Oh, how to describe the empty lonely feeling that an internet junky feels when separated from his smack...his ICQ, his AOHell, his e-mail and his chat requests. Sure, our junk may not be as literal and easy to understand as the heroin or crack cocaine of Johnny Q. Chippy, but don't demean it! To us it's just as hyperreal. Take, for example, my current dilemma. "It's just a power out," you might say, but hey, am I making fun of you when you get a headache 'cause you didn't get your little caffeine fix? No, of course not. So let me explain. There I am, happily chatting away with Mezzanine, §tormWillow¤, and Lord Byron when of a sudden everything shuts down. Now at first I'm thinking "Okay, it'll turn back on any time now. I waited.

My next thought was not anything so human as 'what next?' or 'shit' but was rather "I hope they don't think I just left..." Strange that at a time like this, when it's been a half hour or 45 minutes that this is -still- my chief concern. And, of course, that gnawing sensation in my chest that just needs to know what's going on right now with everyone in the world..

Hm, perhaps I did not explain well enough. I am lonely, yes; this should be fairly obvious. But am I alone? Far from it. My sister and my mother are in this house; so are my aforementioned pets. But when you're used to being connected to millions, it just can't add up for long...

So I write. And by coincidence, I end up writing in the same notebook that, only days ago, I constructed a 28 page letter to a person I talk to online. Strange? To some. But I wanted her to see my handwriting to feel like I was a little more...real.

The loneliness. You feel it deep inside of you and, perhaps the first time you've been forced off in a while, you don't know what it is. You just feel something missing..something intangible. You wait for it to be over but it won't end. You lay in your bed and read a book and try to forget but pretty soon it's your everything. Then, when you're around a bunch of your close, real life friends it fades and you know what it was. Loneliness. You never had to be alone when you were online; now you have no choice. When you're lying in bed again that night you think about it and it hurts, badly. It's hard to admit, but that's what it's come to.

But you're lucky now, cause you can admit and accept it. Doesn't mean you're gonna quit. What's so bad about addiction, anyway? Everybody's got one...