It's 4:30am, and I don't know what to do with myself. I keep thinking about the future. Years from now even. There is not something that can be done right now, or even soon. It's just time spent waiting. Pacing back and forth.
My first instinct is maybe to send someone a message, but there is no one there. Not anymore. I can't simply go to sleep and expect things to be different when I wake up. There is nothing to look forward to anymore. It is so much frustration like I never imagined would be possible. I need to break something. I keep thinking about what a relief it would be if I could just go to my old job and just smash the place up with a baseball bat. Or myself. If I could somehow take control over another person and smash my head in Walking Dead style.
I try to imagine how it came to this. It wasn't always this bad. What timeline of events has led up to this moment? I think to trace back to about 2012.
We were moving back to Florida from Texas. I have never lived at the same address for more than two years. Never. Often times no more than one year. We were staying with my wife's ex-husband in his tiny one-bedroom apartment. I had to go through his room just to get to the bathroom, unless it was late at night and I would **** in the kitchen sink. We slept on a mattress on the floor and it was humiliating because it seemed like every day there was someone there from the cable company or to deliver something to him who had to come into the apartment and step over us. My son was born while we were living here. I was under a lot of pressure to find a job. Any job-- which means applying everywhere and getting a call from no one but Walmart. So I was working for them again, and we lived in that tiny apartment until we were discovered by management and forced to move out. We found another apartment nearby to move into nearby. Myself, my newborn son, my stepdaughter, my wife and her ex husband. This time there were enough bedrooms and bathrooms to where we could live a little better. It was around this time that I began to feel a lot like I do now. My wife was always at school, and later at work. The rest of the time she spends sleeping. It began to feel like being single again. It was here that I began development of my first Minecraft server. It was crude and basic, but that was all that was needed back then. I remember a time when more than 50 people would be online at any given time. I remember Ikkian played on there for a while. Between work and the server, there was never any down time. I spent a lot of time working on the server and helping players with their problems, usually server related, but sometimes not. It felt very fulfilling, and it was exactly what I had planned and hoped for. I became friends with a lot of long-time players. Because I was the server owner, I was the guy everyone wanted to talk to. Everyone wanted special perks and privileges on the server and forum, and I was the boss who decided it all. Players that I trusted would become chat moderators, or given access to special commands that enabled them to help out with the server. We all communicated in real time over Skype. This way, if ever there was a problem on the server, it could be addressed immediately by whoever was available. It was by this way that I met Red, who I once wrote about extensively in a separate thread. Red first called me on Skype needing assistance with a server related issue, which was strange. People don't usually
call for any reason. Most everything was handled via text. After that, Red would call again and again, every day, just to talk. She said my voice sounded like her favorite anime character, Sebastian from Black Butler, so she always wanted to call. I was happy to entertain her. She kept me company during the many hours I would have otherwise spent alone in silence. I became the father figure in her life where there wasn't one to speak of. She would come crying to me whenever there was a problem, and I would make it better for her by just being there to listen and to talk to. We would while away entire days playing Terraria and WoW together over Skype. This went on almost every single day for more than a year. Despite our distance, I had never felt so close with anyone, ever. --and just as I began to think our bond could not be any stronger, it grew in ways that exceeded the limits of my imagination. With just little every day things. Like how she would teach me how to braid my hair over cam on Skype, or when she would leave me letters in my mailbox in WoW to tell me things she could never say to me while we were both online-- like how happy I had made her, and how important I was in her life. It was this kind of sentiment which later became an all the time kind of thing, where we would sit together in
our favorite place in Mt. Hyjal by the water and talk for hours in game the kinds of things we could say over call without feeling awkward about it, even though we were still *in* a call. For me, it was like water for a person who had been chronically dying of thirst. Or we would duel each other. I taught her everything I knew about being a combat rogue until we were evenly matched in every way in both skill and gear. I was so, so proud of her. Just writing about all of this now makes me so happy. It makes me forget about how wretched I was just a few minutes ago.
Just look at how much of this giant wall of text is all about Red-- as if nothing at all else happened in those four years, or ever.
Of course, that all came to an end. I will never fully understand exactly why. I have been left only to speculate with only vague answers from her to go on. She has said to me that it is just as painful for her to not be with her best friend, but I find that hard to believe, given it is only on her part that this has happened. I felt abandoned, but not completely. She unblocks me on Skype occasionally to poke me with conversation ranging from casual to sappy and emotional before going away again. My guess is she has real friends now, and no longer has need of me. The time between present and the last time we talked gets longer and longer, and I fear she will forget about me completely.
Around the time this first happened, Pokemon Go was just about to come out. Instead of feeling completely lost, I knew how hugely popular it would be. I knew I could ride it like a huge wave. It would become my vehicle for meeting new people-- people who were roughly my age. People who lived near me-- and it was. I thought perhaps I could fill the collective void Red and others before her had left with someone new. I personally organized a massive group of local people on Facebook under the banner of Team Valor, and arranged numerous large-scale events involving Pokemon Go related events. Lure parties, gym raiding, etc. One day, I was at the mall with my wife, her ex husband, their daughter and my son. On our way out the door, I recognized one of my Valors from the Facebook page-- somehow who called herself "Acid Wolf" and had a big picture of Arcade Miss Fortune as her profile pic, but I wasn't completely sure it was her. So when I got home I made a post on the Valor page simply saying that I thought I saw said person at the mall just a few moments ago, and she responded and sent both me and my wife friend requests. A few days later she posted a link to her live stream starting a new character in WoW, and I commented asking what realm she was on, so she invited me to play with her. I was beginning to like this person more and more. After struggling with issues with cross-realm compatibility we decided to just play League of Legends over Team Speak instead. It was a lot of fun having someone to play with, and more so someone to talk to again. It felt reassuring to me that she would frequently send me messages on Facebook without my initiating any kind of conversation. Like one time she sent me a picture of something she had colored randomly, so suddenly I became interested in drawing just so I'd have something to talk to her about. She even introduced me to the local comic book store she hanged out at and invited me to go there. I thought, "at last. I can finally be included in something." I did not get to actually go there until many weeks later, due to stiff opposition from my wife, who insisted that my friend was "weird" and that there was nothing I could do at the comic store I could not also do at home-- that it would be a waste of gas, etc. One Friday, I decided I was determined I would go to the comic store, and nothing would stop me. I scrounged up quarters so I could take the bus, as suggested by my friend, and set out that afternoon. I spent at least two hours walking around trying to find the right bus stop, but managed to make it to the comic store at around 5:30pm. I was unsure what to do when I got there. I knew no one, so I sat down and played on my phone for a while. I was starting to feel foolish for going there. I had really gone hoping to see my friend, but it was starting to look like it wasn't going to happen. Just as I was about to leave, my friend showed up. I was not actually expecting her to. She came around the corner and greeted me as if she knew exactly where I would be somehow. I was shocked. She was so friendly, and over the course of the evening I got to learn how extremely charming she was. She picked out a deck of cards from the counter and led me to a table where together we played a game called Fluxx for about an hour until a few of her friends arrived and we all played Nightmare Before Christmas-themed Munchkins. I was having such a wonderful time. It was like a dream. I remember thinking that it never could have happened if I were not so resolute in going that day. I made a grievous error in telling my wife where I was going to be, however. She left her work early that evening and ruined everything with her jealousy. I then made things so much worse by becoming overly emotional with my sentiment towards my friend and by basically telling her I was in love with her.
The rest is history. While Red and "Acid Wolf" could not be more different from each other, I have realized something they have in common-- in that I am not completely 100% removed from their lives. They have both contacted me without provocation after they had both told me that I should leave them alone and that they did not want to talk to me anymore. I have been essentially put aside, or into storage-- for if and when the day should come where I might be needed again. In some event where maybe everyone else on Earth died of the plague, for instance, I might have some value as a person-- which is ultimately what it all boils down to. There will always be someone else people would rather be talking to, barring plague or fiery plane crash or meteor strike.
That took 3 and a half hours to write.
Edited, Nov 24th 2016 4:02pm by Kuwoobie