Well, this has without doubt been a very eventful year on many fronts. From my online gaming life to my real life and everything else along the way. Where to begin on the latest episode...
Let's recap briefly. So far in the last weeks / month I've had the bad, having to put my dog to sleep after 15ish years, having to help and practically take my mom's test for work over several days of hell and problems, fights with Comcast resulting in my no longer getting many stations, stress has caused some medical flare ups here and there. Been broke and poor to the point of having at least one financial crisis this month thanks to my mom again. Multitude of other little things along the way from my cel phone shorting out and shutting off to other various things breaking and not working like the toilet seat. All-in-all several bad things of varying... badness.
The good. Well, sadly mostly online and game stuff. Portal 2 finally released, greatest game ever! 3DS out and got a couple games, amazing device. EverQuest 12th anniversary celebration probably should be under the bad since I never finished that one main quest after weeks and months of trying. Hung out with a couple friends one of which I had not seen in some time, was kinda cool. And of course, my car, my dad gave me his 2009 Honda Accord EX-L V6 with everything. Lots of good, makes for a balance between the extreme good and bad so far these last few months.
Then came Saturday, April 30th. I had recently, specifically the last 2 days, had friends on facebook with birthdays. This had me thinking about my own that is coming early June. I always make resolutions 3x a year, my bday, Samhain, and New Year's Eve. The story behind why is involved and irrelevant to my point. Anyhow, I always make small ones, baby steps, things I am likely to not fail or quit. For example, one year I decided to make the resolution to drink only low fat milk instead of whole milk. Yes, things that lame. So, I was thinking how old I am and how far I am from succeeding at anything I ever wanted to do thanks to my life sucking and massive amounts of medical issues and related problems. So, I figured, this year I'm gonna make a huge resolution or two. I was still unsure of what but I had decided that as of my birthday this year I was gonna make some major changes in my life. Try to fix things that bother me and make things right and different and all that. Was quite motivated but unsure of what I was going to do specifically. Was thinking about it all day on Saturday while doing stuff around the house and getting ready to leave to go to my dad's. Right as I was getting ready to leave, my mom, who was in the other room cleaning suddenly comes banging on the wall to tell me my friend Rodney is here, at my door. I was like whoa, what!?! How very weird that I was wanting something majorly different to happen and right the he shows up, out of the blue.
About Rodney. You have to understand that this guy and I were great friends, best friends growing up for many years. I did many of my first drugs and other experiences with him and we went though more than most people could ever fathom or imagine in a million years. Around 1997 he had moved and he came back then moved and I had lost touch with him. See around that same time I cut ties with all my old friends and joined some new friends and groups because I wanted to bury the problems of my past. So when he returned a few years later we had lost touch. Nearly a decade had passed when about 2008ish he came back. He was here maybe a month or two, we hung out, it was great. Then he vanished again. In 2009 he returned but only for a few days were we in touch that time. I had a lot going on and he was not here long. I saw him maybe twice before he said he was leaving for a job in Seattle and would see me in a few years. And just like that he was gone again. Then he shows up Saturday, no warning. So I've only seen him maybe 4 or 5 times in the last 14 years and not at all in like 2 years.
Now, another good thing to know about him is that he's always been the life of the party. He always manged to find everyone and get people together. He kept us all going by finding any crazy thing you could think of so we would have something to do. Too many old insane stories to tell and frankly several of them would strike terror into the average person so I won't get into that in this post. So, naturally, being mister social he was already on the way to a bbq with several of our old friends none of which I have seen in 15+ years. I had to continue on to get my mom her meds and to visit my dad so I did not go. However, I got to talk to one of them on the phone later and it was cool. I hadn't spoken to her in many years and we were also very good friends. I've always kinda thought of Val like the female version of Rodney when it comes to her personality. Another person that you feel instantly comfortable with and can do anything with or say anything to cause they both just like to have fun. Up to this point this was all cool and fun and exciting and good news.
This is where things go sour. Sunday, after some sleep and thought I figured lemme see who out of these friends I could track down online. I knew Rodney himself was far from knowledgeable about anything high tech or pc related. But his girlfriend has a mac so figured maybe he at least has a facebook page, I knew his brother did. Well, I didn't find one, but I found his brother, Randy. I thought wow, cool. Yet I felt kinda hesitant to friend him. I'm not the same person these people knew 15 years ago. I have changed so much. I've been code blue 3x, had 13 operations, been hardcore crack addict $1k/day, robbed, done every drug imaginable, broke many laws, did a variety of unspeakable acts. We were all insane back then, we did all sorts of outrageous, unreal things. Now, 12 years of online gaming, disability, medical issues, life issues, physical, mental and emotional issues. From years of avoiding going out due to medical apparatuses and things causing me public embarrassment and such I ended up being somewhat of a neurotic agoraphobe. Despite the fact that I am free of any medical thing and for all intense purposes appear healthy and normal, I still retain several social anxiety issues. Sure, online I'm miss friendly. Someone once referred to me as the "social butterfly of EverQuest". But, in real life. It's like Codex said in one of The Guild episodes, "Sure there's a lot of drama in game, but at the end of the day you can always just logoff. You can't logoff from real life."
Well, it gets worse. Without friending I was still able to see Randy's (Rodney's brother's) friends list. And on there I saw Val. Didn't know her married name but I knew it was her based on the crazy profile pic of a traffic sign saying crazy things. Anyway, I checked out her profile and found on her friends list one other friend I use to know, Marla. I was like wow, since I never even realized that Val and Marla even knew each other. Oddly, no one else we use to know or other mutual friends were on any of their lists. So I went to Marla's friends list and found yet another old friend, April. I was like oh wow at this point, cause I had searched for these people for years and found nothing. And now they were all popping up so easy, right here, in my virtual world, on facebook, like as if they were standing right in front of me the whole time. This is the part that sucked though. On April's friends list was a name I care not to repeat and hoped to never see again. My ex. The one I never got over. The one I was supposed to have been engaged to. The one I was supposed to have had a Wiccan handfasting (marriage) to that apparently only meant anything to me. There, happy, on facebook, smiling, and married, to someone that isn't me. After years of thinking this was all behind me, that I hadn't run into any of them, that I couldn't even find them when I tried. I had figured at this point I'd never see or hear from or know anything about any of them again. Had a knot form in my chest, felt sickened at their happiness. Felt violent almost. A bit light headed even faint. The gamer in me kept thinking things like headshot and nuke their ass and kill, kill, kill lol. But the rest of me was just like wow, I can't believe I found them that easy right there all the time and they're all so happy looking and gah... yeah... hmmph.
So, now after some time and thought it's become less about my ex and more about the fact that a large part of me wants to contact the others but I have no idea what to say. And moreover, I'm not sure if I want that decade of my life to have any connection to this decade of my life. And, everyone's doing better than me... I mean, some married, some have kids, all making money, at least one teacher, most actually got through college finally, all seem happy. Me, did not finish college, am disabled, have no money, live at my mom's, and have a life that revolves around EverQuest raids and Cafe World catering orders and feeding my cats. When I'm not gaming online I'm gaming offline and when I'm not gaming on my pc I'm gaming on the 3DS. I mean their biggest successes involve family, degrees, and wealth. My biggest successes involve loot chests, raid gear, and 2 blogs that no one reads but me.
And there it is, here I am, that's the story. What the shit do I do now? I wanted a huge change. I missed my past. I dislike my current life. And now I got a huge change, I got a chance to reconnect to a large portion of my past that I was sure was gone forever. But, my life is the suck and there's no playing it off or pretending that it's anything less that uber craptastic. Do I go for it, leap into 15 years ago, old friends, old stories, other things not appropriate for this blog post, etc.? Or do I push it all away, avoid them all and bury the past even more than it was?
My friend Norma summed it up best today on the phone when she said, "Be careful what you wish for." Seriously, no shit. I wished for this, but I never expected it to happen just like that! Now I'm like, do I really want it? And I'm scared. I'm scared being around these people will bring back memories and feelings and lure me into a path I do not wish to go down. When I hung out with them, as mentioned above, I was a terror. I was a danger to myself and everyone and everything around me. There's a reason I quit everything and cut all ties with everyone in 1997. BUT, have they changed? That's the thing. Would it be so bad? Maybe everyone else has changed enough that I can be around them and still be the me of now and not the me of then. Problem with that is there's no way to know until after it's happened. And if not then it's too late cause I will have made that connection and knowing that life is always right there so close could be too tempting to resist. Or should I just dive in and become the terror I once was? Should I just go for it and party out as much as possible and just say screw it all? I tried tonight to bury myself back in EverQuest and Cafe World and it didn't work, this whole situation haunts my thoughts and weighs on my mind heavily.
My life has been stagnant for years. I've had basically 4 friends that weren't online that were actual people I could go hang out with for the past roughly 10 years. I haven't had a serious relationship since, well, hmmmph... it was like 1994, yeah, I know. But, it's been safe. Safe from rejection, safe from stress or situations that I didn't wanna be in. Safe from the many things that could go wrong and the many wrongs I could do. Maybe the change is good? I kinda fear change. I'm OCD, I'm possibly a bit insane, clearly have social anxiety issues, possibly a bit neurotic and agoraphobic, I like things unchanged even if they suck it beats them getting worse. I am not a pessimist I'm a realist. I don't claim everything is negative I am going on proven fact of past experiences that most everything is negative. Then if things go right I can just be happy about it. Less chance of being let down.
At this point you may think I'm just rambling. But this is in fact my brain going through the process of figuring out what the hell I should do about finding friends and a past that I long searched for and missed and now don't think I can handle dealing with since it took so long to find them in the first place.
Not sure what's gonna happen next. Not sure how to feel or what to think. What I do know is Rodney and Val are two of my closest friends I knew for years and we went through some crazy times together and we three at the very least will have no problem hanging out and hitting it off again like as if no time had passed. The others though, those I mentioned and several I did not, I just don't know. But, I'm invited to a bbq at Rodney's in two weeks. I will definitely go, I wouldn't miss it because of Rodney. That and the fact that he is only living like 5 minutes away. But how that goes, how I feel around the others talking about things I wanted to forget and people I don't want to think about. How well that past integrates into my current life is still a mystery at this point.
And then here I am like most of the cast of The Guild all I can think is what about raids? I mean I have raids 5 nights a week. And there's other gaming stuff. I mean ok, so it seems lame when you explain the whole online gaming life to regular people. But, that's what I do. It's my life. And for what it's worth I'm damn good at it! I have gaming obligations! Without those I'd have nothing. It's the only thing I have to plan the rest of my life around. The closest I come to a job or family. Yes, it's sad, but it is what it is, I am who I am. /sigh
Despite my 1337 (leet) gaming skillz (yes the z is intentional), and despite all the insane stuff I did and went through in the 90's; I feel like someone hit the reset button the game of life and set my ass back to n00b status.
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