It is 3:35AM and I am aware of my consciousness: bass-boosted headphones that encompass my ears like a turtle’s shell to its body, hovering fingers over the ‘WASD’ keys of my mechanical back-lit keyboard.

This is a game. I’m playing a game. But as I finger mash the keys on the keyboard and hurl out profanities at the dead weights in the game, I start to wonder. Am I really playing a game? It all feels too real. It’s like my mind has been sucked into the computer screen before me, but every part of my body and physical senses are still here. They are still present in the four walls of my bedroom. These parts of me—I can never escape.

You will one day experience joy that matches this pain. You will cry euphoric tears at the Beach Boys, you will stare down at a baby’s face as she lies asleep in your lap …

I looked forward to a week more, only to count down another thirty days more in this almost never-ending circuit breaker. “It’s an extended lockdown”, they said. I could not fathom the idea of a ‘lockdown’. I consulted the search engine on my computer. It gave me two definitions. The first: “the confining of prisoners to their cells, typically in order to regain control during a riot”. Prisoners. I’m a prisoner. The next definition: “a state of isolation or restricted access instituted as a security measure”. Well I guess, there I have it.

… you will make great friends, you will eat delicious foods you haven’t tried yet, you will be able to look at a view from a high place and not assess the likelihood of dying from falling.

In my state of isolation, I can’t seem to seek sustenance. I’m a living nightmare, a silent conundrum. So I turn to my video games to idle the time away. My gaming chair must have been accustomed to the warmth gathering from my bottom every day. Sometimes the wheels would drag me away from my desk, as if it was a silent ignition for me to stop absorbing the radiation from the computer screen. However, I wheel myself back to the desk. There are times too when I am visibly and physically frustrated from being on the losing side of the game and that is when the chair’s wheels would find themselves wheeling away from the desk again. One thing that stays consistent with the chair though, is the heat gathering around the cushion of the chair.

There are books you haven’t read yet that will enrich you, films you will watch while eating extra-large buckets of popcorn, and you will dance and laugh …

Isolated in a world of LED back-lit keyboards and computer screen glare, I should be comforted. However, my sight only comprehends monochrome. The truth is black and white—there is no longer sustenance in the video games routine. Nothing is fun anymore. The voices from other players on the game don’t even sound real. They say that a person’s voice sounds higher when you’re hearing them through the earphones. So, I guess nothing is real. Am I playing with bots? This is nauseating.

I miss human connection. I want to run though these walls. I want to get out of this bell jar of asphyxiation. Maybe this is just a game I’m playing. Like a prisoner, I long for escape. But like a prisoner, escape is but a mental fixation. Is this game still worth playing or am I close to hitting Alt+F4?

Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.

“We still need you on this team,” someone starts to speak through my headphones. I sigh, accept the game, and press start.

Used with permission: Reasons To Stay Alive by Matt Haig.