Dazed and Disconnected
Short Story About the Digital World
“I’m done with this shit!”
I said, starring intently at the screen promptly, begging me to reconsider my account.
I wonder if they will all think I just disappeared, I thought. Then clicking the last deactivate account button.
Email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube and even my Porn Hub account would all suffer the same fate. The depression, anxiety and bullshit would surely be ending tonight.
Over the last five years I have to admit I was down right addicted to the idea of being so connected to the world. I just couldn’t get enough of it. Many of my waking hours were spent stoned, flipping through random pictures, or videos of everyone else’s ‘happy lives’ but tonight as the moon beamed its soft stream of white light through my living room window something inside me had shifted. I couldn’t seemingly understand, or put my finger on these strange feelings I was having. I was so connected, yet why was It I felt so alone.
Something I remembered reading earlier that day on the bus had resinated through my mind. A piece of vandalism that was scribbled on the back of a seat on the bus, began to now suddenly make perfect sense to me.
“Many lives are spent in fear of such unknowns, its only when we learn to accept the unknown that we are set free.”
It finally had dawned on me. I had never really seen any of the world through these glazed over computer eyes. It was everyone else’s stories, comments, and pictures and in reality none of it was real, only merely images and pixels of people, places and things. Five solid years of other peoples memories, five solid years of wasted time. What could I have been If I wasn’t so caught up In this spider web of information.
When it was all over I was left arched over and drained, like a marathon runner after an epic race. Gazing at a now black screen. I shifted my face into the moons rays and began recalling the days, weeks and even months that I had let drift by, where the only sunrise or sunset I saw was on this very computer screen. Gently I closed my laptop and rested it on the plate glass coffee table in front of me. I slowly sat back and melted into the cool, tan leather couch and once again bathed myself in the soft hues of the moon. I was soaking it all in. I tilted my head back and began starring aimlessly up at the white pop rock ceiling of my apartment. Isn’t it funny how we all seem to think we will live forever, I pondered. How we merely assume the fact that we will always awake the very next morning, with the chance to correct yesterdays wrongs. In reality it is merely luck.
more by ROACH ADAMS
photograph by Luis Llerena
