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Addicted to the internet?
Written by Sean on Tuesday, April 10, 2007
I’ve been told often enough that I was addicted to the internet. I know many other transabled individuals who have been told by family, friends, or even therapists that they spend too much time online. And it’s true, we *do* spend a significant amount of time online. Is it any surprise though?
Yeah, is it any wonder that we spend so much time online when it is the only place where we can be ourselves, and meet people who won’t judge us for being transabled?
Seriously, the "real world" is not very friendly to transabled individuals. Either we have to hide our feelings, repress, bottle up, and deny the fact we have BIID, or, we come out of the closet and we are then shunned by familly, friends, colleagues, and even members of the medical profession. In some very rare instances, we are permitted to share a "real life" relationship with someone who isn’t transabled, and who doesn’t care one whit that we use wheelchairs, earplugs and blindfolds or that wish to be blind, paralysed or amputees.
Even those who know about us and let us use our wheelchair often do so under sufferance. *Very* few accept, much less understand. Which means that when we wheel, we know we are doing so under the disaproving stare (sometimes even literaly) of our loved ones.
It’s not a life that. There’s nothing pleasant about knowing that either you have to hide behind a brick wall, or that you’ll be shunned, that even your loved ones disaprove not only of what you are *doing*, but of what you are *feeling*. Heck, they even disaprove of what we are.
Then, we come online. First, we learn that we’re not the only ones to feel the way we do. A leaden blanket is lifted. We realise that perhaps we’re not such freaks after all. Second, we start interacting with other people who feel like we do. And we suddenly feel free, accepted, supported.
Our day-to-day activities in "real life" is handled with terrible price on ourselves, on our self-confidence, on the core of our being. We get online, and it’s a refuge, yes, an escape from that dreary, ignorant world that rejects us.
I’ve been told that I should spend more time with real people. But online people are just as real. Ohh, I’ll grant you that often we represent ourselves somewhat differently online than "in real life" (IRL). But the interactions I have with people online are *so* much more meaningful than those I have with most peopleIRL. Even my interactions with my partner are often nowhere as meaningful as those I have with correspondant.
Does this mean I lead an imaginary life, where I fabulate and imagine? Nooo, I am fully aware of the difference. I’m not retreating from real life into some kind of delusion.
But I’ll ask you to cut me some slack, to give me a break (L1 please!) when I seek haven online, because having to deny who you are, day after day, it’s just not a life.
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2 Comments
2 On 12 April, 2007, art5080 said:
I’ve followed this blog with a moderate interest for some time, as I am stictly your garden-variety devotee. That
is NOT said as an indictment of the transabled, wannabee,
pretender or need-to-be community, just a statement of
what/who I am. Another reason I appreciate the thoughts
expressed reference the transabled experience is that this
blog is NOT amputee-centric. Again, not as a judgement,
but my devotee interests have not been toward amputees;
only toward paras, wheelies and those using mobility aids
such as braces and/or crutches. But, that’s just me.
However, I have to admit, the author’s thoughts presented about the Internet addiction, have caught my attention.
Even if the Internet has not come to an addiction status,
the inclusion we can find or feel here simply is not available to us elsewhere. Odd, isn’t it, that the
“elsewhere” spoken of IS the real world (IRL) and our
more immediate geographical area ?
As to the assertion that we spend too much time on-line:
I simply have to nod in agreement, “is it any surprise”
that we do so ? To that extent, I can definitely share
quite well with the pretender, wannabee, need-to-be and transabled community.
/Art
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1 On 10 April, 2007, Brice said:
I spent the fall and winter addicted to Second Life, where my pretty paraplegic-appearing avatar used a wheelchair, or crutches where the chair wouldn’t go. I got asked the tough question rather often, why wheel here when you can walk? My answer was that I have not experienced myself as walking, don’t know how to act. I got out mostly because Second Life has grown beyond the capacity of its owners to manage it and it may in fact have been damaging my computer. If I thought things were under control I’d probably go back to the addiction tomorrow.