from the suicide attempt survivor's journal:
Memories time: A digital relationship.
At times I just love to sit and reminisce about the past and re-live romantic relationships. 'Romantic' is actually a broad term for what I am about to share here, with all of you. Here goes:
It's been quite a
while since we've been chatting with lady on some chat app, sending all these messages
and funny emoticons and all that crap. After a while not so long, we even
started to celebrate some weird anniversary. It was something related to our
first digital approach: actually the first message logged by the damn thing.
Browsing through the history of the bloody account, we could tell for sure the
instant we first made contact. Good for me: I wouldn't have to try and remember
this anniversary - the thing was only a click away. Fuck, there was this time
when I forgot to click the reminder, but that's another crappy story.
First, there were
four months of Facebook friendship. Four bloody months, this thing hit me like
a stone. What have I been doing for the past four months? I've been having a
virtual relationship. Virtual, not real, in my head, yet my partner existed physically
somewhere in this world. Nice paradox, isn't it? Me and my girlfriend: we were
a couple, although I've never been lonelier in my entire life. No more going
out with my friends, running straight home from the office, no socializing of
any kind because all I could see and to was to look at a screen depicting words
and images. So I live one life where I moved around my continuously shrinking
physical world, then I lived another life - the sitting in from of the
scientific marvel called computer and then finally my third life, my dream
world of relating to a person/concept I projected rather than knew.
I imagine that she's
my girlfriend, she imagines I'm her boyfriend, but we actually do not have a
common palpable present, not even a common past. All that connects us are
images and words, a pretty picture of everyone of us projected on our empty
life walls. We know nothing human about each other: how we smell, how we
taste, how we react when we're happy or angry, how we feel pain or joy; and
despite all these inhuman connection, we feel more connected to each other than
many people, at least we love to believe this.
Four months' anniversary.
I sent her virtual flowers. She sent me a virtual bottle of wine. Said she
wanted to surprise me although she knew I fancied scotch whisky. I asked her if
she wouldn't mind me having a bit too much to drink. She said I was funny. Emphasized
it with a winking smiley face. And there was all the thrill, the joy, all
consumed using little figures on a screen. These were to replace the expressing
of our emotions when added to our written phrases.
I got drunk and I wanked again in front of the monitor, staring at her picture.
This was our own reality and
we couldn't change it for the world, only because we wouldn't know something
else. We wouldn't know how to function normally anymore. At least, I wouldn't.
At work, I'd rather have sent ten emails than talk to a workmate for a minute.
[...............]
For both of us, this was real. Everything else would be
unreal, a fantasy. This was all we got so far and we were happy with the way
things were, although it was all upside down, making no sense at all.
It all ended the way it began. Everything slowed down and perished, complete with the user name deletion from my chat list. Nothing out of nothing.
Miscommunication, illusions, delusion, projections, lies, fantasies, deep frustration, isolation, alienation and ultimately failure.
"There's no sense, it's all Volta, Ampère and Ohm
Earth to Moon, it's the same as London-Rome."
Theatre of Tragedy - Fragment
