Words native to [place of lost]

One year and eight months ago, I was depressed.

Words native to [place of lost]

About ten years ago,
I saw a fat man with a Star Wars shirt on the street. The fat man looked terrible, but the shirt had a cool stormtrooper riding a chopper; This visage caused the following internal dialogue within my mind:

"Why is he wearing that shirt?"

"Well, it's a cool shirt."

"Yeah, but it's just a picture atop a black shirt, there's cooler shirts out there, like full-print."

"True... I guess he just finds that particular stormtrooper cool, like that."

"Yeah, but why wear it on a shirt?"

"I guess he wants people to think of the stormtrooper when they see him? Like, he wants to give off those cool vibes by wearing the shirt?"

"But why not work towards BEING the cool thing instead of showing it?"

"...Huh..."


Seven years ago,
My life consisted of work, gym, computer, and a rare hangout with friends in the big city. I wasn't exactly happy, nor sad. Just tired, tired of existence, hoping death could hurry up and take me so I could get a rest. This thing, 'being a human', as good as I was at it, I just didn't want to do it anymore. Like Sisyphus pushing a boulder, I understood the job I was doing, and it was hard, but I knew there was no point to it.

My internet life, for many years, had consisted of unrestricted usage. In early 2009, it was browsing through forums, sites, ungodly horrors, and God knows what else. Eventually, as time passed, I got captured in a bubble: Do you want to visit 4chan, webcomics, manga, anime, YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, porn, or play a game? My day would probably start at YouTube and end at YouTube; this is the only fixed pattern. Everything else could be accessed in any order, unless I played a game, in which case I would probably spend 10+ hours playing.


Three years ago,
I had two years' worth of overseas tours of duty under my belt. From that point on, any small bump in the middle of the night would violently wake me up, heart racing, knife in hand, standing on the bed before I could realize I had woken up. I took virulent hatred for the folk waving around the word 'PTSD', as if they knew what that meant. I grew a deep hatred for most political groups, especially for those that advocate for war. I was fit, I had a house, and my eyes reflected a silent horror most people should not understand. I got myself a partner earlier that year, and my friends thought me I looked happier.

In a way, I was happier, even then, I hoped death could hurry on its way to take me. I was still using the internet as much as ever by that time, but video games became very boring. The fantasy, the power, the experience, it was just not the same, unless the game had a 'something' I enjoyed. 90% of my internet usage was devoted to YouTube at this time.


Two years ago,
I was jobless, had not a single penny in my pocket, a hobo with a house, such are the ironies of life. Whatever little money we got was thanks to my partner gaining a few changes doing commission work, even then it was only enough to pay the bills and ensure three meals a day, for most of the month. I would only eat a meal a day, sometimes half a meal, even then my internet usage did not decrease. And more than ever, I was depressed.

One day, when taking a bath, I got electrocuted whilst grabbing a pipe. At first, I did not understand what was happening, I felt a weird vibration going through my body, and before I could realize it, I was unable to let go of the pipe.

Every muscle in my body tensed up as the electricity traveled from my finger to my foot, eventually, as per a miracle, I let go and fell onto the hard floor like a rag-doll. It took me about a minute to get up and stumble my way to the bedroom, soaked and crying into my lover's arms like a newborn baby. It was the first time I cried in many years, not out of pain, or fear, but for the thought of my lover finding my corpse in the bathroom.

Later that same month I would be trembling atop a chair, installing a new light in the house after the old wires burnt. The thought of having experienced trauma, and said trauma manifesting such a strong physical reaction on my body clung to my mind for the rest of the month.

Eventually, I wrote about my past, about my whole life, without stop, for hours and hours on end. After a month of work, I finally reached a conclusion: My internet addiction was my body coping with trauma, and as long as I kept this up, I would never move past it.

Can you imagine if I never bathed again after the incident?


One year and nine months ago,
My plan started; at first, I would limit the time spent on the internet to 'only 4 hours at night tops,' I would say to myself, and spend most of the day doing whatever to entertain me. A few days later, I realized this was a terrible approach. I needed to completely cut off the devil from my life. With a heavy heart, I disconnected the computer and doomed myself to an offline life.

At first, I was bored, so I searched for any sort of entertainment I could find. I drew, read, cleaned the house, walked, stared at the clouds, but the hours simply refused to pass. After a week, I developed a routine: I would wake up at five in the morning and prepare some dough. Then, while the dough was rising, I would clean the whole house, take care of the plants, and go out to collect fruits from a field. At about six in the morning, I would make juice with the fruit and put the dough in the oven (very simple cake, flour, sugar, fruit, and yeast); then, while the cake was baking, I would play tarot in the garden.

By nine in the morning, I would be drinking juice, eating cake, and watching the clouds go by, marking the start of a new day (And this was winter!). For the first time in decades, I felt fulfilled. I was enjoying the fact that I was alive.

I had not a single penny in my pocket; as a matter of fact, I was probably slowly starving, but in all that misery, I found myself happy. I made plans to play tarot at a local place where people that are into that sort of thing congregate, and eventually, I realized I did need some internet in my life.

The internet is genuinely useful when treated as a book, and so I did. I would only access the internet to find useful information, and for about a week, this relationship worked wonders.

Again, thanks to an irony of life, just when I found my happiness, I got a job offer. Not an interview, but a fully-fledged 'do you want this job?' sort of deal. Needless to say, I took it with both hands.


For the past year,
I have been working full-time on a computer. I am thankful for the job I have, and especially thankful to the fact that I am good enough at it to 'make myself' free time by exhausting every task until there is nothing to do but relax.

I sometimes miss the days when life was as simple as baking a cake, paying the bills, loving my partner, and tending to the house, but I wouldn't change my current life for that one. That experience made me understand that indeed, the cliché of 'happiness is inside of you' is in some way true. But I cannot put my hand on what exactly that happiness is, or how to reach it. I only know a few facts thanks to the experience:

I guess overcoming one's traumas could help? Or maybe learning to 'enjoy the creation' as some religious folk say? Maybe some belief in the paranormal is needed to enjoy life, such as how I devoted myself to the tarot and occult in those dark times?

I cannot answer these questions. I can only hope this post gives someone some needed guidance.
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This tale has been written for the Agora Road Travelogue (June '24).

Footnote, some observations on internet adiction:
(Note: Be advised, this footnote has not been spellchecked)

So you might wonder, what am I doing here, posting on this blog, if I stopped using the internet for anything but information gathering?

Well, I am trying to find the line between Tonic and Poison. So far, I have noticed that some mindless entertainment such as watching a video is needed for the brain to unwind. You can't pick-up 'reading' as 24-hour entertainment, at the very least you need to just lay down and watch the clouds go-by (Watching a video is akin to this or watching a performance!).

I have realized that there is something about watching figures move that lets the brain 'rest' in a way that sleep or meditation cannot. I can not explain this phenomena, nor do I have the resources to do a study on this, sorry.

The 'Gauge' I have found to measure whether something is good or bad is the following:

If you do not feel bored through the day, or feel like 'doing something else' (that is not inside the computer), chances are whatever you are doing has the potential to be bad for you.

If you cannot put something down midway-through, that thing has 'hooked' you. This is VERY dangerous, only interact with things that 'hook' you if you have enough self control to stop at will. And even then make sure to purposefully put the thing down midway-through at least once per week to ensure you still have control. This is very important!

Now, when I say 'putting down' here, I do not mean 'midway-through'. What I mean is, say, you have allowed yourself to use a site like youtube for a little while, you watch a single video on youtube and now it is time to go through your day.

Do you feel like going back to watch another video? Do you sit in the sofa and some weird impulse in your body tries to convince you "you're free now, you can watch videos it will do no harm"?

Basically, is your brain asking you, in any way, to sit-down and watch youtube videos even though you already allowed yourself the treat, and should not be further engaging with the platform?

If you notice any of this, when putting-down a site, or app, or whatever, stop using it until you are completely sure you've got enough self control not to fall into the trap. In the case of something like this, instead of 'putting it down once a week', you should only interact with it at most once a week.

Go on and try it, you will feel the effects of this in real-time if you quit youtube cold-turkey for a whole week, from monday to next monday. When it comes to sites with strong hooks like youtube, tiktok or reddit, I would advise against using them for entertainment more than once every two weeks, ever.

When it comes to useful stuff like watching an informational video on something you want to learn, reading an useful post with answers about whatever or that kind of stuff, it should be fine to use, just be very careful not to accidentally use it as entertainment (I.E. watching 'educational' stuff like vsauce).