Liosuelo

The Breaking Point: Eye Strain, Burnout, and Quitting the Internet

More than anything, everything really came to a head with that final eye strain incident. I had been pushing through the discomfort for a while. My eyes would get sore, I would rest a little, and then go right back to the same habits. I told myself it was fine. That I just needed more rest. That I could manage it.

That night, I was on my phone again. Stressed, in bed, looking something up. My eyes were already fatigued, slightly burning, but I kept going anyway. I remember thinking, I need to stop, but I didn’t stop right away. I kept scrolling, kept reading, kept trying to find whatever I thought I needed in that moment. The next morning, I saw so many floaters.

I had sensitivity to light, and my eyes felt significantly worse. It wasn’t just discomfort, it was this heaviness, this awareness of my eyes that I couldn’t ignore. It didn’t feel like the other times where it would go away after a couple of days. It felt different. Like something had shifted. Within a couple of days, it became clear that I had done significant damage. At least for me, there felt like a connection between how I had been using my eyes and what I was now experiencing. That part was really hard. It felt like negligence on my part. Like I had ignored something for too long, even when my body had been trying to warn me.

And that’s when it actually clicked. Not just that I needed to rest my eyes, but that my relationship with the internet had gotten to a point where it was controlling how I coped, how I spent my time, and how I avoided myself. When I was at my lowest, when I was stressed, when I didn’t want to feel something, I went on my phone. I read. I scrolled. I consumed. Over and over again. It wasn’t even intentional anymore. It was automatic.

The pain point was that at my lowest moments, when I felt depressed and anxious, I chose to numb out by doing this. It became a really bad habit. Consuming, digesting, and holding all this information to fill up my brain to the very top and overflowing, in order to not feel. It created a numbing sensation, but also a way to feel through other people.

I became completely fixated on the lives of sex workers and people with taboo lifestyles, or people in very tough, depressing, hopeless situations. Part of me probably had a need for social justice, and I’m drawn to dark stories. But I think it was also a way for me to process the darkness I felt inside. It helped me see that other people were also going through equally tough things.

Sexually, I was so repressed for so long before I left Christianity. I would look at people who were able to fully express their sexuality, by choice or not. Their lives became a way for me to understand sexuality and sexual health, through chaos, pain, or triumphs. Consuming these stories could also weigh me down. Reading about horrific trauma created a depressive state about the world. It was numbing at times, but also created hypersensitivity to the world and a way to express things I couldn’t otherwise.

As someone who is such a deep feeler, constantly aware of my emotions, constantly verbalizing or writing them down, I would match my energy to what I read. I remember telling my boyfriend that when I felt sad, I would look at other sad things to match my energy. I created an endless loop, which kept me stuck for a long time. I knew it was bad when I started getting wrist pain from being on my phone too much. This was when I was in Thailand.

This is when I started being on my phone chronically, especially because my dad had just died. That’s when I became obsessed with this girl named Caroline Calloway, watching her descent into chaos and “scamming,” or simply following her existence. That’s also when I discovered Lipstick Alley and started looking at all those message boards.

The internet also became a form of community sometimes, depending on where I was posting or looking. Even YouTube had a huge influence. I remember being so in tune with the vegan and fruitarian movement. People like Freelee the Banana Girl, Bonnie Rebecca, and Stephanie Y., even though some of them are no longer vegan. When Stephanie was doing Australian cycling and had her own blog on her website, I was obsessed with following her life. I was interested in health and ended up becoming vegan years later, but at the time, it was about watching these people who were living extreme, visible lives. I just couldn’t stop observing.

Eventually, in my early 20s, I felt so depressed about myself because I felt like such a loser for watching other people do things I wanted to do and didn’t do. That feeling came to a head when I turned 30. I started seeing that the people who had started blogs or social media projects in my early 20s were now famous, wealthy, socially connected, and accomplished. Granted, they had their own levels of burnout, but seeing that I had nothing to show for myself pushed me to think, okay, I do want to be an influencer. I do want to create content on the internet.

And a lot of that consumption wasn’t just social media. It was information. Articles, forums, message boards, niche websites. I was constantly learning, constantly taking in new information, constantly trying to understand something, anything. It felt productive. It felt like I was expanding my mind. But at a certain point, it stopped being about learning and started being about filling space. About not having to sit in silence. About not having to sit with myself.

The eye strain was the thing that forced me to stop, but it wasn’t the root of the problem. It was the result of years of overconsumption, of constantly filling my mind instead of sitting with myself. I took time off everything after that. No phone, no writing, no reading. Just listening, walking, resting. Even that felt uncomfortable at first, like I didn’t know what to do with myself without constant input. And slowly, I got better. My eyes improved, but they didn’t go back to what they were. Even now, there is still sensitivity. There are still floaters. And that feels like something I can’t ignore.

It’s a reminder of how far I pushed myself. Of how much I relied on the internet to cope, to feel, and to not feel at the same time. Something else I’ve been thinking about is how much the internet took away my ability to just not know. To sit with something and let it unfold. Instead, I was constantly looking things up, constantly needing answers, constantly filling any space with more information. It created this loop where I was always consuming, always searching, always adding more, without ever really processing.

Even in conversations, I noticed it. That instinct to prove something, to look it up immediately, to validate everything in real time. It’s like we don’t trust ourselves or each other anymore without the internet confirming it. And I think that’s part of what I lost too. That sense of discovery. Of mystery. Of just being in something without needing to immediately understand it.

I feel scared of it, honestly. Scared of how easy it is for me to fall back into those habits. Scared of how much of my life was spent observing instead of fully participating. Writing feels complicated now. My whole writing life has existed online. So I’m trying to figure out what it looks like to write outside of that. To create in a way that doesn’t depend on constant engagement or constant consumption, and doesn’t leave me feeling depleted afterward.

This is day one of coming to terms with all of this. Building something different. Slower. More intentional. Volunteering in person. Doing things with my hands. Creating without always being on a screen. Taking real breaks, not just saying I will. Being more gentle with myself. Health over productivity. I don’t know exactly what my life is going to look like with less internet. I don’t know what it means yet to be a writer in this way. But I know I can’t keep doing what I was doing.

I remember what this felt like before the internet became such a big part of my life. When I was ten, I remember getting lost in a hobby that didn’t involve a screen. Being fully immersed in something for hours, not checking anything, not needing anything else, just being there. I remember that feeling clearly. That sense of presence.

I want to get back to that. I want to see what happens when I give myself that kind of space again.

I look forward to this journey. I’m seeing where it will take me.