Day 13: This is not Brokeback Mountain. You're not that hot. I can quit you.

So, two weeks ago, after a pretty long and co-dependent relationship – I broke it off with the internet and tried to go it alone.

I assumed that after all the talking and fights, the break-up would cause a pretty serious rift in my life, and I would feel vaguely like I’d lost a half of myself.
I was curious - late at night, would curl into my chilly bed and wonder what the internet was doing without me? Would food taste different without the internet? Would I need a long time to recover or would I find a new relationship pretty quickly? Would we text message sometimes? Would we talk to each other at parties? Could we be friends? Friends w/ benefits?

Almost halfway through, and I have to be a little more realistic. The internet and I are having a lesbian break-up. I was having commitment issues and an identity crisis, so I freaked and ran away with gallant dreams of a better life without the internet. The internet doesn’t really have a personality, so it will welcome me back at my weakest moment, and we can resume our usual dysfunction without changing any of our destructive patterns together. We’ll go back to the internet offering me options – food, entertainment, shopping, and I’ll just use the internet like a doormat – picking what I want to do, buy or eat without caring how the internet feels about it. All that matters to the internet is that we spend a lot…a lot of time together.

So really, the internet and I are in the same room, and I’m just pretending it’s not there.

It’s not that the internet was really that amazing. The internet was kind of average, actually. I’d had better. It was just that…it knew just how to get my attention and keep it. It knew what to say, what to whisper in my ear, just how to touch me to keep me interested, but when the afterglow passed – I was never particularly wow’ed, and I wondered, why do I invest so much time with something that’s just…ehh.

The single life is a little lonely though…and boring. I had other ideas of how this would be, thought I could just pull out my little black book and call up some of my old flings and have a great time catching up. Turns out…they’re all seeing other people, in different towns or married with kids.

The coffee shop was available, so we’ve been hanging out a little bit. It’s a little bookish, but it has been helping me with my homework. The bar called too, but it’s loud, it’s out everynight and always has a hundred people around it. (Also, I think it might have a drinking problem.) The gym, which I was also seeing for a while when I was with the internet has called and called…and called, but lately, I’m a little put off by how demanding it is.

So what’s the answer: Well, I’m not going back for another two weeks atleast…we’ll see what the internet thinks about that! The question ultimately becomes: Do I severe the ties completely, turn my back on all that we have together?

Maybe a longer separation is appropriate – 3 months, a year?

Or did I just need a month to experience what it’s like without the internet, a month to just feel all by myself? To only vaguely explore how the internet affected me without a total cut-off?

Maybe I’m just here for the experience – just to sew some wild oats. If so, after I’m back with the internet – should I examine my other co-dependent relationships and maybe quit those for a while too?

Suggestions? antiochlogan@yahoo.com