A fictional story with a moral chime.
I am not certain exactly. I think it all started after she left me. You cannot put your finger on when these things begin, but very soon you are a changed man. It just took me ages to realise it. I am a slob. I mean it didn’t happen overnight. My love of computer games can’t have helped. My single mates were always playing them and texting me to jump on board. Every day after work I had to wolf my dinner down so I could join in with an online mission. It literally was a call of duty. But I had always been into gaming and I hadn’t always been obese. And even when I did pile on the pounds, it happened so slowly and with such subtlety that I just kind of ignored the whole thing. I am not saying that being fat is a bad thing. It is just that I had never expected I would be overweight and it really did not feel good. Having said that, many fuller figured people love their lives and are proud of their bodies. I am not knocking that; but it was my lifestyle overall.
It had consumed me. My fast food diet has sucked the energy out of me and I had stopped interacting with the real world. Found only in an online shoot-em-up game. That world seemed far more exciting than my single life, without Sarah and without many people who wanted to spend time with me. At least that was how it had felt. I realise that actually it was me that had cut myself off from everyone.
Even the friends who played computer games with me seemed to be more appealing in the game than in the flesh. When Mark asked me to meet for food I told him to log in and suggested we could have a live game while each ordering take aways. I persuaded him it saved the hassle of both wasting time driving to a restaurant.
