A Jumble of Thoughts

2000s were an awfully beautiful time where you didn't know if the person you were with online was real or not despite every word and feeling being felt--especially as a teenager. I rarely speak of her anymore outside of therapy but I want to talk about her now openly for myself because she was a big part of who I am now.

I met Elise when I was around 14 or maybe 15 in Runescape. I had seen her walking around and I oddly liked her character and we were doing the same thing: mining and going to the bank to deposit our rune essences. I finally got the courage to speak to her and found talking to her to be incredibly easy. This may have been the first time I talked to someone without a tremendous amount of effort.

We got to know each other and I felt so good about myself that I started to feel worse and worse whenever I was away from her offline. I only had the notion of romance from books or games and no healthy relationships in my life to model what I wanted with Ellise after. I just knew that I loved her. And I told her that eventually.

She had said she was waiting for someone to come back and rejected me at first. I weirdly took that well now that I look back, and I gave her time until asking again months later to which she agreed to be my girlfriend. I was elated. I was given hope. I had renewed life. I had someone to live for. I lied about myself multiple times out of shame of my family situation--both financially and emotionally. I wanted her to love me but felt so broken offline that I didn't know how anyone could see me in any sort of positive way.

We would talk almost every day for maybe 2 hours at the most. I had started to wake up around 5 am to walk to my mom's house to use their internet so that I could talk to her before she went to bed. Those were the best parts of my day. I eventually did end up telling her the truth about myself which she reassured me that that was nothing to be ashamed of. I did anyway but now felt that maybe she did love me for who I was but I couldn't let myself believe this. I felt like I was being lied to. I didn't love myself, how could she?

I ended up leaving the game for a while with an old online ex who I felt on a similar level with. We were both self loathing and had a rough home life. We spoke about our want to self harm and eventually she (the ex) disappeared--only to reappear years later.

Ellise and I got back to talking but I had broken her trust by then and things felt a little different. I felt a little different. I had just spent a while with someone who reinforced my disdain for myself, so it took me a bit to readjust to someone hopeful. Someone kind. I almost wish I hadn't gone back to talk to Ellise because I was so far gone and a lot of the words I said about myself, a lot of the distrust I had in her words, too, hurt her--this further made me feel like a failure.

I spoke to Ellise about all my wishes for myself from then on. How I wanted to be happy and live a fulfilling life. How I wanted her at the center of that. How I wanted kids eventually. How I wanted to love her differently. She liked that. She brought that out of me. She reassured me over and over and I knew I had to listen to her if I wanted to be with her--I had to go against my brain.

She told me she believed in me. She didn't ridicule my dreams. She was kind and patient with me. She was my best friend.

I want to point out that I was pretty religious back then, as was she. He had a lot of faith in general. And I felt like she brought out the best in me.

I was 17. About 3 months away from 18. She was 18 and just had started university. I felt so inadequate compared to her. I felt unprepared. She was the first person to even mention a higher education to me. I never considered it before. No one had talked to me about it. So I tried to prepare myself for that by talking to my high school advisors and my social worker.

I started to make more and more mistakes. I spoke to another friend and I felt so badly for her situation and she had expressed interest in me. I felt like if I rejected her, she might harm herself or make her just feel bad. I was a notorious people-pleaser for so long. It was a stupid mistake that I felt even as I was accepting her proposal.

Ellise found out about this through her friend group and started to talk to me about it. I panicked. I acted without thinking. I felt so horrible. I hurt Ellise, the one person in my life that made it feel worth living. I told her that. I didn't want to live if she wasn't in my life. I told her what I wanted to do to myself and she repeated it back to me.

She had called me on my phone a few times in the past years. I loved our calls despite the reception. I loved her voice. I had never spoken to someone on the phone. I had been too afraid to. But this last call was seared into my brain and I still hear it. She said my name. She told me she loved me and then there was static. I struggled to speak. My body went still. My mind was racing because I wanted to stop her but knew I couldn't.

After a few days, I learned from her friends that Ellise had attempted to take her own life. She wasn't going to talk to me. The guilt built up inside to unmanageable levels. I buried it. I would play Runescape a little longer until every other friend had quit the game. In the meantime, I would consider how to harm myself to punish myself. I felt like I should have done what I said I'd do or not say it at all. Why did I have to say it? I felt my life falling apart. I felt sick. I hated myself for what I felt like I caused.

Ellise's friend slowly stopped talking to me and giving me updates. My guilt kept rising. My attempts to hurt myself kept going until I felt like pain was my only reprieve. I'd relive our conversation over and over throughout the years knowing that I could have done better. Knowing that I could have done our whole relationship better. I couldn't tell anyone that I loved them anymore. I couldn't feel. I grieved in silence because I felt shame telling anyone this. I felt like, how other friends in our group, they would say that Ellise wasn't a real person. It felt insensitive. I never learned if she was or not. I just have our conversations and phone calls. I have our memories. The felt real.

I would eventually get to a bearable state and start college and have friends. I would start a relationship. All the while, I was thankful to Ellise. She built me up. She gave me blueprints to things I wish I had already known. Things I should have known. I still did everything for her despite being with someone else. In the back of my mind, she was pushing me forward when I felt I was falling back.

I didn't talk about her until I was around 28. She came up in my therapy session. I still talk about her at 36 in therapy. She was a pillar of hope when I had none. I knew I'd never get back with her even if she reappeared and wanted to. I was too different. I stopped being religious. I was more reserved. I had my arms up at all times to defend myself emotionally.

I let myself grieve. I told my parents about her almost 20 years later. I wrote to her, apologizing; I wrote poems to her memory; I still sometimes write to her because writing to myself feels silly.

This was brought back on because I found an old email from Ellise's friend telling me that it's okay to move on--it's okay to live. She said that Ellise would have wanted me to just be happy.

I love her memory. I can still see her. I can hear her. I can see her words in my mind. I loved her. She changed me into someone better. She is the reason why I can wholly love my partner now. I love my partner more than anything in this world along with our son.

Whether you were “real” or not does not matter.

Streaming, Maybe Over

Well, I know decisions are sometimes reversible and rarely final. Any way that I'm feeling now may change in a week, month, or however long, but I've been thinking about this for months. The decision was reinforced every time I tried to stream lately, which made me think that maybe this isn't for me.

Streaming has obviously been on the backburner this past year with how busy I've been. I still play games, just not as long and would rather use all the time to play the game rather than talk to people (people I still enjoy, just I need to prioritize my own enjoyment in the times I can). The same can be said of watching streams. There's just no time for it. I'm back in the mentality of "why watch when I can play," and I've also been trying to stop multitasking when doing hobbies.

I just haven't focused on just myself. I never even wanted to stream or lead a discord group. I just wanted community but the exact right fit community is hard to find for me. I've really also wanted to prioritize offline fun and socialization and to just use my phone/computer less. I left a bunch of discord groups to help me spend less time even browsing conversations I'm not going to be a part of.

I've kept Bluesky as a final bastion of online socialization online (aside from Discord DMs and group chats or if I play an MMO) just so that I have an outlet when I want one.

From the first stream with 0 to 1 viewers to the last real ones in the beginning of this year, I just had a blast. I had fun meeting new people, spending time with my brother and cousin who would come by, turning online friends to physical ones. I'm thankful for everyone who came by, whether it was for one stream or more. I also enjoy drawing up emotes and overlays and changing things around. I just had fun, but it stopped being fun when there was so much variability to my schedule with both start times and sometimes, it would be over before I could even hit "start stream." Maybe one day, I'll go back to it but I'm just going to enjoy my time finishing up the games I started.

Thank you all. I hope it's not goodbye forever, just goodbye for now.

Remembering A Friend

I held back a lot of feelings when I found out that an old friend of mine passed away about two years ago. He wasn't an easy friend but he was my friend nonetheless. 

I won't name him but if you were around the Sea of Thieves community back in 2019 or whenever, he was a pretty well known guy.

I met him doing SoT favors for a stream. We'd set up giveaways along with another friend. He and I got along pretty well and he was so friendly and just the social butterfly my social-anxiety-having self needed at the time.

We played for hours every day or every couple of days. It was a blast. We pushed game physics to their boundaries and found out some discoveries (you can use explosives to get from one island to another using just the blast to propel you if you time the fuse correctly; and if you sword lunge from high enough into the water, look down and then swim up, you just might be able to land on a galleon). I even met his mom online. She's still on my friends list (a really nice woman and I was sad to hear of her passing down the line).

Anyway, we made some friends together but they were mostly his. When it came time and he had a girlfriend he met in the community, he introduced me to her and we all got along for a bit.

I was disappointed to find out he was doing other stuff which didn't sit well with me and I let out what he was doing in a private conversation. That was kind of the end of our friendship. I didn't know better and we would have stopped being friends at that point with our moral dilemma anyway. I left his discord and would then learn about his smear campaign (even saying that I should commit you-know-what, because I had opened up about my mental health struggles and past) to other community members about me. Luckily, not really anyone believed him aside from his close friends, and out mutual friend let me know what was going on.

After that, the situation left a damper on the game and community for me. I stopped playing. I felt like it wasn't fun anymore. I play games for enjoyment and relaxing, not to have drama. And all of being in the SoT community was secret drama being told in private. I had a taste of the bad side of communities thanks to this friend.

Flash forward a few years later and I messaged him. I wanted to apologize and clear the air on the things I had messed up on and he apologized as well. We talked for a while and just tried to get back into enjoying things but it just wasn't the same and we drifted back apart. At least there was closure. He would try again a few times and we'd talk every couple of months but it never stuck. Then we just stopped.

I checked up on him after a while as saw posts of his passing. I couldn't process it then. I didn't know what to feel. I was always so alone that I never had a friend pass away that I know of. I just ignored it and moved on. But it hurts my heart knowing that he's not there playing games, having the sculpture I made of his character on his Xbox. I won't hear his infectious laughter. He won't message me in a few months asking if I want to play some game that I wouldn't want to play but just might if it meant spending a little more time with him.

No matter anything he said or did. Nothing changes that he had a positive affect on me and my life--even if sometimes it's just knowing that I don't always mesh with people and that's okay. I wish I got to tell him how much he meant to me. And I wish I did his silly video with him where he wanted community members to say how much the game means to them.

I kind of miss you, friend.

Grieving Friendships

For as much as I know now that the friendships I had were doomed to fail, one of us messes up, or we just grew away from each other, or if we argued and couldn't move through it, I still grieve for the people I've lost contact with. I had them closely as friends. I loved them despite anything else. Not a romantic love obviously, but a love like being happy they were around. Smiling at seeing them online and feeling like I mattered and knowing they did. 

Maybe because it's almost 2am and I've been trying to get this baby to sleep but I miss all of you. From the friends I met online back in 2002 to the friends I made through Twitch in the 2020s, I remember the start and end of our times together and they play back like social failures in my mind.

I've taken a few steps back from letting people get close. I'm careful and weary. I even feel a little distrustful at time. In no way am I feeling like people are replaceable or that the people in my life right now are unwanted. Vilet always says my analogies are bad but in the most awful way--and it's relating to gaming--I feel like I want to play with my old games. The new games are fun and I enjoy them but my heart is still in the past. I want to spend time with those people. I want to have conversations that we didn't get to have. I want to apologize and I want to forgive. But like many of these old games, once you go back to try them you find you've outgrown them and they're maybe not what you remember or want anymore. Not in a way of betterment over them but that the chasm is too wide to meet in the middle, to meet where we're both at. There's a disconnect and I know that if I tried we'd have a week or less of conversations before moving back on with the lives we created post-friendship.

I miss them. I mourn their friendships. I wish I could go back and talk to them. A lot of them, i didn't get to tell them how much they meant to me. I didn't think I needed to because I thought they knew because I knew. But I kept that to myself for whatever reason. I loved and love you. You still mean something to me.