Destructive Internet Browsing Behavior

[I don't know what else to do when I get upset or happy or excited or pissed or any other wild emotion I may have, except to write about it. And it's personal and these are my feelings and I share them on here because I'm real and I have a desire to express myself just like everyone else in some form or another. I know I don't have to justify my writing to the probably 3 people who read this, least of all to myself, but I always feel like I have to start with a justification as soon as I feel something heavy coming on. It's dumb, but it's how it goes and you've been warned. I'm heavy hearted and I'm down in the dumps and I really, really, really want to pull myself out as quickly as possible before I spend the next 5 years of my life pining after something that will never be.]

So imagine that you've just made a really hard, life-changing decision to leave behind some things from your past and make an honest effort to move forward by physically moving yourself to a new location. And you did this because you didn't feel like you had much of a choice. At this new location you don't have a job yet, don't know many people, are kind of homesick and still are relying on said things from your past to help you on occasion or just be there when you need or want to refer back. It's comforting to know it's there because it's always been there. You feel comfortable turning to it, and try as you might, you always find yourself going back to it because you have loved it more than anything in the world up to this point in your life. You never gave up on it, but you wonder what the role of your absence will be.

You then find out that after so many years this comfort is no longer available to you. And you find out online. And it's not the first time either. But you realize that by physically moving yourself, you have created the "out of sight, out of mind" situation in which you are in fact, no longer seen and no longer thought about. Do you crumple like you have in the past? Do you feel hurt and cry? Do you feel ashamed of how reliant you have been and how you have let it get so far out of your control that when it stops you feel like your entire world has just crashed, rendering you helpless and speechless? The answer is...yes. You probably do. Because you have actual feelings and a heart and you once had an intense, unshakable hope that the future would bring you something more than the present state of uncertainty.

But all in an instant, every hope you had is shattered before your eyes. All the nightmares you've had are actually taking shape. And that feeling in the pit of your stomach? It is in fact vomit which will inevitably lead to more tears and eventually a headache that will last for days.

You call some friends but quickly learn that they don't know what to say any more than you do. You're frantically searching for any tiny shred of a silver lining and all you can come up with is "my fault, my fault, my fault." You start taking deep breaths and chanting "goose fraba" to calm yourself down but images that would kill you if they could start flooding your mind. You can't decide what to say or do, if anything.

So you choose silence. And you vow to leave it that way, because this is not the past anymore and in the past you would have made your feelings passive-aggressively known. You choose silence because there's nothing left to say. You finally realize after all these years, you have lost. There's your closure. You lose. Game over.

You spend the rest of the evening trying to distract yourself for fear that if your mind wanders back to it for even one second you will break down. You go to dinner and force it down. You watch tv. Clean your room. Write. And you know that this will be the last night you will waste crying over the past. Because you will rebuild and you will thrive. You know that anyone who mistreats you is a damn fool and you refuse to feel this way forever. You know you will be ok because of your ability to feel. You know the road ahead will be uphill in the snow both ways in the dark without a flashlight, but you also know that you have been there before and you can climb your way out of it again.

You will not be defined by destructive internet browsing. You will not waste another night of your life on this because when you wake up in the morning, you will no longer pay it one ounce of attention. You are worth more and you will have more and you will not settle for the first thing that makes you feel comfortable again. You know that you will be ok and you will do it on your own.