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.
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