Being Me

Stage #5

Stage #5 - The Unstoppable Relationship with the Internet

So let me explain to you my obsession with the virtual world, also known as the Internet.

I am obsessed.

Maybe it's because I find everything on it more glorious than my reality.

Well, in the beginning, I wanted to be an air pilot. I found them so elegant and daring. Then after my dad brainwashed me by saying airplanes crashed a lot, I changed my mind. Then I wanted to be a palaentologist, because dad was always putting up History channel on the televison. But that too vanished away like the mist when he commented that I'd have to have my hand buried in the soil every day of my life.

Then for a long time, I was obsessed with the sky. I loved everything about it, the way the stars just twinkled, the magic of it all captivated me in one big bubble and then I wanted to be an astronomer. But as days went by, I realized I sucked at physics and so that idea dropped too.

And then I become 14 and all of a sudden, I start feeling a sense of devotion to celebrities and their lives. I spend weeks obsessing over a film, a dialogue from it, or a particular celebrity and their personal lives. I don't just want to see them every day, I want to be them too.

I shut myself in the washroom and act like a celebrity. I talk to myself, taking the roles of a million people at to myself. I am the talk show host. I am the celebrity they are talking to. I am the audience who cheers and applauds me for all my humorless jokes.

I print out scripts from my favourite films and act it out when no one's home. I print out lyrics from songs that I take directly to the washroom. I play my imaginary guitar and drums. I attempt head stands and bad boy moves that my body is clearly not fit for. I loose one of my incisors in the process.

I turn into a big clown. My whole life becomes a comedy film. And I get it hard. Real hard.

I cry tears of deep inspiration, because the fact that no matter however much I try, I'll never be them slaps me real hard in the head.

It all hurts me so much and for weeks I am depressed. Then almost as slow as a tortoise I move on with my life all thanks to mom and her irritatingly true anologies.

"Celebrities. They'll do their job and go. People like you will watch them and cry. But at the end of the day, if you don't study, you'll forever be this way. Tina, come on. I know you don't want to be jobless."

Then I live in denial and pour out my heart in what I call articles, (but really, they are just rants) about the very celebrities I worshipped like idols just a single day ago on the net, where I say things like why people even bother about their faux perfect lives so much when there are soldiers out there sacrificing their lives for their countries.

But then, I see Adam Levine singing 'Animals' and pretty girls in gorgeous dresses smiling on the red carpet, and bam!, there comes back the inspired me all over again. It is a cycle. A way of life.

And although I hate myself for it, I just can't crush this feeling away. These goosebumps that ignite my hands when I see them on the television. This euphoria in the pit of my belly, that maybe someday, somehow, I'd be one of them too. It's all too heavy, and crashes down on me like a tonne of bricks.

I fall face first to the ground and just lay there, thinking.

Thinking what my life has become, and why I am so sensitive to honestly useless things like fame.

It is so complicated to decipher. I conclude, life is like that.

I guess I am obsessed with it. Fame.

I hate myself for it. I really do.

I live my life thinking and admiring the life of people who don't even know I exist.

But I blame it all on growing up.