Today, I awoke feeling delirious with hot sweats. I walked around the house in circles and paced the bedroom so much, that I burned a hole in the carpet. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, nor with myself, because last night my pre paid internet connection ran out of credit, which should have been fine, because today was the day Optus were meant to come and reconnect my normal home service. But they didn’t. It was like the episode of Kath and Kim, “Waiting for Telstra”, except for the absence of millinery and herbal relaxants.

I learnt something about myself today. I can not function in this world without the internet. Full stop. I know that I lived quite happily without it until the mid 90s, but now without it, I feel like I am back in the 1890s, washing my clothes by hand and ironing my clothes with irons heated by a wooden stove.

By 1pm I really had the shakes. I tried to make light of the situation, by telling myself to make the most of it by watching a DVD or reading a book, but I’d already devoured a 600 page novel the night before in lieu of access to the world wide web, so I wasn’t really in the mood for more literary companionship to kill time (even though I must admit, it was a page turner that kept me up to 4am this morning). It’s kind of like a kid complaining to a mother that they’re hungry and their mum just tells them to eat some fruit. They want chocolate or lollies, not a freaking apple!

At 3pm I had officially cracked. I rang my friend for moral support, and she was pleased to hear that I had ever so characteristically moved on from one addiction to another – smoking to wireless broadband. As soon as I got off the phone, I knew I needed a fix, and I needed it fast. I threw on my clothes and headed to the internet cafe. I didn’t care that I was going to be subjected to “gamers” (young pimply 16 year old boys who spend all day at the internet cafe playing online games), I just needed to log on. Stat!

As soon as my hands hit the keyboard, I felt a wave of calmness wash over me. My breathing started to slow and stress was rapidly leaving my body. It was though, I’d gone cold turkey in rehab for a week, but somehow I’d managed to escape and get a big hit of crack.

So, here I sit now, a picture of serenity. A stark contrast to that of this afternoon, because I relented and bought another 2GB of prepaid wireless internet. Sure it shits me I am currently paying for a home service I can’t use, but sometimes there is no price on mental health.