When I made the decision to begin writing about one of the most significant periods of my existence thus far, little thought was given to the order in which that would take place. As a neurodivergent person, it is common for me to inhabit many timelines and headspaces simultaneously. That, however, does not make for good storytelling, and this adventure demands a very particular narrative as accompaniment.
When I first began this writing project, life was a fair deal simpler than it now is. So much has changed in such a short space of time, it now seems sensible to incorporate those new elements into this overarching timeline. That left only one missing piece, and that was to resubscribe to the MMO that I’d left in 2018 to concentrate on a real life quest to convince other people to publish my written work.
I got the Achievement for my first poetry pamphlet back in November 2022, just after World of Warcraft’s 18th birthday. I resubscribed to the game in late September 2023, and I’ve been playing ever since. There needed to be an Epilogue where my OC (original character) was able to find peace, and I was able to stand alongside her with the same sense of achievement.
That’s when I knew I was ready to start telling the story of what this game means to me and how it quite literally saved my life. We’ll be using this space in the following months to post a selection of fictional works, plus lyrical and conventional poetry, telling a story that began back in March 2005, when my youngest was born.
Not much is remembered about how real life was like in that first year. Everything was about the kids, about making sure they were happy, and their needs were covered. Both were breastfed, and exhaustion was almost permanent until my youngest was about 18 months old. Looking back, I should have asked for far more help than I did. There should have also been more friends, but most of the people I cared about vanished after my son was born.
It might seem odd therefore to distance myself from the one close female friend I had shortly after my youngest was born, but the decision was made based on a need to move forward emotionally. I’d never found it easy to make friends with women, for reasons back then made no sense. Accepting my bisexuality altered that mindset completely, and it made an awful lot of other decisions make sense in context.
This is not a happy poem as a result, but it is an honest one. It is a reflection of my mindset at the time, and that matters more than anything else.
Character Creation Screen for a while be someone else's poor facsimile of a broken self and it can be enough choices colour retrospective actions remake yourself better inside this space not enough as yet let's pretend to be capable accomplished taller and thinner enough of a distraction before dinner twenty minutes as a filler not enough why am I letting other people's facsimiles colour this thinking I am not enough
If you’d like to talk about the issues in this post, or you have any comments, please consider a reply :D