My Best Friend, My Enemy

'I should check my email' has become a habitual thought that runs continually through my mind. These days I think the thought more than any other. Thing is, when I think the thought these days, I get a sort of shortness of breath and a turning in my stomache. Checking my email has been, for more than six months now, filled with huge highs and shocking surprises and cruel words and gut wrenching disappointment. I have started to hate checking my email and yet I do. I check it all the time. All the time. What am I looking for? What am I hoping to find in my inbox? Why has there been so much to dread?

Have I come to believe that this laptop is the portal to my future? Open up this neat little white plastic and steel box and magic appears on my screen. In front of me - schools I could attend, friends that I can invite, men that I might love, money that I could make, a world of things to buy. I live a virtual reality where everything exists as Possibility. I stay tucked inside the pocket of whatever room I sit in and connect with a life that I am too terrified to live. I gather the information on the programs I could take, read the pamphlets and then stick them in a file. I send out hellos to people I would like to call friends, but who don't know my dreams. My inbox is filled with men who I keep at arms length because the ones I let in a little farther stop showing up at all. I research my dream jobs and send resumes and then lose interest and wonder when the part comes where I figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Hell, I don't even order Chinese food anymore without calling up an online menu first. This little white box keeps me so connected that I am more alone at 30 than I ever was at 21 when I had never heard the term myspace.com.

Then I blog about how I can't seem to stop. I blog and glance down at my Mail icon to see if any new mail has arrived and note all the new blips coming from my Skype and my Messenger and my iChat. I google the new guy that I met, listen to a friend's podcast and download an ex's new trailer off of youtube.com. I think about challenging myself to not touch my iBook or ANY computer for an entire week. The thought is thrilling and scary and is only interrupted by a corresponding thought that reminds me...

I should check my email.