2009-03-30 - 7:51 p.m.
Jack Contemplates Love And The Internet (3)
Continued from the entry before
If it was not for Isolation, I never would have met so many friends.
Laugh at the irony, but it's the truth.
My isolation was not absolute.
My isolation was from the physical. The "real" world outside.
For weeks, sometimes months I never saw another living person. The phone never rang. No one ever came over. I never talked to anyone.
My job was gone. My girlfriend was gone.
My roomate was gone. She began living at her boyfriend's house but never actually moved out.
Everyone was gone.
But I was not alone.
I was just living somewhere else. In the computer. In my head.
There was no night or day. There was no time and it was always dark.
There was no end to the coffee and certain CDs played in repeat, and I was always here.
There were no months, days or weeks.
Most of the time, there was nothing to eat. I was starving but I hardly noticed. When I noticed, I hardly cared.
When I finally ran out of coffee and every last thing that could be considered food was eaten (think crackers, peanut butter, stale empty taco shells) it was time to leave the house.
Buy more coffee, cheap powdered creamer, ramen, and white noodles and rice.
That would hold me for another few weeks.
Sometimes I left the house to buy alcohol if I wanted to get drunk, but I never went to the bar anymore.
Everyone and everything was right here.
Right here, where you are right now.
I still don't know how it happened. But it was one of the most incredible times of my life.
It never could have been if it was not for the friends I knew then.
The friends I loved then.
The friends that loved me then.
Friends that I never "knew" and were never even "real."
Somehow, in all of my burning, seething anger and hate, I found myself feeling a love so intense.
I am Jack's burning love and hate side by side.
Suddenly the ex-girlfriend I never really loved, didn't seem to matter as much. She left me broken and resentful, but so did a lot of other things.
For the first time in my life, I found myself experiencing things I never had in the outside world.
I was finally alone with myself.
I was finally able to feel all those things that I was not letting myself feel for months and years.
I could finally come apart.
I could love and hate, laugh and cry, destroy and protect, listen and be heard, feel and be felt, confide and be a confidant, comfort and be comforted.
For the first time, I could really relate and connect.
What happens online, happens in the mind. It is the closest thing we have to telepathy. Two real people that have never seen each other, never heard each other, are connecting and communicating in an unspoken way.
We get to know people we never would have met.
We read each others thoughts.
We read each others feelings.
We connect in a way we would not anywhere else.
In a way, we are reading each others minds.
Parts of oureslves that we would probably never share in real life, are shared and experienced.
What part of that is not real?
The part that does not involve physical human interaction?
This is my experience.
This was more real for me than what's referred to as "real life."
Jack Feels Like Going Crazy, But He Can't - 2009-05-06
Jack's Pathetic Terrified Little Extinction - 2009-04-14
Jack Wakes Up To The Sound Of Music Slowly Disappearing From His Head - 2009-04-10
Once Upon A Time In Jack's Wildest Dreams - 2009-03-30
