Slowly but surely, things are improving on the health front. I am hoping to return to work next week but have been glad of the time off. I did need to rest. My body is still quite tense and the strain is still there, but it’s become easier to bear over the past few days since the big blow-up.

I’ve been cutting together videos from my new guild’s first runs and I kind of accidentally realized that underneath all the tension and stress I’m still feeling about things that will be coming to fruition in the next few weeks, I feel happy. I feel hopeful. I know that there are people I can count on. I know that I don’t have to be all things to all people anymore. I know that I have friends who will back me up and who will take things off my shoulders instead of asking me to carrying on struggling alone.

And that? That’s a pretty damned wonderful feeling. Still sucks what happened but perhaps it’s for the best.

The doctor gave me the week off of work so I could relax and let the nice strong medication (Lexomil) he’s put me on take effect.

At least, that was the plan. Reality, however, likes to kick my ass on a regular basis.

There was a situation in my old guild (Stormcrows) that led to a rather large, messy blow-up on Wednesday. There were some things I did to contribute to this situation — namely not taking the two people at the heart of it aside and shaking some sense into them months ago. In my defense, the reason I didn’t do that is because 1) I wanted to stay in the guild and felt that doing that would just get me a nice /gkick and 2) I feared it would cause an explosion (which, in the end, it did).

Critic (Tau’re) inadvertently triggered said explosion by taking one of the parties aside on Monday and talking with them about the situation and asking what could be done to help resolve it. The other party decided to turn around on Tuesday (after Crit, I, and most of the others thought it was resolved and all was on the way towards being cool again) and shout at all of us, accuse us of shutting the two parties out of the guild, gossiping behind their backs, etc, etc etc.

Take two people who don’t say “hi” to anyone for going on six months now. Add a lot of other people wondering if they have done something to make those two angry. Add general confusion as to whether those two people care about the rest of the group. Mix in the officers spending months smoothing things over, explaining that the two are a couple and just want time together and do care…all the while the two do their damnedest to show that they don’t…blend in a person who is on the verge of a nervous fucking breakdown, is ordered home from work because of non-stop panic attacks, is getting ready to announce some world-shattering, life-altering news to various parties who are fragile after a tragic loss that’s left a gaping wound that will never fucking heal, who is having trouble at work, and is just, in general, under the kind of pressure of which diamonds are born. Know what you get?

You get a fuckin’ shitstorm. That’s what.

So, I left Stormcrows and decided to make a go of my joke guild Causes Without Rebels. Before the sun had set Wednesday, I think something like 80% of the Stormcrows had come over to my guild. I spent all day Wednesday setting up the guild site, getting the ranks organized, getting the guild tabard and bank done, and just generally getting it set up.

I’m still amazed that this happened. It totally didn’t have to happen this way. If either of those two had been willing to even acknowledge their role in this clusterfuck, we could have resolved things. Instead, they want to paint themselves as innocent victims instead of seeing that by spending no time with the others for months on end, they created the perception that they didn’t care and that they could not be approached. Maybe there were things that the rest of us could have done to make it better (I’d love to hear specifics on this one!) but we weren’t the ones who forced them to segregate themselves. We didn’t force that dynamic to happen. We did our best to keep things running smoothly even with it going on and, in the end, when we reached out for the final time to ask “can you at least just say “hi” to us once in a blue moon?” we get shouted at.

One of the two made a remark to me that is completely apropos. She said “this is just like being back in school.”

Damned straight. It’s just like being back in high school were the two “cool kids” can’t be bothered to say “hi” to us poor scrubs. Only this time, the scrubs don’t have to keep taking it.

Of those two parties, one of them can go fuck herself. I never, ever want to hear from or of her again. She could win the lottery and I wouldn’t be cheered. She could keel over dead in the street in front of me and I’d just be careful not to step on the corpse. But the other…the other one…the one I thought was one of my closest friends…the one I thought of as a brother…the one I trusted (and I trust damned few people on this planet!)…if he ever decides I’m good enough to speak with again, well, he knows how to reach me. My hand is out to him. All he’ll ever have to do is take it.

There. Glad to get that off my chest. I’ll be going back to the doctor tomorrow to evaluate how well the medication is working and whether or not he thinks I’m stable enough to handle returning to work full time. In the mean time…I have a guild full of my friends I’m going to go hang out with.

– G