I Like Being This Person.

Wait. I just said I like being this person. What happened?

And then, everybody laughed. My lovers and I had been talking about norms, policy-building between us. How to stay in touch across time zones - fewer hours than across the ocean now. Planning to reserve one convenient hour to connect to one of our busiest people.

We were talking about leadership. In our group of five, three are far more followers than leaders by preference. Maybe, maybe that's more two, and the third is on the fence. Two of us are more leaders than followers - and I'm one. I'm the louder one, the one who draws attention to it more often, who usually asks what telecommunications program we're using to voice chat, and suggests something to watch or to play, takes responsibility for remembering things we agreed we have to talk about.

But we have another leader, who usually stays quiet, who spends more time watching and less time saying what he sees. He gives careful prods but not ostentatiously. It's not his way. And he and I, it seems we work together well. Me the circus ringleader, he around the shadows at the edge of the ring of light. I asked again that he remember to remind me, if my shouting becomes too self-serving - I don't want my trained assertiveness only to serve my own preferences. And I'll try to give him time, and bite down on my jealousy when it has a problem with sharing the spotlight.

I asked him to tell me out loud that it was alright that I was louder, was showier, was the ringleader kind of leader that I am. Whether we really do work well together with this being a prominent part of the nature of our double act.

Good. Because, I like being this person. And I wouldn't want to have to go without it.

Wait... What happened?

And then, everybody laughed.

You're healing, he said.

Okay, crying. Crying again.

I'm on my second day of being back on my thyroid medication. There was a gap there for a bit, while we got more. But I'm just over the extra hormonal stress and mess of my period, and although I expected things to be harder while I was off my medicine for a week or so, and then back on again... All I've really had to cope with so far that's seemed worse than usual has been some waves of tiredness in the middle of the day. And I eat, and drink, and get excited with my loves and I listen to upbeat music, and they pass. And honestly, I have been getting short and broken sleep a lot of the recent nights too.

I've been here a month and a half, in the house of someone who wasn't surprised to see me, who wasn't pined after secretly for months on months - we've discussed my coming to see them for a long time, and they've said yes, that they would welcome me with open arms, and they have.

Our apartment is our apartment, they tell me. Ours including you (meaning me). Our food and drink is your food and drink too. You don't have to keep asking me whether you can have it.

Our apartment, then. It's a pretty place. Well maintained, simple and somewhat small but high quality and close to their work. I keep it tidier than they ever did - I asked first. We've discussed the matter many times, and I've gotten consent over and over again to go ahead and turn their lives upside down.

We watch heartful TV together. They've been showing me This Is Us. I've been showing them Steven Universe. They're started to show me My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I've had a bit of fun riffing on it and analyzing it.

With some prompting from me, they started to shift their focus away from the idea of signing up for a code college which would require them to be at a physical classroom for months and pay up thousands of dollars later down the line presuming they can find better work after the schooling. They're taking on some courses on Udemy instead for now - there was always some fear that they wouldn't be able to stick to it, but I'm here to help now. To ask what they're learning, and remind them to study regularly... but not too hard. ♡

We're doing it together. I'm picking up a Udemy course too, and suddenly I have a six month plan, to end in a working store website and all the experience it took to build it. This morning, a Saturday morning, we each spent a few hours on our different projects, in the same living room, taking time from time to time to hug and kiss or give back massages.

I send them to work with packed lunches. We can save money that way, and still eat deliciously. They don't mind - they like the food I give them. I keep our apartment clean, and cook, and when they can't walk on their own, I'm there to help carry them.

And I'm working through this course, and from time to time I just spend my day watching YouTube videos, but it's okay. Because it's not all the time. In my spare time, I get to reach out to people all along the edges of my online social network. I got to spend a half hour not long ago telling someone struggling with grief that they were not as alone as they felt.

And I still fret, sometimes. Of course I do. I worry that work that isn't done in a hired position isn't real somehow, isn't worth as much... but I know that isn't true, it's just... just one of the things that gets passed along through the deepest social memes and habits. And I don't have to know that all by myself anymore. My lovers will tell it to me over again as many times as I need to hear it.

I've been starting to look through listings for a house for us to move into once the lease here ends.

My Stars want me to stay here with them.

Everything is different now.

And I'm starting to think... Maybe I really don't ever have to go back.

Out of the Fire and into the Pan

It has been a stressful month or so for me, increasingly so over financial debts and concerns that I may not be able to arrange things adequately even to get myself to Ireland, much less beyond... I was very reluctant to return to Ontario Works, but this week I did so, and spoke very humbly to the staff member there who was quick to listen and encourage me, and trusted me when I said I was job searching already and had applied to ten or a dozen summertime positions, which I had.

I've made up a chart on Google Sheets of when I applied to what and how long I spent doing it, and roughly what sort of positions they were, and I've given to my friends and to my employment counsellor at Goodwill Career Center a link to see it as I add to it. I was feeling so glum and reluctant one evening that I turned to examining the feeling and what exactly it was about. I decided a large part of it was probably the silence. I've never been able to happily endure silence as a response when I put myself out into the world, whether it's a joke or a request or, as now, a job application. It feels like casual rejection, which feels hideous. Although I know that keeping at my job hunting a little at a time, stable-like, is how best to make sure I can find something, it's awfully discouraging to me not seeing any mark of progress, because I've not got interviews or hire offers yet.

So I thought about that, and I decided to ask my friends to help me by setting up like video game achievements for me, so that to help me keep going with gradual consistency, I could measure progress by milestones like grindy achievements; applications X days in a row like studying on Khan Academy, or apply to five receptionist jobs, or to ten labour jobs, or thirty jobs in total, whatever it'd be. Then I'd have marks of progress to look forward to, and to look back on, that didn't depend on any feedback I'm unlikely to get from the jobs themselves.

So that seems alright, and I do think it's helping me stay happy, which ultimately makes everything better. One of my friends agreed in right away and will share with me a song from his music library or a sketch he's drawn that I didn't see before for each two online applications I submit, or each one place I submit in person, up to two rewards every day. And yesterday, I went through and did five applications online to mostly labour oriented positions, so I could focus on how to present as a good labourer rather than trying to organize a bunch of different fronts at one time. I like that strategy, I think it suits me well.

There's also mother. I don't remember whether I wrote it here, but I got back in contact with my mother, and that's been stressful. I think she's trying, though. I told her once a little while ago that she had been behaving unappropriately and to stop sending me any more messages until I could figure out what to say back to her, and then she sent me a message to say she would (because no-one ever apparently thinks that saying yes counts as saying anything), but since then has stayed quiet, and I've got a long email sitting in drafts that I haven't gotten back around to yet to trim down and decide whether to make it milder, but I've been focusing on trying to keep my morale high enough to job search. I might say more about my mother here later, or maybe I won't.

I've come 'round to sleeping days again, which is all a great frustration, but I can still do my job searching at least, in the evenings when I'm awake. Normally I'd try to push my sleeping forward and forward through the days some more until it was back around to nights again, only I talk to Iris in the evenings. He's been very sweet and loving to me, and it makes me feel happy to have that place and time when I'm welcomed for a while. I've got him playing through Doki Doki Literature Club, which I played my virgin run of a while ago. I thought we might be done with his own virgin (or I suppose you could say blind) run through it by now, but he goes through the game so slowly, reading the dialogue and discussing the poetry and thinking hard over every choice and talking to me about it.

We spent some amusing and interesting hours together finding a bunch of secrets in the game, much earlier than I would have expected and which I hadn't even known were there, so I was able to participate in unraveling them from ignorance and with sincere exploration myself, which was great fun. I won't say any more about that here, because between them being secrets and the type of game DDLC is, if any readers have not played it, I would want to encourage them to do so and experience it all themselves. Iris and I have recorded our playing the game and I might put it on YouTube at some point if ever I find a comfortable way to edit videos again, so it's not like our experiences will be lost if I don't write them here.

Last time we played, Iris had a substantial conversation with Yuri for the first time in the game, having mostly spent his time talking to Sayori so far. It was very fun for me to hear him read it, partly because it went like conversations he's actually had with me even more than I expected. I see a lot of myself in Yuri, a lot of my own strengths and weaknesses and fears, depicted very well in some places, and that gives me reason to love the game if I didn't already have an inclination to. I spoke to Iris about it and he can see what I mean by that, although he finds much more kinship in Sayori himself, which doesn't surprise me... Such a simple sweetheart, taking unabashed delight in the simple solaces of the world like restful sleep and tasty food. And what's better, he doesn't mind if I make a little fun of him for it. It seems I get along very well with fellows like that, who can remind me by example to enjoy the simple things, and aren't too proud to let me laugh at them.

I say simple, but it doesn't mean stupid. Iris and Fish and Coda too can understand the complexity and darkness in my perspectives well enough to empathise beautifully and sincerely; I know it's not any lack of understanding or capacity that leads them to deal with life on such simple terms, but their own preference, and oftentimes conscious decision about who they want to be. I can thoroughly respect that. I can enjoy walking a time with Iris's sunny attitude, knowing that he is sincerely willing to take his turn walking with me through nightmares... so spending time lighthearted doesn't mean denying the dark is there, in the way that it has often felt to me as though it does in broader society. It's not whitewashing. It's not stupid politics. It doesn't make me pick sides between two ends of a waveform as though they were contradictory to one another for the contrast. I love that.

Anyway, I started out this writing meaning to say that my benefit return from filing my taxes has come in, and now so has Ontario Works support for this month, since I hadn't paid my rent yet, not having the money, and I asked humbly if they could help me with that and was told they could and would. So I've paid my rent, and I also paid off most of the debt on my credit card that's been building up from groceries and stuff... And my plane ticket... and there's such a weight off my shoulders now about that. But I still need to work at finding work for those weeks of summer I have left if I can, because I can use all the money I can save up to get myself started strong in Ireland.

Dear Memory: Overlap

It's been a while since I wrote here... A lot has happened.

I mean, a LOT has happened now that I look back on it. Three short weeks later, and so much has happened after these long, stretching months of seemingly so little... I have finished my diploma. I was a bit worried about Tax, so I studied it purposefully and did well enough on the exam for a solid pass, although still not a great grade overall. I have moved out of the house with the loud and inconsiderate roommates I didn't feel I could talk to. Moved right next door, to another room managed by the same landlord, with different roommates. These ones don't bother me much. The walls are thicker and the room is further away from main flows of traffic. I've been sleeping full nights again, at long last. I even have access to quite a large downstairs den which I can reshape to my heart's contentment. I cleaned off and rearranged the furniture, populated some neglected shelves and a mantlepiece with books, knicknacks and an assortment of tasty snacks. I actually set up my round table, which has had no space to be useful in for over a year and was just in the way at my last house. It is so pretty now, a comfortable and happy place into which to invite my few local friends. Including a special new addition...

My asexual girlfriend finally moved to London! I had been forgetting this was even a thing, but a few days before I moved (which was a few days before the end of the month) she was landed and local. The night before the move, unable to sleep and stressed, I called her up to go walk the London night streets together and we hugged and kissed and chatted about all sorts of wonderful things. I've been showing her the markets on the weekends. It gives me an excellent excuse to go out to them myself, and there's a great budget stall at Gibraltar that sells non-perishable foodstuffs that are past their expiry date. I've found some pretty great things there (like sunflower seed butter and some delicious little cookies) and also some not great things there (like protein bars and Welch's fruit snacks which become very tough as they go stale), but the prices are certainly right for experimentation.

I got another three offers from Irish colleges, and am currently trying to decide between Sligo IT, Carlow IT and IT Tralee. I also got mail from Waterford, but to be honest their letter wasn't even a conditional letter of offer like the other three were and I was very unimpressed, so I'm not seriously considering it. I'm currently leaning towards Carlow because it's the closest by transit to Athlone.

I booked my plane ticket. Five hundred dollars or so, including baggage allowance. I'm bringing a real suitcase this time, bringing more with me; since I'm leaving nothing behind to wait for me.

And I broke the silence. I wrote you an email on the first of May. Brief and simple and somewhat formal, but contact has been made. I got a response the very next day, which was even shorter and simpler, but although little is said and although you did not take me up on the offer to talk more by starting a further conversation, there is enough confirmation there to make my heart sing. Misspelled and humble is a simple message that validates all the work I have done to get back across the sea. "Of coarse I'll meet with you".

Now my next big task is to choose between these three colleges and get access to enough money to pay my confirming deposit before May 30th. I'll probably need a student line of credit. And for that, I'll need a co-signer. Probably my father, if he'll agree to do it. Otherwise, I might reach out to Iris. Or Ashlynn. Or maybe even Brian, possibly. I'm willing to have some really awkward conversations about finances in order to make this happen. I will find a way.

As I was heading out to the bank today to discuss this, I paused and wanted to hear a specific Ani DiFranco song. This happens often enough, but this time... I didn't have the version I wanted to hear. I have the song, somewhere in my discograpy, but... it was too loose and whispery. I remembered a different rhythm. The search for the correct earworm involved a flustered overturning of YouTube to no avail and my purchasing a single track for 99c of the other non-live recording that was made of it... only to be sent the wrong song. They sent me "Shameless" instead, so I called the support line to have them fix it and ask questions about the song I was looking for.

It's been sorted. I have it now. The lighter and jazzier, more rhythm-tight 2007 recording, from the album 'Canon', of Ani DiFranco's song "Overlap":

...I know there is strength in the differences between us
and I know there is comfort, where we overlap;
Come here; stand in front of the light.
Stand still, so I can see your silhouette.
I hope... that you have got all night,
because I am not done looking at you yet.

I love this song. This version of this song. It prompted me to draw an analogy between communication and light that I built up so thoroughly I drew a colourful diagram of it years ago. And thinking those lyrics brings tears of intensity to my eyes. I feel this so much. I feel this about you. Not just you... So many of my friends. But also about you.

I have started taking firm steps in the process of job searching. There are postings on a student website. There are agencies in town that might be able to find me a temp position; maybe even one related to my accounting studies. I had an intake interview with one of the recruiters at one of those agencies on Tuesday (two days ago).

But I think I may be pushing myself a bit too hard. I came home feeling somewhat dizzied today, my mind full of blades and violence. I've had a particular propensity within the last week and a half or so to imagine stabbing myself through the left eye with my biggest, sharpest, favourite kitchen knife. It has been making me very twitchy, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It may be... I hope... just down to a high intensity of stress, which is natural as the school term is ending and one is looking for a summer job. And preparing to go back to school. And adapting to changes in romantic relationships. And a move into a new house. And finances... So all told, I mean, I don't think I have a reason to be all that worried, but it's still a particularly unpleasant symptom of stress and I hope it goes away soon.

I hope I will hear from my dad. I hope he will be willing to co-sign a line of credit for me. I hope I can find a summer job that pays enough that I can do some saving for Ireland. I hope so many things, really... And I look forward to seeing you, sometime in my first few days of being back on the isle. I want to get to know you again, Fish. I hope you want that too. I really do.

Dear Memory: The Games You Play

Hi, Eoin.

I feel very close to you today, dear memory. I have been listening to your voice. It has been... over five months, I think... since the last time I listened to your voice, and that sound, so familiar, carries an amazing weight of nostalgia now.

I know you must be doing okay, for now, because you're part of a podcast now. Maybe later, I will come back and add a hyperlink to it into this post, but not yet. Not today. I'm a little afraid that you'd see the back-link somehow, and find me here, watching you, and that that would make you uncomfortable. So as much as I would love for you, for this person you are now, your voice still familiar, your jokes told with the same friendly sass... but not to me... As much as I might love to see you turn and see me watching you, I do not rustle the branches. I stay quiet and hidden and permit you not to be any more likely to notice me than you already are, for I've posted links to my blog sometimes on Facebook and I think once, the preview line visible from there held your name.

It's so good to hear you laughing again. And Gearoid and Troy, too. I miss hanging out at your house, listening to you banter with them like this, at home and happy and comfortable. I miss listening to you talk about the games you love, and shows you love, and things you do. I hope I will one day be welcome again to stand awkwardly at hand, listening. Trying sometimes to find something to contribute by saying. Even feeling self-consciously out of place there, but still allowed to be there, listening, enjoying the stories... and talking to you about them afterwards.

Maybe someday I will play games with you again. I hope so. You're so fun-loving. It's... relaxing just being around that, sometimes. It... was, I mean.

While looking through Steam today after nabbing a game which was released for free as an anniversary promotion, I stumbled across something I had remembered only dimly for some time. The Beginner's Guide... And I remember, like vision, like the physical world coming back as a dream fades. I remember sitting and laying on your bed and exploring it, rapt with attention. I remember the prison cell which ostensibly would originally have trapped the player for hours. I remember the trick-door which kept coming back or something, although I'm not sure I remember the trick to it. I remember three figures with blank faces, asking questions about how I got there, and how to move forward. I remember a huge room full of bubbles with comments in them. I remember a combination lock without any clues to the combination. I remember a man standing at a podium. I remember a red curtain around a stage, and a gun which shattered the scenery into blank whiteness... I remember a house full of little things to fix. Little chores to keep up, maintenance to be done. I remember liking that part. It seemed... peaceful.

I remember sitting with you and speaking aloud back at the narrator about the point I thought he'd missed. I remember... rising above the maze. Do you know, Fish...? I still keep that screenshot among my wallpapers. And whenever I see it, I think of you.

I listened to your podcast while I took a long walk today, and bought some ramen. Many times, I laughed at your jokes. Not just yours, Eoin, I mean Troy's and Gearoid's too. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're talking about things that you love. I'm glad that I can listen to your voice without getting in your way. If you keep doing this, then there may be a way that I can have your good humour and your cheeky cleverness in my life even if you don't want to talk again when I land.

When I land. Dear memory... I haven't written this here yet. But last week, I got my first offer of placement back from an Irish college. Dear memory, the only condition set out in that offer is that I successfully finish my diploma and hand in my transcript by May 30th. Dear memory, I don't even have to get good marks in my classes, I only have to pass them. Dear memory...

I am coming.

I hope I will get more than one offer. I hope I will have a reason to contact you and ask which one I ought to choose, a lapse in the silence that's existed between us for more than five months. But even if this is the only choice I am given... I am coming. It's gone from "hope" and "maybe" and "trying" to something more solid.

The day after I received the email, I woke up in my bed, and squirmed gradually to consciousness, and my first conscious thought was to repeat, in my mind, I could buy my plane ticket today. I'm going to Ireland. Where to head after I land may not be set in stone, but I have my confirmation now. There is at least one answer available to that question. I'm going to Ireland. Coming to Ireland. I'm coming back, and I'm coming for you. It sings in my heart so intensely it turns almost to a shriek when I think about it. Like a perfect tone, sweet and high and pure and so loud it could shatter glass.

There is still much to be done first, but the greatest hurdle, the most doubtful issue has been cleared. The rest is details. Details which will fill my days, my nights, my schedule, until mid-August.

And this is why I felt it was now an acceptable time to look through your Facebook page again, and see a couple sorta recent pictures. And I found your new podcast there, and I've been listening to it. It's close enough now, somehow. It doesn't feel distant and stalkery the same way it did once before, because I expect I may have cause to actually be in touch within just another two weeks.

It all comes down to this... and now I hear you laughing and joking with your friends, just like you used to. And something in me that had worried that you might be somehow a very changed person now, someone less likely to like me... something of that fear melts away. You will very likely have changed somehow... but you laugh the same. In your most recent pictures on Facebook, your smile is as I knew it before I left. That's Eoin alright. And that's something right about the world. Something happy. Right now, it must be night time in Ireland, though it's yet early evening here. Goodnight, Eoin. May you rest healthfully and wake happy. I love you.

Needing To Be Useful

This tale of my past is derived mostly from a long conversation I had with my friends yesterday. I recreate it here, slightly edited for better reading and accuracy. May it help anyone who wishes to know me, to understand some of my perspective. May it help anyone who is currently suffering similarly, to know that they are not alone.


I was an outsider, in my mind, for most of my life through elementary and high school. I did not expect anyone to want to be around me, even when I was at home. I grew to escape my fear of social rejection by getting caught on blades in my mind. I was considering dying for a long swath of it, because I thought it would remove me as a burden of unwelcome obligation on my parents, and on society at large. So I tried to imagine nonexistence... which is impossible. And I tried to imagine hell... which is vague enough that it can be endlessly iterated on as progressively worse forms of torture.

I do not recommend this strategy to anyone.

My parents did not deny me by rigidly insisting that I should be Christian, or Muslim, or a doctor, or any such thing; they were simply busy with their own affairs and generally seemed to want little more of me than to not to get in the way, and to not spend more hours than they felt was permissable in front of a television or computer screen. I felt that they neither noticed nor cared that I was suffering.

Although, when I came back from my year of travel to Australia at the age of nineteen, my father confessed to me that he had been concerned sometimes that he would lose me to my shadows.
I was kind of exasperated that he hadn't said that at the time, and I believe I told him so.

For the most part, I consider my parents to be a feature of my past. To a large degree, I consider them to have failed me, and myself not to owe them much of anything. Family is those who understand and support me, wherever I find them.

However, I am still open to visiting my father again to say hi and try to catch up before I leave the country. I like him, in some ways. He is very expressive, and good at explaining and describing things. ...Sometimes people have said I talk like him.

Anyway, I couldn't bring myself to die. Both the consequences and the means were too terrifying to accept. I saw the potential, but it made me horribly squeamish. I squirmed whenever I looked at a sharp knife, or even when someone close to me was holding something as innocuous (but potentially lethal) as a sewing needle. Sometimes, I still do.

And also, I have to admit, I was not actually convinced that it would be doing the world a favour if I died, since I recognized that a lot of heroes in stories came from outsider status, and hoped that I could be like them, although not with much confidence attached to the hope. Perhaps it seemed to me at the time that this could have been desperate denial of an unpleasant truth. I think while I was so young, it did not occur to me to believe in cynical denial of a hopeful truth. At least not in myself.

I became deeply obsessed with proving my own worth, establishing my own right-to-exist. A cognitive habit which is so ingrained, its shape is still reflected in many of the ways I think that were built and updated around it, even if the existential urgency that originally drove that obsession is weakening now as I heal my mental habits.

I tried to do what heroes in stories would do; hold to good, in whatever form I could see it, and to helping other people. I felt hopeful... desperately, pathetically hopeful... whenever I could do so much for my classmates as throw someone's ball back to them to save them the effort of walking to get it, even though I knew my status as a scapegoat would mean they would never invite me to play.

And I spent a lot of time walking on my own. I would walk the big track-and-field running track during recess, thinking to myself. Knowledge and wisdom derived from contemplation were useful, in theory, so if I could develop more of that... it must add to my value, my right-to-exist.

And I had a period of life when I communed with spirits. Although who can say, now, whether there was any reality in that outside my own perspective? I think even my former self at that time was in the habit of wondering whether there was any reality in it outside of her own perspective, and might have readily admitted this if anyone had ever asked her what she thought about it. Almost certainly, though, she would have been overwhelmed by that same desperate hope, because someone was actually expressing an interest in her perspective... paired with fatalistic near-certainty that the one who was asking would use anything she said as something to yell and catcall back at her later.

There was one time, she was walking the track as usual, having turned her heel and walked out on a social situation that was growing unworkable, but was followed by a whole tribe of children. My memory has likely inflated the numbers, but it seemed to me like most of my grade was following me at a short distance, booing and screaming.
And I kept walking. What else was there to do?
Someone had run up to me... it must have been winter, because they got their boot caught in the snow. When I didn't stop to help, but kept walking, I was declaimed as selfish and having "lured" them out here into the cold to die, or something like that. That may have been what set all the booing and screaming off, now that I think about it... but it is all very fuzzy.

And I came to hope, throughout this time, and through hope I came to believe, that in taking this kind of abuse on myself, someone else, somewhere, was spared it. The attention of the bullies was distracted from someone else who might otherwise have been a target, and may have had less resilience to bear it.

That, at least, would be something useful. So I thought I could live with it.

My social life drastically improved at sixteen years of age. My mother plotted with a family we knew to hold me a really nice sixteenth birthday party, away from all the kids at school I felt obligated to treat as friends whenever they would let me, even though they were not.

My mother, in a surprising display of respect and consideration, drove me far from our little village to a larger town, and drove me around the town to look for a present I would actually want, because she didn't want to waste money on something I didn't, an attitude with which I agreed wholeheartedly, and still do.
Gemstones of my birth-month? No, I wasn't really interested in gems. They were so girly and ostentatious. A bicycle? A good idea, but I already had one, my father's girlfriend had got it for me.

I didn't find anything else I particularly cared for at any of the other shops we went to either, and my mother was growing frustrated with the failure to find an appropriate gift, so I recommended we go to the used book store. There might be a book there by Terry Pratchett or Spider Robinson that I hadn't read yet, and although it would be a small thing, I knew I liked those.

In the used bookstore, I found two large, hardcover books that quickly drew my fascinated attention. They were two of the three core rulebooks for Dungeons & Dragons, edition 3.5. And I knew I had found The Thing. They were expensive enough that my mother was very reluctant to buy them for me, especially given that there was one missing, and I would need to have all three. But maybe she just didn't understand why a set of three hardcover books should be worth so much.

Here, I feel I need to back up and explain the context of my desire. I had been trying to invent Dungeons & Dragons from scratch since I was six or something. I had made a habit, from a very early age, of drawing mazes, and putting dots in them with different colours of markers, to represent monsters and treasures, and trying to get my half-brother to play the adventure with me.

I knew to call the person who built the maze and filled it with monsters the "dungeon master", so I guess I must have picked a lot of that idea up from things I'd heard some older kids saying. Almost certainly Levi and Nathan, the two boys closest to our age (although still older) of a farming family we knew, and which my father would often visit, bringing my half-brother and me along. We would spend time with Levi and Nathan whenever our family was visiting theirs, often running off to play in the woods near their farm. We especially liked the game of trying to dam up tiny streams, and keep building and repairing the dam as the water that was pooled behind it grew wider and higher.

But anyway. Although I suspect I must have seen or heard the older boys playing or talking about it, I don't think I had ever actually realized that Dungeons & Dragons... really existed? I thought they were just talking about video games, maybe, or trying to recreate video games without a computer. I did not realize at the time that the video games had actually been recreations of D&D.

So finding these rulebooks, to me in my teenagerdom, was a little like discovering the tomb of King Tut. I managed to convince my mother that yes, these books were something I really wanted, and it would make me very happy to have them, as long as she could get me the third one too. She bought them, and I started reading voraciously as soon as I got back in the car. She actually had to prompt me to look up after we had pulled in and parked in the driveway of the other family's house, so that I would notice that they had put up a big paper banner across the front of the house, that said HAPPY SWEET SIXTEEN EMILY. It was, I have to admit, a really nice gesture.

My mother and the mother of this family were friends, and I got along pretty well with her two children. There was a boy named Victor who tended to be very loud, so much so that between us we named a measure of volume someone was shouting at, "the Victor scale". There was also a girl, whose name was not connected to such a mnemonic, and so I do not remember it. Possibly it was Tammy. I remember her being small, slender and creative in ways that reminded me of a pixie.

We spent a weekend there. We had KFC on my birthday (a rare luxury), and I spent most of that weekend reading and plotting, and convinced Victor and Tammy to play the game with me, even though we didn't have the Player's Handbook, which is the most important one. But we would need dice. They brought me to a hobby store in town that sold the right kind. My mother didn't want to spend any more money on me, but I couldn't play the game without any dice, so I presented the greatest compromise I felt I could. I would get just one die, and I would choose it out of the factory seconds box, which was cheapest.

I looked through the box for a 20-sided die that I liked. I think it was a black one with red numbers. We would have to make do, but we could, because you could simulate rolling any other die with fewer sides by rolling a d20, you just had to divide the numbers up evenly, and roll again if you got one of the leftovers. I drew a conversion table for this purpose. In retrospect, my sixteen year old self, in her excitement about this, registers to me as incredibly cute.

Later that summer, after a copy of the Player's Handbook had been provided to me and I had thoroughly studied all three core rulebooks, I started to prepare a real game, for more than just a weekend out of town. I pulled out a book and craft set I'd been given previously about proper forms of writing with quill-pens and practiced the art just so that I could write prop documents, and place-names on my maps, with the proper medieval flair.

I painted an overworld map on a big piece of newsprint that I had deliberately stained with coffee to look old, and tore all the edges so they'd be ragged. And I planned an adventure and where it would begin, with an opening scene like a cinematic from a video game, and a great big complicated wonderful dungeon to be the first adventure. I invited the other kids my age at the youth group I usually spent time at to come and make characters so they could play with me, and nagged at the ones who expressed an interest until I succeeded in dragging them away from playing Halo on the x-box to come and do it.

And I ran my game.
It became an established feature of the Thursday youth group, every week.
Sometimes, the players would even invite me over to their houses so I could run the game on the weekends.
And my heart was full of joy and validation, because for what seemed like the first time in my life, there was a reason people wanted to have me around.
Even if it wasn't because of who I was... just that I brought the game.
My morale and creativity improved tremendously. I would draw battle scenes and characters and maps in the margins of worksheets at school. I embraced that role as hard as I could over the next couple of years.

I told this story to a couple of my friends over voice chat on Discord not all that long ago, and I think I could hear one of them choke up a little when I got to the end, because in the end, it comes around again to how all this happiness was due to the relief of a loneliness and sense of worthlessness so unendurably desperate that even though I still didn't think my players necessarily liked me, it changed my whole life.

And it is sad. I get it. I agree, and in fact I'm really glad I have friends who can understand how sad it was. But when I look back, I can't help but remember the happiness too, and smile a bit.

The heart celebrates, when it finds a situation which is even marginally less bad.

Dear Memory: A Little Return to Code

Hi, Eoin. Hi, blog which is a symbolic representation of the potential of talking to Eoin.

I'm not very engaged with my classes lately. I had midterms three days in a row last week, and I barely studied at all and arrived late to two of them, but the thing is... I think I still aced them. The one I have marks back for already went super well, although I struggled to remember how to do one of the questions for a while. It was just more of a challenge than usual, and that was actually kind of more fun, in a way.

I haven't gone to the gym in a week. I'm not sure when I will again. I slept during the day today, although I did attend my classes all the way through first and participated actively in them. Got another midterm tomorrow, have barely studied, but it's in a subject I don't expect to be hard: Business Information Systems.

I'm still procrastinating on filling out my college applications, and I feel worse about that than any of the rest. It's more important to me. However, here's what I have been doing. I spent a couple hours two days ago going back and writing in an easter egg to the first little game I programmed on Khan Academy. The bouncing basketball one. I showed it to some of my new friends, and even a fan community, and got some very positive feedback. People had some fun with it, and they seemed to appreciate the easter egg, too. And I've written out a bunch of steps to a program I've wanted to make since my stint of trying programming last year.

I've completed the first step, written out twelve and even after all those steps are done there will be lots more things to expand the program to include and make it more interesting, but it will be together enough that I should be able to invite my friends to start fiddling around with it by then and have something for them to enjoy playing with. I'm also making a point of using ample comments all over the place, and permitting myself to be sassy and emotive in them. I generally am, when I'm happy.

Just as it was the first time around, this is challenging in the way that my classes just aren't living up to much, and that makes it fun.

I've also been in a revitalised skitter about you, occasionally just drifting around, pacing while my mind is occupied with happy, hopeful imaginings of meeting you again. The reinforcement from Ampersand and from the one person from Ireland that I told about it has stoked up my optimism and dampened my fear. But that doesn't change my strategy or my resolve at all, I just... feel more giddy about it. Heh.

I miss you. I'll figure out my way somehow. I can't wait to see you again - but, I am going to have to. For now I'll just have to settle for the dreamy imaginings that are rarely more than an idle thought away, and visit me often while awake and even sometimes while asleep. Also, I've got Don't Cost Nothin' in my head, having watched more Steven Universe recently.

Dear Memory: A Hole in My Foot

Dear memory... Over the past week I have been largely idle, as I mentioned before.

On that Monday, I came into school and was unnerved and confused that the front doors were locked on a Monday morning. I had not remembered the short Family Day holiday; Monday and Tuesday classes were cancelled. The gym was not open either, and I would be unable to work out for my third time that week. I returned home, and slept long and through the day, and at some point, I scratched and pulled at some rough edges of the thick soles of my right foot, and restless, I pulled skin away that tore bloody at the end, and wound up with a patch that was thin and bare and painful to walk on.

I have not been to the gym for the past week, while I was being idle, and part of the reason is that I have been waiting for my foot to heal, and for the slight stiffness in my calf to recover after walking with a limp which puts more stress on different places. It seems to me as though my restless picking may have corresponded to a subconscious need for rest, and winds up working out quite nicely, although the fact that the way it works out involves temporarily hobbling myself is not ideal.

On Friday and Saturday, I turned my sights to work again, as the finished version of an important assignment in my Finance course was coming due. I worked for three and a half hours solid on Saturday morning before 6 AM in that special zen state I get into when I am under pressure to finish a document, in which the hours seem not to matter, as the document forms. Large pieces of writing produced, and then whittled and perfected and formatted step by step; like a drawing, increasing by stages, but not in a particular order. Just switching to adding or refining in some other place where additions or refinement can be made, and then coming back and adding to or refining the part I had just left behind to do so.

It is strange and beautiful and trance-like, and I think I always worry, as a deadline draws near, that I might not manage to fall into that alien and productive state of mind again, it is so different. But then I do. One of my team mates started out working on the wrong part, one that had already been done, and adjustments needed to be made at the last minute. I volunteered to take on part of his work and adapt the project to include the extra work he had done even though it had not been necessary, and it all worked out. I believe so, anyway. Our grades aren't in yet.

I have to say, I have been delighted with my team for this assignment. I think it's fair to say I have done the lion's share of the work on the project, but if so, I have determined lynxes pulling beside me. They show solidarity, they rowl in support and pride when we make a leap forward, and we make that leap together. My teammates have had my back and contributed resources I did not have by conferring with their friends in other sections to figure out segments of the assignment that I did not know how to proceed on. Their written segments showed effort and contained genuinely useful material, despite a few inaccuracies and some poor English. I don't blame them. For two of my groupmates, it is not their first language, and in any case some peoples' skills are not oriented towards writing well.

Mine are, and I spent some of those hazy, focused hours of vaguely happy-ish just-do-it-ive-ness stroking my chin and carefully rephrasing, reducing redundant statements, correcting spelling mistakes and structuring the flow of sentence to sentence.

I also made the report pretty, putting the original phrasing of each assigned question in italics at the beginning of the section that addressed it. It had a pretty header with all of our last names in it and collapsible headings, and I uploaded my current state of progress for my teammates to look at several times. They expressed appreciation for how pretty and comprehensible I had made it.

After the three and a half hours of solid work on the assignment report, I continued on to finish two quizzes for other subjects before sleeping, because they were there to be done and at the time, I didn't mind the expenditure of time in the way I normally do. I scored 100% marks on both, despite being so tired that words occasionally swam before my eyes. I think the difficulty and doubt made me focus and double-check myself more, and the fatigue to the point of feeling uncommon silence and stillness within my mind helped prevent restless distraction or overthinking.

I went back to my games on Sunday, but felt less engaged with them. I think I have had the rest I needed. But, even if this level of strange, zen productiveness were entirely sustainable, I don't think I have a task before me that demands it. Until the next time to crunch on school affairs, I mean.

My foot has healed to a point that the pain is minor and of a different kind. Only the slight pain of touch on scab. It barely hurts to walk. I think I will go to the gym again today.

I listen to another episode of Welcome to Night Vale while walking through the halls, feeling friendly and zazen. The weather comes on, and the gentle, romantic sound of strumming guitar greets my ear, and I experience a strong mental vision of myself laying in a field of swaying yellow grass, half feeling as though you were with me, and half wishing that you were. My heart yearns gently like the satisfying ache of a well-exercised muscle. I pause, and look out of a window, and gently touch the glass as I continue towards my Intermediate Accounting class after the weather is over. I want to go for a long, long walk to nowhere in particular, to be walking. The temptation is extremely appealing. I decide that to do so would neglect my duties at this time, and I continue on to class.

The class is review. I do not focus on it. I sit and write this blog, and listen to the gentle, comfortably familiar sound of my professor going through example problems in the background. I occasionally look up and acknowledge the subject matter. I occasionally hear the input of one of my classmates, and once or twice there is a little chuckle of laughter across the class. I am not focused on the lesson, but I am happy and feel a gentle, abstracted affection for my classmates and my professor and the community that we are together, in the context in which we operate together. Various things seem vaguely and peacefully right about the world around me. This may be partly attributable to my having consumed a Monster energy drink this morning. Those things don't just make me alert; even when I remain sleepy and tired, they tend to make me bizarrely happy.

And I continue to miss you. This, too, seems vaguely and peacefully right. I miss you, Eoin. I love you. Cecil's deep, pleasant voice during part of this episode of Welcome to Night Vale had said... You are never the same twice. You are different at every moment. Continue to do what is important to the you that you are now, until you are not that person anymore. I smiled. I appreciated that part. I feel it is very much what I am doing, and a vital part of the perspective that has been what I am doing since the original light of determined decision in November. This is what is important to me now, and it is true to myself to act upon it. What happens later will wait for later. My priorities will someday be different. I doubt I will regret this, though. How could I regret taking calm, gradual strides toward being as I wish to be? Being where I wish to be. Being with someone I wish to see again.

Final Exam

Before writing the exam:

The first exam I took in this same testing room was in much different circumstances, just a few students here.

Today, I arrived just on time, and had to wait in line to be processed for about ten minutes, then sit and log in to a computer and wait again until one of the staff on duty here comes to open my exam with the password for me. Five minutes? Ten? I brought a Monster drink with me, and I consider that there is some risk of my being distracted during the test by a need to pee. I wait anxiously for my chance to begin.

I did not study much for this, but I did put in a solid two hours from home this afternoon before coming here, to get my brain back in the practice of the course's exercises and ready. I've got my depreciation pretty well down, from the looks of it, although I'm still a little confused about some methods of tracking impairment. The review document was about half depreciation, with some impairment and capitalisation of intangible assets and goodwill.

-----
After writing the exam:

It went pretty much as expected. I did have to pee for about half of the duration, but regained my focus thoroughly enough to get through the test and answer every part neatly and thoroughly. In a couple of matters, I put a great deal of work into applying all the details of a theory that I wasn't sure was actually the right theory to apply. The doubt was a difficulty, but I overcame it to make my explanations thorough, if it turns out they were the right ones. All in all, I think I can feel fairly confident of earning at least an 80% on the final exam and on the course in general. Grade A, although not A+. I'm happy with that.

I came back from the college hungry and shaky with caffeine jitters, chatted to my roommates, ate some spaghetti, and then retired to play Drawful and Xyzzy with a few close friends for several hours. It was an excellent evening of gaming. My friend Lyric stormed the first game of Xyzzy, reaching 12 points and victory while everyone else was back at 6 or so, and then we played another one, to 15, and it was my turn to have an awesome winning streak. I closed the game with a blank card and a reference to a theme about sandwiches having voting rights which had been established in the previous round. The last winning combination of the game was "WHY DO YOU HATE SANDWICH FREEDOM?" ...And I was very, very happy with that as a cap to it all.

The relief of being finished the term at last is tremendous and happy and floaty. I look forward to a short rest from active enforced schoolwork, and a fresh start to the next.

I will take a couple of days to just relax, if I feel like I need them, and will make a point of prioritizing checking out free available classes at the school's fitness center, and preparing for Pathways Week.

... It's been a good day.

Dear Memory: Trying to Slow Down

I wrote myself a checklist for today which consisted of very little big or taxing, and included leisure as an entry. It has been exams, and I have been dizzy with love and busy with study and unable to get much sleep, as I stay up late and my roommates always wake me with their conversations in the morning.

So I have had a quiet day deliberately for once. I set away my laundry, I enjoyed my tea, I ate leftovers and a shawarma on my way back home from a walk. The snow glitters like tiny flashing stars everywhere. Across the ground and in the air, the world around me shining with pinpoint mirrors, facets on a tiny flake of ice. Craft glitter could never match this, for all that it might be designed as though to try.

I Googled up some podcasts to do with finance and bookkeeping and Irish experience or systems in particular, and listened to one first episode of a couple on my walk. In one of them, the voice of the speaker sounded so similar to my dear friend Coda that I giggled to myself about it. In the other, the accents brought me nodding recognition and a reminder of the lecturer who taught my marketing class in Athlone.

The man at the pizza shop (who made me a shawarma) was good-natured and complimentary, happily chatting to me about all the diverse ingredients that make up the flavour, and shared the basic ingredients in the garlic sauce when I confessed I didn't know how to make it.

Half way along the long stretch of Oxford St. which is bordered in great sports fields and open to the wind, I paused and stared in some wonder at the sky. Lights... Lights on the distant side of the field stretched straight up in gorgeous vertical beams, visible high into the sky, diffuse with gentle auras. Some lights more reddish, others more bluish, and a couple thicker and brighter and yellow. I suppose, the light must have reflected off the sparse falling snow, to show those magnificent beams like pillars or signal lights up into the sky. It was worth stopping to stare at for a while, and I could not help but wish I had you with me to see it and awe at it alongside.

My phone had died of podcast. Its battery is rubbish these days and I hadn't fully charged it before leaving anyway. Otherwise, I would have taken a picture. As it is, I describe it here and encourage anyone who might read this and who lives in a place where it snows to look for the beautiful sight on a night when it is only just snowing in tiny flakes, so you can see into the distance.

I certainly must have overexposed myself to those Elbow songs in the past couple of days. Now I can hardly get them to stop interrupting my thoughts, and I am a little irritated of the feeling, even though they are good songs.

I am trying, for the moment, to calm myself down and return some focus on the present and near future, as much as it is habitual and forever tempting to continue daydreaming of meeting you again. I do not want to overdo it and lose sight of the broader existence and variety, and the options in my life. I hope to continue to find ways to enjoy my time here in more than just waiting for it to be over. I see myself in a broad variety of lights, as a student, a traveler, a romantic, a strong creature going on adventures, a restless youth barely able to pull myself together for an hour or two to study and touch ground between flights of fancy and self-indulgence.

Yesterday I went over to the college for a while just to get out of the house, and wandered into the library. There I found on a rack of books to be returned to the shelves a volume called Celtic Mythology, and I picked it up and sat down and read a while, a description of what disperate and scattered records shed any light at all on the religions and folklore of old Irish and broader Gaul or Gael culture. Records in Greece, observations written by their foes, suggestions in the content and the labels of some various works of art; statues, a cauldron somewhere... I read a brief English summary of the stages in the Book of Invasions.

Although I felt restless and tired and was frequently tempted to return home, my mind was also hungry for this context of some of the scant few things I heard others say while I was visiting, and one bit in particular, a mention of one surviving boat of a migration, which carried fifty women and three men, prompted me to blink to myself in some astonishment. I had heard that story before. Only briefly mentioned in this book, but I had heard a much elaborated version in a book I had read while still living at my mother's house what must have been over ten years ago.

It put me in a keen interest to someday take some time to visit other sites around Ireland, any place which still has symbols or record of these old stories, or special relevance in them, and see what it might inspire me to wonder. I thought, perhaps I could become a scholar of these great old stories someday, perhaps write conjectures on them... That, though, is another big and bold idea. It must be enough for now to be fascinated and pleasantly distracted by them, and keep going about my business of learning business, putting forth however much effort performing well at that must demand of me.

And it must be enough, for now, to bring my writing to a close and wish you and myself a good and restful night.

October; Natural Cyclical Endings

A chill rides on the quiet wind, what some old friend of mine once called a "culting cold". The ground is littered with leaves in yellow and red, although many yet remain green on the branch.
The temperature is just the way I like it most. It has an edge of cold that might grow uncomfortable if I were tired and had no protection against it, the better to hide in a comfy sweater or a warm blanket. The sky grows dusky around six, and grey with cloud. It is not bright enough to hurt my eyes, though I still see clearly and in colour. Meandering through the campus grounds, I take in the beauty, alone. I allow myself to meta-think about my heartbreak, still not fully healed, and to notice and embrace that I am capable of enjoying this autumnal atmosphere, the beauty of cyclic endings, alone. It is not too much to bear that no-one stands with me. Perhaps it would be too much if there were no way for me to share my appreciation of it with... But I can write it here. I can mention it to friends in passing.
Alone, I can walk across paths laden with fallen leaves.
Alone, I can feel the chill of coming winter foretold on the breeze, but not, as yet, here.
Alone, I can walk away from those things I must leave behind, without knowing in any certainty whether I will ever see them again. This is life and mortality.

I remember the similar chill of mild Irish winter, and smile fondly. In the coming months, that mildness will make way for the harsh and savage ice winds. I will walk through paths carved in deep snow... probably, anyway. I wonder if I will feel more or less lonely then. I wonder if I will spend my time with new friends. I wonder if I will build a snow sculpture on some day when the snow comes plentiful and wet enough to inspire it. I wonder if I will take an opportunity to slide down hills as I did when I was still a small child.

I have a test today. I know the fact, acknowledge, accept, and then hold it at some distance, although I do not push it away so that I might forget. I walk through the chill air, admire the campus clad in autumn. This is one of my favourite times of year, and it is good to relax before a test.

I feel well. Parts of me are certainly still grieving, but overall, I feel well. I am beginning to imagine ways that the future might be acceptable even if I never see that person again, although I should hope I will. I am beginning to imagine that I may be happy in other places, with other romances. I reflect on age and maturity, on the continual process of growing up. I consider that I seem to have a much better time meeting and keeping friends than I used to. I consider that my radical views have, to a large degree, mellowed out. I tend to give more credit to those I disagree with these days. My mind wanders, philosophical, serene, reverent. I write half from memory and half as a lucid stream of consciousness. I feel I have written enough, for now.

Tabletop Story: Rogesh the Spy

The last time I played D&D was a cameo in a Pathfinder game while I was visiting an old friend in Northern Ireland. He suggested I make a character to join the party in his game for the short time I was there, so I asked about their current situation in order to make a character who could arise out of it. They were a party at around level 10, I think, and they were on a mission to find various pieces of the true name of a demon who'd been established as a nemesis of theirs. This had taken them most recently to a city of vampires, where they had been tested in battle by the vampire god Malkav (Vampire the Masquerade reference, there) and defeated his avatar, thereby earning his blessing on their quest.

My character was a half-breed (dhampir) called Rogesh who'd grown up in the city and made a name for himself as a thief, spy and assassin. He was a casual worshiper of Malkav and identified with the vampires of the city, but knew he was street trash. He lived a hedonistic lifestyle funded by selling his skills to the nobles in their petty power struggles. He was a rogue/shadow dancer and pretty much all of his powers had to do with shadows. He could step between them, hide well in them, bend them into illusions, and (fun fun flavour) the shadow companion he relied on to scout and sometimes flank for him was his own shadow - as a half-vampire, his human half did cast one, but his studies and powers gave it sentience and independence. When he wanted to stay subtle, he kept it near him, walking with him footstep to footstep as mortals' do, but he would whisper to it sometimes while stalking the seedier streets of the city.

Anyway, he'd been hired to spy on the arrivals to the city who had crashed through the gates a few days earlier, and see what they were up to. He tracked the party to where they were entering the sewers (vampire city sewers, full of blood and viscera), but his stealth was matched by the intuition of their drug-addled seer, who sensed that someone was watching them. This led to an awkward confrontation. Rogesh surrendered immediately (his advantage is stealth - once that's broken, he doesn't have much) and admitted he'd been sent to spy on them, but was somewhat awed when he saw the mark of Malkav's favour which showed magically behind their eyes and was eager to join them when they explained they were on a quest approved of by the vampire god. After all, he could still report back to his employer, and give even better details if he was observing their work from the inside.

In their trek through the sewers, Rogesh helped them fight, earning some trust and respect from the others, and his shadow was destroyed by an unknown danger after he sent it out scouting down a side path. He snuck past a gigantic otyugh embedded in the sewers, and when the rest of the party attracted its attention, he shouted threats at it and shot it in the inside of the mouth until it was convinced it would be better not to eat them, and let them go by.

Finally, they found a fleshy spire covered in writing, which they were sure somehow held the piece of the name they were looking for, but it was trapped, and the demon showed up in an avatar form built of blood from the sewers and fought them. The demon had prepared a strategy for fighting them, but was not expecting Rogesh. It was wearing the shape of a humanoid whose body it had taken over. Apparently she was a relative of one of the party members as well, and was known as a vampire hunter who had once posed enough of a threat to the city's undead population that Malkav rose up and claimed, or proved, his divinity in order to drive her off.

Before the fight, she offered Rogesh that since he was a half-breed, and had no part as yet in their fight, he could join her and serve her forces - or, he could stand against her with the party and be tormented horribly after she won. Rogesh stood uncertain for a moment, then realized he recognized the shape, and made up his mind. He fell to his knees, and for perhaps the first time in his life, he prayed aloud to Malkav. He had never been particularly devout, but he lived his life for life's pleasures, as was Malkav's way, and had always belonged to the city and the vampires. He prayed to Malkav to give him the strength to fight for the love of life and the joy of going down fighting. It seemed his prayer was heard, somehow. As a response to his passionate plea, his shadow returned. Normally it would take a month to grow back after being destroyed, but it came back immediately, visible against the chamber floor, and it looked subtly different, with long, flowing hair as would often be seen in depictions of Malkav in his role as the handsome prince-god of vampires.

The shadow wasn't any more powerful, but it was back to help him fight anyway, and Rogesh dug into the fray, leaping at the demon along with his new companions and digging blades into its back. In the end, they won, and Rogesh survived, falling to the floor of the sewers and laughing manically at how his life had suddenly become entwined in the affairs of gods and demons.

Denouement:
As the adventuring party left the city for their next destination, Rogesh returned to report to all the important vampire nobles (though his client first), and the church of Malkav, what had been happening, and that the demon had sought to usurp Malkav through the religious uprisings of the city's mortals. The uprisings were quashed in a bloody slaughter, Malkav himself taking the form of a gigantic ugly beast to rampage through the streets, supported by priests and warriors.

Rogesh watched the fighting from hidden alcoves in towers, in awe, and later asked a priest at one of the temples why Malkav took the form of an ugly monster when he was fighting. The answer given was that slaughter was an ugly thing, and Malkav did not think it fitting to offer it any of his beauty. Rogesh, who had never been beautiful and had always been a mercenary, found this to be a somewhat validating explanation.

His shadow retained its handsome new shape, although its personality and knowledge remained the same as ever. He was honored as a hero for warning the city of the danger; his reputation was greatly improved, earning him more prestigious contracts; and he told stories of the adventure in the city's bars and brothels while showing off the image of Malkav in his shadow to attract ladies.

Life Across the Sea

The Irish winter is mild compared to Canada. It was particularly mild when I arrived and for a few days then, and felt like spring, but now it's quite bitterly cold enough to be irritating. Being outside and moving is really not a problem in winter clothes, but inside, my apartment is not heated efficiently enough to cope well at all.

Worse, it's heated by metered electricity and that inefficiency costs a not insignificant quantity of money. At least now I know how to turn it on if I decide not to suffer numbness of my toes and fingers anymore for a while, but if I were to keep it on and keep my room a comfortable temperature with it (it does take a fair while to spread the heat sufficiently through the room) it would cost me 2-3 euros in electricity charges, per day, by itself.

I learned to my unhappiness that I would not be provided any blankets either and the first night I was here, I shivered impotently, huddled against a wall heater in the living room to no avail. The building was colder still while most of the students who would regularly inhabit it were still away on the winter holiday.

For the first five days I was here, I walked roughly three kilometers to the Athlone Castle in the center of town. It is just what it sounds like, a great old stone castle with a cobbled cart road up into it, and up at the top they have kept some cannon and stocks as historical artifacts. Each time, I sought out the St. Vincent de Paul's outlet I had seen existed downtown on Google Maps. Some of those times, it was closed, and its signage calls it Vincent's, with new and unfamiliar branding. However, I did buy sheets and a towel my first trip, and blankets on a couple of subsequent ones. I went back later for some more clothes, hoping to find something to wear to a nightclub, although that's another story; and finally, shorts and athletic capris. Regardless the place, a thrift store is my personal lifeline.

In the first two weeks of school here, I've learned that the Irish are more relaxed about time (less monochronic, as my earlier classes may have put it) and the proper time to arrive for classes is right on the hour. The lectures will actually begin 5-10 minutes later. Several of my classes were cancelled because it was so early in the term, and one was cancelled just because the lecturer did not show up.

I went out to Eddie Rockets (a local diner) and the cinema with some of the other New Internationals. This is not an official term, it's just what I'm calling those students who, like me, arrived here as transfer students for the second term of the year and with whom I was inducted and shown about the school. There are some from Germany, some from France, some from the Netherlands. The film we saw was Passengers. It was not perfect by any means, not an immediate favourite like Amelie, but it was visually absolutely gorgeous, and it was acted very well. I did however find myself internally facepalming at the movie at several moments though (Goddamnit, John, you should know better than this. You do not cross that line until you have had that talk. Could we maybe at some point consider having a romance movie which doesn't depend on someone doing something incredibly stupid and unethical for all its tension? Although, to be fair, he has pretty much descended into a personal hell. The extreme circumstances having affected his mind at least makes sense.) (Look, it's a science fiction movie... We know this guy is going to die because he's not one of the two protagonists who have to pull things out of the fire. Did you have to make him black? Really? Lawrence Fishburne does a fine job, but the adherence to the trope is embarrassing.) (and worst of all... What? Excuse me, what? You can't do that, that's cheating. She stopped moving while immersed in water. You made a point of showing her ceasing to struggle and going limp. No-one else is there to rescue her. She's dead. She is not going to get up from that no matter how much she's jolted around. She's dead, goddamn it.) ...but for the most part, although it was full of tropes played straight and pretty predictably, each one was played sincerely and with impressive style. The eye candy didn't get in the way and was absolutely beautiful. I was actually sitting in a cinema, noticing the tropes but not minding all that much. I found myself thinking... Well, would you look at that. In this moment, I'm damn near acting and feeling like a normal healthy young adult.

The New Internationals who were with me laughed at my comments on the film afterward, and split up, some going home, some heading out to the nightclub Karma. I was wearing thin and anxious, but elected to give it a go. The atmosphere when I stepped inside though did not agree with me, and I was already feeling tense having walked around for some time with a trio who were primarily speaking French to one another. I tried some of my learned high school Canadian French, to the encouragement and appreciation of Sana, but every time I opened my mouth, I felt deeply embarrassed by the knowledge that my ability with the language is so patchy. Perfectionism is not helpful in learning new things.

At the nightclub, the fee was 8 euro just to get in. Then inside there was a bag check that cost another 2. A youth slung himself around a corner hollering, and the throbbing music from inside did not appeal. Annoyed that I was already facing being milked of my money stage by stage, I defied the sunk cost fallacy, turned on my heel and left, stopping to ask the lady at the ticket gate whether I could get my 8 euro back and just leave. She said no. I wasn't going to argue.

Triggered, I walked towards home, around midnight downtown in an unfamiliar country. But then, being triggered is often like that. I despaired that I didn't have Lonely Digger on my mp3 player anymore, nor my mp3 player with me, and more than anything I despaired for being alone, far away from any of my close friends, and especially the closest, she who I dream will travel with me, my Ashlynn. Reaching a peak in my desperation, I sat on the sidewalk, took out a notebook and pen, and wrote. I do not, however, recount that writing here.

Since arriving, I have made contact with the Tabletop Society (board games, Magic, D&D players; a lot of familiar and friendly culture, gathered loudly in one room Thursday evenings), College of Kingeslake (SCADIANS! ♡), the Dance Club and the Archery Club (brought to us by College of Kingeslake on Friday afternoons). There has been much to learn and friendly people to meet.

An international student who has been here since September, Anni from Finland, was a quick friend, greeting me in one of my first classes and inviting me to come to Tabletop Society. It is good to have met someone I am comfortable asking questions and asking to work with me on group projects. She's taking accounting as her elective. Perhaps I can help her with the knowledge I already have.

I'm sure life in Ireland will continue to be new and challenging. Goodness, I didn't even really mention the rustic, eccentric architecture and the plentiful unfamiliar birds and how remarkably green the fields are... It will have to wait. There are things to attend to.

Term Hectic

Life has been a combination whirlwind and sinkhole for me recently.
I only just noticed I had not blogged in over a month. It's really no wonder that during the school months, I neglected it last year. I have my courses to handle, and right now assignments are getting on top of me. I have arrangements for my foreign exchange term to make, including lodging, furniture storage, finance and course selection. I have my primary and secondary relationships to juggle. A good problem to have, admittedly, but trying to stay sane while negotiating fights with one and jealousy with the other has been very draining.
In amongst all this, the biggest thing is trying to cope with my mood, my intense cravings for sleep, my utter not-willing-to-put-up-with-this feelings about the tumbling and crashing that keeps me from sleeping during any of the hours that the landlord and his family upstairs are awake (I'm so glad I'm moving at the beginning of December - oh, right, add that to the list of things I need to do and prepare for!). The schoolwork would not actually be much to get through if I could maintain my morale and just sit down and do 'em, but between exhaustion and exasperation, loneliness and pressure, it's a lot to manage and can easily leave me dazed and unproductive.
I'll get through it somehow or another. I have to, after all. I look forward to Ireland and the new term, after the arrangements and preparations and moving is all over. A new beginning, new lessons, a new setting. Europe! And when I come back, seeing Asha again in the summer months.
Well, why not dream far ahead, I suppose, right?

Dear Diary... I Quit!

After my vacation... Nothing seemed any better at work. I was just as disillusioned, cynical, sick of it, as before, and more so. There was another incident with one of my supervisors... I think I have largely managed not to speak of those here, though I thought about it. Simply put, two of the supervisors I work under have repeatedly treated me and spoken to me with disrespect I am just not willing to put up with... From the tasks I am assigned to and when, to how they respond if ever I question anything they've done.

Not long before my vacation, for example, I got a face full of really bad attitude just for asking, and trying to do it politely, where my supervisor had been, as I had not managed to catch sight of her on the sales floor for the past twenty minutes. I am not claiming necessarily that she was not there; I focus on my work while I am working, and people can sometimes come and go without me noticing them, but there was a point when I was looking for her actively, to deal with something that required a supervisor, and could not find her. I got no answer, just assertions that she knew what she was doing, for my information. Of course, the problem was that I didn't. Know what she was doing, that is. Or where she could be found.

This example is on the extreme end, but archetypal. I have brought up my issues with management before... The result tended to be that some meeting was had, behavior improved for about two weeks, and then everything slowly returned to the way it had been, disrespect included.

This has not been the only problem I've had with my job, that's made me more and more irritable with work since last September, but it's one of the easiest ones to remember and brood over, and after the newest incident, which I will not detail here, I decided I had had too much already, and was not prepared to take any more.

So I came in on a day I was not working for a meeting with the management. I asked to be placed in the processing room instead of in sales, exclusively and as soon as possible. Several days later when the head manager was available to talk to me, she explained to me politely why she would be unable to transfer me exclusively as I had requested. And I responded by stating politely that I would like to officially resign from my position. I had a resignation letter penned, signed, dated and in her mailbox the same day.

I have worked two shifts since then. After all, it's legal imperative and good form to give two weeks notice before actually leaving. Those two days, I've had a lightness in my step and a glee in my heart. Several customers have commented on my excellent customer service, and one even bought me a coffee. I am very glad to be leaving.

Funnily enough, both of my problem supervisors reacted with shock when I told them I was quitting, and almost immediately asked, "But why?". I kept diplomatically silent or evasive. I'm escaping from my troubles there, no need to make a scene and make enemies. It's not as though it's a secret that I've had troubles with them, but my experiences have told me that they don't accept or listen to direct criticism, so it doesn't seem there's any point in confronting them. It would be a waste of my time and energy.

Instead, I've been fantasizing and dreaming in my head about business ideas I would love to bring to fruition, and how. I don't actually think about college itself that much yet; I'm sure I will as September gets closer. I hope I will keep dreaming and fantasizing and fleshing out my plans, though, up until college and all the way through it. My studies should teach me enough practical skills to get those dreams started. I will likely begin some of the early steps while I am schooling. I look forward to it, and again and again I repeat to myself how much more skilled and more competent I've become. I don't have to put up with disrespect or answer to bosses who won't answer to me. I could find a better place to work, but I think I'd rather make one. I am already reading books that should help me.

The plot is afoot.

How I Spent My (Sex) Vacation

Hello dear diary blog.

I am back at home now after two several-day trips out of town. The first was to go visit a girlfriend and her girlfriend in St. Thomas not far away from the city. The second was a trip out to Scarborough to visit another old friend that I had had sex with before, and had for some time considered that it would be nice to go visit and do it again.

Both trips were wonderful.

I watched a movie. I played games, including Three Dragon Ante, Therapy, Gloom, Spelunky, Chess, Scrabble and Squarez. I faced my deep feelings of alienation, and cried aloud and wept. I slept on couches. I slept on an extremely comfortable bed. I cuddled. I kissed. I hugged. I had sex of various kinds. I had orgasms. I gave someone else orgasms. I watched and shared funny YouTube videos. I cooked and shared delicious meals. I dreamed up a game system. I went out walking and almost got lost. I came back home wishing I had more time to spend with the excellent people I was with. Twice.

Then I came back and I had an appointment with my counselor. I played some games at The Cardboard Cafe with my boyfriend and my roommate, drank expensive but good tea, and ate expensive but good snack food. Now we need to focus on getting together our rental application for an apartment we really want to move into, and submitting it with attached rent deposit. There is much to do...

Angry Today, Happy Today

I woke up today angry. Angry at the birdsong that distracted me from my already fitful attempts at sleep. Angry at the dry sweat all over my body, and the heat at work where I'd been sweating yesterday. Angry at my roommates for not doing their parts of our planned spring cleaning. Angry at myself for not doing mine out of busyness and resentment. Angry at myself for being angry.

I felt uncomfortable with it, but was willing to put my anger and the tired-buzzed insomnia last night that fueled it down to any number of things; malnutrition, burnout, the one day this week that I took my daily pill late... It took me over an hour into my work shift today to realize...

Of course I'm angry. How could I have forgotten? Yesterday a co-worker I would like to consider my friend told me he thinks transgenderism is a disease. Yesterday, when I got home, I cried... and I expect it to just evaporate, do I? Like the gummy residue of yesterday's sweat?


And then after a long, tired day at work... it got better. I made a plan to visit one of my loves in a month, and challenge myself to get my biking legs back so that I can do it by bike. I took a bath. My roommates and I did the dishes... together. I ordered pizza. We hung out together and laughed at imgur. I guess after I realized I had a reason to be angry, it didn't bother me so much that I was.

The first part of my day was hell to get through.

And then, me and my friends... we changed it.

Spring Update

Alright, I feel I owe anyone who reads this a little bit of a catch-up talk on what's really been going on in my life, plumbing aside. In the last two months, I had two teeth completely extracted, and after each operation I fell into a state of increased moodiness and fatigue, sometimes extreme, for somewhere around two weeks. The first of these lasted for the last couple weeks of February, the second filled most of mid to late March, and that's one of the reasons I haven't written much, although I did think about it.

Near the end of my period of lethargy in February, I wrote this journal at work, intending to share it:

February. Lethargy. For at least two weeks now - or going on two weeks, maybe?
Exhaustion has been my constant companion. In my dreams, I struggle to sleep or I struggle to wake or open my eyes. Dreams feel like waking hallucinations, fitful and flighty. When I wake, I may feel awake for a fleeting moment, but sleep calls me back to her like a siren.
If I must, I rise and dress drunkenly to march my weary body to work, and for a time, forced activity revitalizes me, but my energy does not last even my shift. I have felt nauseous and weak 'ere I am done even on short days.
My nose and tongue trick me with experiences of old, rotting blood, sickness, tobacco and skunk...Perhaps the skunk smell was real. I am no longer sure I can tell.
This morning continued this drudge...
...but when I arrived for my early shift, I was honored to discover I was being placed as primary cashier - alone for the first hour unless I were to call for my boss. Perhaps there is hope this may be a better day.
Nearer the end of my workday, the fading sets in and the world becomes slowly less crisp and more unreal. I am still enjoying the honored position not often mine, so this day is better than most, but it is not enough to entirely drive away the fatigue.
My eyes ache, slightly, warmly.
I am thankful for the shot of perspective - spending long stretches of time at cash and dealing with customers, I understand better now how hard it is to do any stocking as well. 

One of my customers was a very soft-spoken young man, slender build, light hair I think, and there was something noticeable about his teeth, perhaps they were set a little forward. He spoke in a way that was... not merely polite. Somehow reverent, perhaps? Unhurried, and sincere, certainly. He seemed almost eager to move around the counter when I asked, and showed no irritation when I looked with some interest at the books he was buying. One was titled "The Pagan Christ," by Tom somebody. I've never heard of it, but that is definitely an intriguing title. I made no comment, but neither any move to hide my interest. Perhaps I shall have to look up this book - partly on its own account, partly out of a striking curiosity to learn what this quiet young man was reading. He could, I thought to myself, have been a priest. If so, of what faith, I wonder? Of course it's silly, but I am enjoying the silliness of fancying after him.
I bid him not let the cold get him down. Pity, but I don't remember clearly what he wished me, only that it was kind and said with quiet, unhurried sincerity. Perhaps wishing me a good remainder of my day.
One way or another, the quiet man and his mysteries make the unreality of my tiredness nearly enjoyable, and certainly much more bearable. 

Yes, this is a much better day so far - but still, I will have to call my doctor for advice or an appointment as soon as possible. I suspect my lethargy may be related to the increase in dosage of my daily supplements that started a week or two before I began to notice the fatigue...

Of course, at the time I did not know it was almost over. Perhaps one of the other reasons that my tiredness in February was much worse and a bit longer than the one in March was also that I was getting into frequent, nasty fights with my online lover. Things had reached the point that I had become afraid of him, despite how far away he lives, because of how effectively he could tear me down, intentionally or not, into a mess of guilt, rage and smallness. When he was angry enough, I was sure that his anger at least, which is in some ways separate from him, did it on purpose. Little comfort to me that he was also unhappy with this - his anger was easily roused and easily controlled him, particularly with regards to me. I guess he was fed up with my own weaknesses, among them a tendency to be defensive and accusatory when something strikes me as potentially offensive.

Often after our fights I was left so angry and depressed that I had neither wish nor will to do anything, and so I would just lay down and either distract myself with comfortably familiar recordings of voices, or sleep, or both. Certainly the despair could have added to my sense of lethargy and hopelessness.

A couple of days after I wrote the above journal, my boyfriend, my rabbit, the one I live with, who had been trying, with mixed success, to be supportive while I was suffering, ran the first session of a Pathfinder game he had been planning. Both lover and I were in it, and some in-game politics started another fight. I told him it was over. The next day, I woke up with my energy back; free...

Of course, breaking up with a lover who is friend to one's friends is not as simple as that. Breaking up with anyone one really cared about isn't. The next few days were extremely hard in their own way as I negotiated for peace after separation, for protection from any potential anger that might come after me for leaving, and kept clamps on my tongue anywhere around that group of friends. Keeping myself quiet was tearing me apart, so at one point I turned to another one of my friends and rambled my aching madness to her, instead... and may have lost her for a long time or forever.

So two weeks full of lethargy were followed by around two weeks of very heavy grieving for a dead relationship. I threw myself forward into it and hurt as hard as I could bear rather than trying to hide from it, in the hopes that I could get through it faster that way. It worked; after a couple of weeks, I felt better, but of course any thoughts of my fresh ex were still painful. Flash forward for a moment to now, and I realize that I now feel about him much the same way I did before there was any romance between us; I dislike his attitude, and he frequently annoys me in almost exactly the same ways. It's disappointing to see that we are so, seeming just back to square one.

Soon after that came my second surgery and its following period of fatigue, but the depression this time was milder and the fatigue did not haunt my dreams. I also had the previous lethargy to draw from, and had some hope and understanding that my bizarre recovery period after surgery would last about two weeks, which it did. And that carries us to my birthday, which was just a few days ago. I was busy that day and the next, so we didn't do much celebrating for it; but my roommate and my boyfriend and I did sit down together to watch a movie of my choice; Indie Game: The Movie.

That morning, I woke up and stared at my ceiling for a while. I was still not in a good state of mind in which to be assessing things or making decisions, and I knew that, but at the same time, I was not sure when was the next time I would be, and felt that assessments and at least tentative decisions needed to be made.

I was 25 years old, had had a job in a charity thrift store for almost two years. I was making a lot of headway on my emotional scars and healing, despite setbacks. I was much less often self-destructive these days, and when I was, it didn't go nearly as far. I was being better to my boyfriend, and for that matter, had arranged to live in a house with two people I liked and was capable of getting along with quite well, generally speaking. But was I happy with where I was, and where I seemed to be going?

No. I wasn't. I had been feeling growing frustration and discontent at work. I felt overworked and under-appreciated and lorded over by at least one supervisor that I felt knew no better than me, and often seemed to know worse. I had been having a very hard time not taking the messes I cleaned up at work personally, and felt I had to sacrifice the things my bosses cared about more in order to do my job right. I felt I had learned most all I ever would from my main position on the sales floor. I did not feel I was getting any closer to moving up the ranks, even though I had been trusted to man the storefront mostly independently for a few hours at a time.

So I thought about that, and that night, I talked to my roommates about it. I think I am ready to take one of the next big steps and enroll at a college or university soon. I think it's time for me to investigate the resources and the courses that may be at my disposal. I still have too many interests to be sure there is any just one thing I want to do, but perhaps I never will be. I'll start somewhere. Perhaps somewhere safe; a business administration degree would be useful in finding a higher ranking position... And, of more personal interest to me, might give me the knowledge and skills to start my own small business or few. Perhaps even an indie game development team.

In the few days since then, I've attended the first session of a group counselling initiative rather cheesily titled Making Changes In Your Life, and have been dutifully trying to fill out the rubrics they gave me to track positive things I have been doing to control and steer my reactions and initiatives. I enjoyed some delivery fried chicken and had my roommates bring me a cake covered in candles to blow out, complete with the traditional Happy Birthday, even though it was one day later due to time constraints. None of us minded. The day after that, we went downtown together and my boyfriend bought me a birthday present; a card game I recognized and liked called Gloom. We picked up snacks in the Covent Garden Market and sat in the mezzanine and ate and played a round of my new game. I got the wonderful feeling that I got to have three days of birthday this year, perhaps to make up for the years in which I did not celebrate. Actually, I felt as though the time from my birthday to the second anniversary of the day I met my boyfriend (which is the date I track, since we found ourselves interested in one another right away) a couple weeks later had been made into a festival for my life, our lives together, a celebration of friendship and support, and feelings of family. I was very happy.

I also, by serendipitous chance, popped in to my workplace on the way downtown just in time to hear my boss congratulate and deeply thank all of our staff for the hard work we've been doing, and our excellent results on our most recent sale. Some of the unappreciated feelings and resentment I had been having began immediately to lift. I was glad I had waited on my impulse to complain.

I still think it would be a good idea to investigate university now. But happily now I'm feeling more carrots and fewer sticks about it.

This morning, I woke up and showered... and came here to write. I am taking the time to get around to some things that fell by the wayside during my month and a half of mixed miseries. And I am proud of myself for it. This is progress. This is... Well. Good steps. This is good steps.