1. You wake up in the morning (that is only when you have managed to switch off your laptop at some hour of the night/morning!), wondering what happened in the virtual world the night before. When you’re addicted to a TV series, you are bedazzled by the lives of your heartthrobs; whether it is the ‘bad boy of the upper East side of Manhattan’ (I see all the Gossip Girl fans drooling over Chuck Bass), or it is ‘the Salvatore brothers (have you chosen one out of Damon and Stefan?). You spend long, continuous hours, glued to the screen taking only washroom breaks in the middle. Of course you don’t feel hungry then, how would food go down your throat with your heart in your mouth.
2. Your phones, laptop, iPad, and probably your walls too, are strewn with posters and pictures of your favourite shows. You’ve received many of the posters as birthday presents and parting presents. You’ve penned down your favourite quotes (the lessons of life you have learned from the narrations in Grey’s Anatomy) in a diary which is your prized-possession.
3. You find yourself dreaming, and day-dreaming about the show; you are either going out with the protagonist, who happens to be a very good-looking and sexy guy (yes, your Prince Charming) or you are dreaming about the murder mystery you are solving with Dexter. The point is that they occupy almost all the space in your mind, yes, the conscious and the unconscious mind.
4. Every time to travel somewhere abroad, you walk the streets and stroll across malls with the hope that you might just spot one of the celebrities there, and you’d finally be able to tell them how much the new hairstyle they adorn in the new season suits them. You practice the conversation you have been having in your head, for an uncountable number of days. Your eyes, peeking into hotel lobbies and limousines. A glimpse of them or even a pat on the shoulder and you know you aren’t going to wash that sweater ever again.
5. The moment you hear that the show may be coming to an end, and the present season may be the last to feature, you wish you could stop that from happening. Suddenly your purpose of existence seems to be lost. You are morose, upset and a lot of people around you may not be able to fathom the magnitude of the kind of loss, disappointment and hopelessness you feel! As if it wasn’t enough already that your favourite character had been made to die to unite with his soul mate (Mark Sloan and Lexie Grey rooters, you may shed a tear, again) or sent off to a far off place, off the sets of the show, to be with his family (Lucas Scott never returned to Tree Hill).
Well, you start watching a TV show, and before you know it, you are literally addicted to it. You get attached to the characters. You begin imagining what it would be like to adapt to their lifestyles. You start juxtaposing your life with theirs. You find yourself connecting with some characters; some you loathe and wish would just end their contract. You spend days and nights in front of the screen, and then the series ends. And then you feel like your life has come to a standstill. Uh oh!
But you are forgetting, there are still a gazillion more you haven’t seen, so start a new one!