P II

Artist: Katpi

The internet is therapy, like every method of connection. Video games are where I relearned to smile.

As is so common now adays, my therapy progressively grew into something of an addiction. I would spend days, weeks, months on end playing and learning, creating and destroying, winning and losing. I became obsessed with the complacency that accompanies the idea of domination. I think that's what makes power so satisfying. It's a type of pseudo complacency. You dedicate yourself so utterly to something, that you're manipulation of that environment becomes more natural to you than anything outside it. Until it doesn't.

Online games gave me my high school experience. They gave my ADHD a home. My family were gamers; some I knew through real life, but a vast majority I would never meet. Computers became like temples for me. I would pray with other gamers, merging the consciousness online. I was too self conscious to be vulnerable in public but I could speak and laugh openly about all my mind within the comfort of solitude in a game.

I don't regret the years I spent plugged in. But physical relationships became very difficult for me afterward because I had no balance. I didn't go to prom, I didn't date, I didn't hang out with people outside of my computer.

I was blessed to have the privilege of online access. There are still so many people now who don't have what I had in the 90's. Queue the America Online dial up. It took me a while after I left the embryonic embrace of the mind's web to understand how to communicate with my face and to another, separate face. Therapy is endless. I'm always in therapy. It's a daily exercise.
~_~

After high school other yearnings began to scratch their way into my brain. I needed to explore art and life; to fuck and get fucked; to fail and love with my physical body. No more digital curtain.

I made a lot of friends online who didn't live in the same country or even speak English. We spent many lives together. I forgot about my physical body. It became kind of pudgy and blobby. My expression in the mirror didn't change much. It looked sad. And when I wasn't at a computer I was sad. I couldn't hide in games' hypnosis forever.

When you're so used to being comfortable it's hard to be uncomfortable. It's hard to change. It's hard to learn. I had this image of reality from being fed all this media and shit from television. This grule fueled me. I felt like shit and I knew what I was being fed was shit but I didn't know enough to stop being fed. I wanted to die.