food for thought and conversation, sets up attitudes, tensions, frustrations, making profound effects on my personality.
Even newspapers can tell truth, it’s no use trying to deny it.

Someone will say, “Hey, take it easy! Television, internet are just means of relaxation, distraction for some people, for others they are useful devices helping to fulfil domestic chores, to stimulate and encourage no matter what amount of education and social background you possess. There are both low-challenging and high-brow programmes and projects, to each his own”.
Hundreds will see no evidents of real harm done to people. So how can I, one of the mass media loyal valets?

But of course there are different categories and different people. The ones with susceptible psyche won’t remain immune to the unique battering of visual and aural stimuli, for them the effect of TV and internet will be either beneficial or detrimental; in case of handicapped viewers TV and internet are almost the only source of life’s experience, only through television and internet they can enjoy walking along the warm sand seashore bathing in the rays of the setting sun, enjoy seeing outlandish countries and their inhabitants… And actually not merely they but each of ordinary viewers discontented with his or her lifestyles can plunge into the reality offered by mass-media.
Like I did.
For TV addicts it’s a need for favourite programmes and shows rather than necessity to be up on the latest news and issues.
I think I started with it, with television I mean, to later join a more sophisticated community of virtual reality-inhabitants, internet-users.
Why not? You are free to communicate with others, to build up your new image and personality unshackled from binds of stereotypes and complexes tormenting you in real life. You are free to stage your own life-drama, you are its only director.
The most important thing for many of us is a want for connection with the similar persons.
On the internet its users acquire a certain status, they are active managers of their life and this can’t but lead to internet-absorbing because nothing else can supply you with such a great opportunity to change and feel changed, powerful, mighty, even omnipotent.

How could I ever live without the NET?
I thumbed through the seconds of life, I survived through a yesterday and could not bring to mind its memories tomorrow. I can’t remember all those yesterdays even now… but for some hooking hints I would have never experienced their vague shadows again…

I can’t live without internet.
I need to hang over the internet and waste away my precious time and due to it to be crushed and shattered, falling to pieces and blaming only myself.
When I am there, I don’t give a damn about others and their small-minded troubles.
I am not suffering from megalomania. It’s rather as if thus I buy the right to be happy and independent…

But just now… I am suffering – from junction in one place and at one time the circumstances of my happy life and oppressing evening mood.
Just because I am disconnected and the world is out of reach…oh gosh…  

P. S. “Nothing can inspirit you better but a true realization of your hopeless position” A. Camus
I have taken advantage of the frustrated idleness and found such disillusioned soul’s words:
”We live in a made-up world. We believe in made-up gods. We listen to easy-listening music. We have “good” friends. We buy Pepsi.”

I have something to add.

“And we are forever addicts.”