Internet Addiction: My Story

First, a little sidebar. I want to keep names out of this so, I will be referring to my ex as "What's his name".

When I was in my teens, my mom gave me this advice when ever I broke up with or was broken up with by a boyfriend: "I know it seems like the end of the world but years from now, you will look back on this and think, I wonder whatever happened to old What's-his-Name." Anyway, that is why the clever pseudonym.

After "What's his name" and I had our second child, I went back to college. I definitely overdid it. I was working a full-time job, a part-time job and going to school full-time. We had kids to feed and I wanted to be a good example for them, working, educating and trying my best to be all I could be. "What's his name" said he would be supportive. At that time we had gotten hooked up with AOL. I thought it was a cute hobby for him. He looked up stuff. He built a family tree. Good times.

What I didn't know is that he was also "meeting" people online. Now, that in and of itself is not a bad thing at all. It's nice to chat with people that do not judge. I did notice however that as time went on he was spending more and more time online. I found out soon how much priority he had given to these online relationships because of my middle daughter (at the time she was our youngest and she was about three)

Again, sidebar. For the sake of anonymity I will be referring to my kids as G1, G2 and G3.

One day, G2 came to me, very excited "Mom c'mere and see what I did". She took me into her room and showed me that she had rearranged the closet. The clothes were in order by color, shoes were lined up, everything was perfect. I told her how proud I was of her and that it was such a big job! What a fab kid! She wanted to show "What's his name". She said "Come see what I did in our room!". His response was quite familiar by then, from his computer desk he said "in a minute, I am in the middle of something". My darling, wise daughter looked at me and said "I need to be pretty patient with him". It about broke me heart.

It continually amazes me that a person can physically be somewhere and not be there at all.

Tommorrow:

The other "woman"