The Game I Gave Myself To

I sold my soul,
not to the devil—
but to a game.

Not a game of dice,
nor one of cards or kingdoms,
but a flickering world behind glass,
a glowing shrine
I kneel before
in a room with no windows.

I offered it my body first.
Casually.
A few hours.
A few days.
A few years.
Now—
I don’t remember what sunlight feels like
on my shoulders
or wind whispering to my skin.
This plastic touchpad,
these mechanical keys,
have become the only language
my fingers know.

I gave it my heart next.
Traded morning laughter
for leaderboard highs.
Swapped out the warmth of voices
for the cold ping
of a system alert.
Every pulse, every flutter
belongs to it now—
the tension before a win,
the shame after a loss,
the hunger for “just one more.”

I surrendered my mind
when I stopped
questioning time.
When hours
began bleeding into each other
like watercolors in a storm,
indistinguishable,
blurry,
meaningless.
Thoughts became pixels.
Ideas—
clicks.
Dreams—
buffering screens
that never load.

I no longer know
where I end
and the game begins.
We are
coiled together,
one feeding the other,
the other
always starving.

I see the world
through the lens of objectives now.
XP points,
missions,
clans,
daily rewards.
The calendar mocks me—
not with dates,
but with login streaks.

Sleep is a negotiation
with lag.
Meals are micro-pauses
between respawns.
Conversations
are background noise,
and silence—
a rare error I dread
more than defeat.

I sold myself to a god
that doesn’t even know my name.
A master made of code
and commerce,
with no face
but endless faces—
avatars built
to be more real than I feel.

I used to walk.
Now I teleport.
I used to speak.
Now I type.
I used to listen.
Now I scroll.
Scroll.
Scroll.
For validation
in leaderboards,
stats,
likes,
a scoreboard of worth
measured in imaginary currency.

I am always here—
chained to a screen
not with ropes,
but with addiction
masquerading as passion.
With loneliness
disguised as community.

I tell myself,
"I can stop."
But I don’t.
I won't.
Because what waits
beyond the game
is emptier
than the hollow victories within it.

The real world—
that place outside the screen—
feels like a fading myth.
People talk of trees
and seasons
and eye contact.
They speak of meals
not eaten alone,
of music
without headphones,
of joy
unmeasured by downloads.

I wonder,
do they ever feel
this ache in the wrists?
This tightness in the chest
when the server crashes?
Do they scream
into the dark
when a level resets,
and everything they built
vanishes?

I do.

I do.

I scream silently,
at 3 a.m.,
when the rest of the world
sleeps,
and I am locked in
with the glow,
my eyelids
blinking slower than the lag.

There was once a boy
who laughed at games,
who played
to pass time.
Now time
passes him.

Now I am
that boy’s shadow,
grown and forgotten,
trapped in an infinite loop—
respawning every day
into the same story.

And yet,
somewhere deep—
beneath this code-worn shell—
a part of me
still remembers
how it felt
to run without purpose,
to lose track of time
not because of obsession
but because of freedom.

That part flickers—
like a dying pixel—
in the corner of my soul’s screen.

Maybe one day
I'll force myself
to log out.
Not just from the game,
but from the grip
it has carved
into the soft tissues of my being.

Maybe I’ll walk barefoot
on real grass
and feel surprise again—
not from twists in quests,
but from wind,
from sunlight,
from birds that don’t respawn
but migrate.

But not today.
Today,
I am its servant.
Its priest.
Its addict.
Its offering.

I sold my soul
to a game.
And every day,
it collects its due
in seconds.
In hours.
In me.

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