A Journey to 25 | Day 16

A few incidents in school led me to question my belief in friendship. I think it must have happened to everyone at least once during their childhood. Slowly my life shifted from offline to online. I used to call them virtual friends. It seemed like I was meeting like-minded people. People who were as sensitive as me. People who were as emotional as me. I felt I connected better with people virtually than in real life. I didn’t feel comfortable sharing my thoughts in school. I was afraid of being judged. But on Facebook, I felt liberated. I could be myself and there were others like me. Being our vulnerable self. We were a bunch of people looking forward to sharing stories with each other after school. At least I was. I was lucky to not have fallen on the dark side of social media at that point. I was almost always online, from the time I reached home after school until I finally fell asleep. When the world opens its door to the place you feel you belong, you want to live every moment of it while it lasts. This eventually got me addicted to my phone. I would check my phone every five minutes. There was no WhatsApp then. Messages were not instant. It would take about five minutes to just say hi. And Facebook didn’t have an app. We used it from the browser. One had to keep refreshing it to see if a new message had popped up. Life was a bit calmer then. Suspense while we wait for a reply. I think the technology was a little human. The addiction became so strong that during a family vacation all I could think of was getting my phone charged. And then it was taken away from me. My parents never had to take such strict actions before. But this time the stakes were different. Maybe it was because it was an important year concerning school. Or maybe it was because it was changing me. Or maybe just the fact that any addiction is harmful. At that point in time, I didn’t realize what was happening. All I could think of is I am being taken away from the place I belong to. Similar to all other places I had been taken away from in all those years. Whenever I had become comfortable it was time to go someplace new. I was in denial. I didn’t understand I was addicted. Though I got my phone back in a week there were certain rules to be followed for the usage. I think these rules gave me the time to think and reflect on what had been happening. Though I didn’t understand completely my focus did shift back towards the important things. And the most important at that point was studying. Slowly I was getting back to real life. Slowly I started being in real life. And slowly things got better at school. I am still friends with a few of my virtual friends. I did make some more later in time. My addiction almost came down to zero. And I have never been addicted to my phone ever since.