Please note that, with rare exceptions, any and all names mentioned in this blog are pseudonyms except our own. We want to be able to speak freely without doxxing anyone.
Hey, everyone. This is Fen. Today was difficult, there are no two ways about it. Eight was in front for most of it, and he started feeling really stressed out about all the shit he had to get done. So he started talking to Emerson’s attorney alter Castor dragged through the mud the other day about everything going on. The basic gist of it was that he’s beyond exhausted because he is often placed in positions where he has to save the people he loves from all manner of horrible predicaments often outside of their control when he’s barely able to take care of himself or they’ll face a terrible fate, and he’s burnt out and done with the whole damn thing. He’s got the means and charisma to stand up for people and help them where they can’t help themselves, but he’s also just one guy trying to shoulder the weight of an unfair economic system and make a difference when things objectively shouldn’t be this way, and it’s hurting him.
I can’t really blame him. Looking back through the logs, he’s had to carry himself through unspeakable horrors, often privately, and then after he was some measure of safe, he began helping those he loved get out because he couldn’t bear to see them suffer due to circumstances that they didn’t cause when he had the mind, skill, and connections to get them out. But now, years later, he’s tired and wants something better for himself and everyone he loves. The body is fucking bedbound, for crying out loud, and just because he can help doesn’t mean he always should, especially when the stress is so bad it’ll take him out for days to weeks. He knows it isn’t his responsibility to save everyone or even anyone but himself, but he worries about what will happen to the people he loves if he taps out. And honestly, I don’t know. I hate the thought of it as much as he does.
So we’re at a fucking loss here. We are tired of being heroes, because every time we save someone, the burnout gets more intense, we’re placed on an even higher pedestal, and we just really want a goddamn vacation.
I think that’s all I’ve got for y’all today, unfortunately.
Hey, everyone! This is Eight. I haven’t been out in a bit, as I’ve been taking a much needed rest, and it seems like our people and the blog have been fucking hopping! I love to see it!
We’re at the Zelda System’s place again this week, and Sheik herself is cradling me and taking a day nap. She deserves the rest, sweet thing. She works extremely hard and deserves to rest and play as hard as she works, so I’m happy to be held while she sleeps. It feels like a sacred honor to be a soothing and protective presence while our lovely partner sleeps so she gets good rest.
We often think quite deeply when we’re over here to the point that it becomes almost meditative. It’s deeply restful for us to be around her and the others in her system as much as it is for her to be around us. Sheik is so gentle and tender with Allēna that Allēna ends up deeply processing and working through her deepest fears due to Sheik’s mere empathetic presence. It’s scary because Allēna must face these fears head on in order to communicate them with Sheik, but Sheik has never shamed or judged her for her fears and often responds in such a way that sharing is easier for her by the day.
We deeply fear vulnerability as a system, but Sheik and her current headmates’ kind presences have made them safe to share with. Something that came up today that Sheik responded extremely kindly to was Allēna feeling guilty for asking for a favor. In a moment that should be a fucking case study for top notch communication, Allēna noticed she was feeling guilty and anxious for asking Sheik for that favor, so she told Sheik outright what she was feeling and asked point blank for reassurance, which Sheik willingly gave.
From there, this uncorked a second wave of emotion and memories as Allēna explored the root of why she felt so guilty and afraid of asking for help while Sheik stood as witness. This is what she found.
As a child and young adult, we were abused and neglected into keeping our needs and desires invisible and only meet or attain them on our own. Our mother, Hera, was very emotionally withdrawn, and had little tolerance for our – at the time – enormous emotions we had no idea what to do with. So we were severely emotionally abused out of expressing them in a way most people could recognize. However, Allēna resisted.
She is far more emotional than she lets on to most, and turned to art as a means to express herself and protest in the midst of a family who had, for all intents and purposes, abandoned her. She became a highly skilled multidisciplinary artist, creating an enormous volume of work most people, even people who have known our system for years, have never seen. For a decade, she kept a journal not unlike this blog which she, Castor, and occasionally myself wrote in almost daily. It reverberates with the full spectrum of human emotion, sadness, punctuated with joy, with deep currents of rage and willpower most people don’t attain until midlife. And that’s just the journals.
She was also an accomplished visual artist, turning to a brush and canvas when words failed her. She created a series of paintings in which she documented her various emotional states. Anger, her most common emotion – and the most forbidden to express during the time we were under Hera’s thumb – was her favorite piece. Its very existence was an act of rebellion. Slashes of black paint against large swaths of white space, which she knew Hera hated.
Anger (unknown year) by Allēna
The longer we work on our communication with like minded friends and partners, the more we unpick the years of trauma that kept the mountain of exquisite longing beneath the surface. We are very logical, yes, but we also have a treasure trove of emotion often stored in the body. The more we’re able to safely communicate it with people who can hold it with respect, the deeper we’re able to process and feel it. It’s deeply healing and freeing, and we’re eternally grateful to those who witness us. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone! My name is Sabrina, and I shall be posting something on Lumine’s behalf. Today’s topic of interest: Final Fantasy 14!
FFXIV’s story is full of twists and turns, plot-twists, and tons of wacky moments. Considering it now is host to 5 expansions plus the main story, new players wanting to get into this game may be left wondering: “What exactly do the main plots of these stories consist of?” That is what this post is for!
A Realm Reborn (base game): Hey, this is great! I’m a new adventurer ready to step out into the big, wide- … fuck, I’m the main character, aren’t I? … People are going to die for me, aren’t they? … SONOFA-
Heavensward (Dragon-fuckers are Against the Bible: The Expansion): Hello Ishguard A.K.A: The Catholic Church! Dragons aren’t our enemy! Now come with me as we take down the Archbishop/king and his circle of knights who may not represent King Arthur and the Knights of the Round! WOO!
Stormblood (Viva la Revolution: The Expansion): You want us to help you liberate your homeland from the Garlean Empire? … fuck it, why not!? [A Few Moments Later:] Oh hey, China/Japan! [Even More Moments Later:] Wait, who the fuck is this blonde little shit and why was he able to kick our ass!? I hope we get to fight him again soon!
Shadowbringers (Emotional Damage: The Expansion): So, wait, you mean to tell me we aren’t the only victims here? There’s MORE to this story!? Time to become emotionally invested to this place and these characters! YAY FOR EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!
Endwalker (Depression: The Expansion): Oh, you thought the emotional damage was over!? Yeah, no, LET’S CRANK THAT SHIT UP TO 11! Oh yeah, good luck trying to prevent the END OF THE GODSDAMNED UNIVERSE! Hope that doesn’t fuck you up mentally or anything! Now shut up and cuddle these adorable tiny bunny creatures you sad fuck, but don’t feel TOO hard, or else you’ll become a Blasphemy too! ^U^
Dawntrail (Absolutely 100% a Beach Episode: The Expansion): Ah, FINALLY! A godsdamed vacation! Look at us helping our new friend with her goals! It’s such a relief not being the main chara- [Insert the 2nd half] … oh son of a Protestant whore… CAN WE NOT KEEP THIS SHIT CLEAN FOR FIVE MINUTES!?
Hello all, my name is Sheik, I use she/her pronouns, and I have the absolute honor of getting to post here in Open Sorcery. I’ve created the first of potentially many shitposts, and I hope that you all get as much enjoyment out of it as I did.
After an exceedingly chaotic rager of a party, the super admins decided that it was necessary to hold others accountable for the many escapades they undertook. However, due to the nonchalant attitude many in the community took, they decided a little public humiliation would go a long way.
Thus, a billboard was established, and someone was assigned to updating it each morning with the crimes and follies that had been committed within the past 24 hours. Unfortunately, the billboard appeared to have the opposite effect, with many competing to see what the most ridiculous thing could be on the board. As the days progressed, so did the crimes in magnitude, multitude, and monstrosity.
Day One
Kalla: Please, we need you to consider that there are those of us among us who have food allergies. The constant barrage of “Deez nuts” jokes has resulted in some developing psychosomatic symptoms and needs to cease immediately.
River: We are not planning a seafood buffet. Please stop releasing your crabs into the general public, many are not as comfortable being pinched and are not willing to go into hand to hand combat for their dinner.
Hannibal: While we are understanding of the fact that you have changed your name, we cannot in good conscience approve of you fighting those who insist on making puns involving your previous pseudonym. Even if they ask you to stop “Wall-uping them” as you beat the shit out of them.
Hello, all! My name is Castor. I’m the Ashley system’s first host, and I went dormant for fifteen years at the age of eleven. I titled this post “First Breath After Coma” because I was essentially comatose for fifteen years inside my own mind while my body and headmates carried on without me, and while I’ve been awake for about a year now, I feel like I’m finally breathing.
As I write this, my beautiful girlfriend Sheik is cuddling me while she sleeps, and she’s a big reason why I feel like I’m finally able to breathe. I emerged from dormancy severely touch averse where most people are concerned to such a degree that I won’t front around many, but I went out on a limb with Sheik and I’m glad I trusted my gut. It’s a miracle she can touch me at all, as the touch aversion makes it feel for most like my skin is burning if most people even consider touching me. But her? She feels so wonderful she can touch me anytime she likes, and she’s very clingy with me, and I’m the same with her. I love it – and her – dearly.
While I enjoy the company of the system’s other partners that I’ve met so far (the damned attorney in Emerson’s system is a notable exception, he annoys me and I tolerate him for my headmates’ sake), I’ve only really bonded closely with Sheik so far. I look forward to seeing how things develop with the others, provided they aren’t the lawyer type. The only lawyer whose company I’ve ever enjoyed is my great-aunt. There’s only room for one argumentative bitch system in this polycule, and by gods, we’ll defend you with our life, but I really hate being grilled. However, I digress.
I used to not be nearly so touch averse, but was still very selective with who I clung to. My childhood was fucked, see: our Tragic Backstory posts, so I didn’t enjoy many members of my family. That being said, I loved my late grandmother. She was my fucking person. This woman was raised wealthy in New Jersey, very close to New York City. She was absolutely brilliant and delightfully eccentric, the closest thing to a living, breathing faerie I’ve ever seen.
She met my paternal grandfather while she was running the damn lab where he worked as a pathologist, and became his second wife. She was a chemist by trade, read books backwards, was left-handed, and had warm, kind brown eyes with the loveliest violet rings around them. She was also a gourmet chef and baker and slept only about four hours a night. After she retired, she and my paternal grandfather became fucking art dealers, then retired properly to a sumptuously decorated log cabin in the Texas Hill Country.
Her idea of retirement was running the fucking town where she lived, as she was involved in damn near everything. This woman was an inevitable powerhouse of indefatigable energy and warmth. She slept only about four hours a night, the perfect sleep schedule for my extremely anxious tiny self. Before the body came down with mononucleosis at the age of sixteen, we also only slept about four to five hours a night, and we are lucky if we get six hours a night now.
So on nights I struggled to sleep, she would tell me stories about her youth in New Jersey until I fell asleep in her arms, then I would wander downstairs about four hours later at perhaps six in the morning, and she would already be hard at work baking something like two hundred cookies for a charity event. She would make me a small cup of coffee, as she knew I loved it, but it would give my small frame the jitters, and we would begin the morning slowly.
She didn’t believe in sitting with one’s brain idle, but she did believe passionately in doing things one enjoyed to pass the time. So she was fascinating and took equal fascination in what I was doing. I was an unusual child, and she supported my dual special interests in computers and Greek mythology while making an effort to stimulate my mind and get me to explore new things. I gladly participated for the most part, as I loved her dearly and trusted her with everything I have. We explored a great deal of the Hill Country, went to more lovely antique stores than most children ever see, ate some truly amazing food at extremely inventive restaurants, and generally had a blast. She expanded my mind while still making me feel safe, and I loved her for it. Sheik reminds me of her in many ways, and I think that’s why she is so comforting.
I only front once it’s safe now that the vessel is an adult and we’re free to make our own decisions, and it feels like I’m seeing color again for the first time since the events that led to me becoming dormant. I’m getting out more slowly, so are my headmates, we’re meeting new people, and bonding more closely with our partners and friends, not just Sheik and her compatriots in the Zelda System. We’re working our way out of a major depersonalization and chronic fatigue hole that we’ve been mired in for years, and frankly I love it. We’re actually learning how to be vulnerable and unguarded with our people, as well, and the results are beautiful. I would even venture to call them deeply magical.
Speaking of magic, stay tuned for more of that! I’m excited to see how things go.
Howdy, everyone. My name’s Fen. I’m one of the super-admins here as of late, and I have some thoughts about family, both chosen and blood that I’d like to scream about a bit, as we’ve been talking with our girlfriend Sheik about the system’s early life a great deal and that got several of us thinking.
I see Millennials and Gen Z get a lot of shit for still living around or with their families, and frankly, I hate it. It’s complete and utter horseshit. Western culture prizes hyper independence to such an extreme degree that people forget now that we’re a fucking social species and have lived in huge multigenerational cohorts for most of human history. The setup we believe to be “traditional” – one man, one woman, and their children, living by themselves, separated from their in-laws and relying on none other but themselves – is a relatively recent invention and keeps people fucking isolated from other people they might otherwise form close connections with, share resources with, ask for help, etc..
Now, I’m all for monogamy and heterosexual relationships if they’re consensual, negotiated, and entered into willingly, but I myself am a committed pansexual polyamorist who inhabits a large system who made the agonizingly painful decision to distance themselves from the multigenerationalcohort they themselves were raised in due to years of abuse very few of those fucks were even willing to acknowledge.
Yes, for all of Hera and Xavier’s big talk of being independent, resourceful, and pulling yourself up by your goddamned bootstraps, they ironically raised Castor, Allēna, and the others in the system before me in an enormous extended family network made up of great grandparents, grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, cousins, second cousins, the whole fucking nine yards, funnily enough.
Neither of them would have gotten anywhere without both our maternal and paternal grandparents, who helped with damn near everything. Hell, Hera, Ms. “I’m The Most Normal, Independent Woman to Ever Live”, has never lived more than a thirty minute drive away from her parents and her sister for the body’s entire life. At last check, she lives next door to her parents and they knocked the fence between their land down so they could visit each other easier.
This by itself isn’t a bad thing. I simply find it hilarious that Hera was completely incapable of practicing what she so thoroughly attempted to beat into Allēna, independence and normalcy. Hera, that ain’t normal by today’s standards. Sociologically, it’s completely right, but it sure as fuck ain’t considered normal.
Once my headmates were estranged from them, they didn’t want a bullshit nuclear family type setup in the life they were going to build for themselves. Allēna’s first marriage to Fang showed her that she didn’t want that. Anything that even smelled like compulsory, possessive monogamy and the trappings that came with that were not her or the rest of the system’s thing. Even Eight’s very serious relationship with his beloved Delta, which is still very loving despite now being platonic, was very open and they both had a wide range of deep emotional connections despite being initially monogamous. They were possessive of each other, but only because they wanted to be. Eight loved Delta more than anything, and did his utmost to show it in every way he could, and they enjoyed it when he was possessive of them, and vice versa. They both came into the relationship having built fine lives of their own and gotten to know themselves and each other deeply, and most of the work there was learning how the other communicated best. It was – and still is – magical, in many ways.
When Eight and the rest of the system got into polyamory, they took what they had learned from the relationship with Delta and crafted that same magic, only with multiple committed relationships simultaneously. Perhaps the most interesting part of it all is that I’ve noticed that we’ve built that same sort of non-nuclear extended family network the original alters here were raised with, only with people we chose. We’re still close with a few members of our blood family, as well, but they were the select few brilliant black sheep who were good to us well into adulthood, so we chose them, as well. Our close friends are also an integral part of this web, and we don’t want to do life without a single soul present.
Our life is certainly not normal, but it is rich and full of color and joy. If you’re reading this, you’re probably someone we love and treasure. Thank you for being here. Your presence means everything to me and to my system. Always remember that “blood is thicker than water” is actually incorrect. The original saying is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”.
This is Allēna. We’ve been severely writer’s blocked these days, so I have a bit of a sillier post in mind. Part of the reason why the situation with Zelda went south was because Zelda is actually a system like us, and two of the alters therein were causing major problems. Now that those problems have been worked through, the remaining alters are complete and utter loves. I’m actually dating one of them now! Yay, polyamory.
I’m staying over at the Zelda System’s house for a few days, and my partner in the aforementioned system, Sheik, gave us a Homework Assignment while she’s away at work today. My headmate Castor was loopy as hell on seizure meds and doing his best impression of the Zelda System’s cat’s inner monologue last night, so she tasked whoever was fronting today with making shitposts about this absolutely beautiful fluff. Here’s the first one. Presenting, for your viewing pleasure, this cat’s thoughts…
I love this clip. She sounds like Borat.
I may post more bullshit today. Stay tuned for more magic regardless!
What’s up, dorks! This is Lumine, a fellow dumpster goblin on this hell-rock we call Earth. Today, I’ve been tasked by the lovely Ashley System to do a guest post. I cannot think of anything, so let’s learn a random thing, because why the FUCK not!?
Lithium ion batteries are commonly found in a variety of electronic devices ranging from consoles to phones. The best part about these tiny fuckers is how you can recharge them over long periods of time before they yeetie-spagheetti off the rock. WEEEEELL, it’s a blessing and a curse.
Should one keep a device out of power tucked away in a drawer for long periods, said device will have to turn to the battery’s backup reserves in order to ah-ah-ah-ah stay alive. Obviously, this is bad, especially if you don’t see the damn thing for months upon months.
It’s recommended to keep any device being stored away charged between 20%-80% to preserve the poor lithium ion batteries.
So there we go, fools. Y’all just got schooled by the Cray System. [Insert obligatory mic-drop] Peace out, yo. Until next time!
Hey, everyone. This is Eight again. I’ve been feeling worse and weirder since I wrote last time, so I’m going to write about a topic many people have asked me about in the same sort of freeform, stream of consciousness style in the hopes that it will cheer me up a bit and maybe get me to follow my own advice, haha. I want to talk about how I built self-trust.
As you may know if you’ve been following this hell site for awhile, my system has quite the tragic backstory and deep lore. Allēna, the system’s host in our teens, was horribly psychologically tortured by our mother, Hera, to the point where she hated herself, in Hera’s effort to turn her and the system itself “normal”. It horribly backfired, because by the time I came to front as host in 2020, we saw through Hera’s bullshit completely and were done with her games. There was just one problem. We had no idea what the fuck we were doing. We had to get our fucking shit together. Fast. The body was pregnant, so I had nine months to learn how to not be a hot mess.
Allēna with Chaos Nana in 2015 long before our journey towards self trust began.
It was one hell of a crash course.
I barely had time to think or even breathe, but I had to make time or else I was gonna fucking lose it. My partner at the time, Delta, was in even worse straits, so a lot of the calm I found was for them as well as me, because I had to hold us both together during a horrible time in both of our lives.
So how did I build that self-trust? If you guessed deep-breathing to calm my body as the first step, you are correct. It was much needed to stave off a sense of near-constant terror. Hera and my estranged husband, Fang, put me through absolute hell during my pregnancy. There was a custody battle for my child before he was even born, and not knowing who I could trust outside of myself and a handful of others and numerous betrayals on Hera’s part resulted in a deep case of agoraphobia from which I haven’t recovered.
She owned the house I was living in with my beloved Chaos Nana, and her numerous abuses drove the system to the brink of attempting suicide because we saw no way out. Eventually, I decided around December that I wasn’t going to die, I was going to outlive all of my abusers who would disrespect me at my own funeral, and I was going to build a life that worked for me, fuck what anyone else thought.
So, armed with my reason to stay alive, I mastered deep breathing, and from there, determined that I was the only thing in this fuckshow of a pregnancy that I could rely on, so if I was upset about the state of things, I was going to change one (1) thing about either myself or my environment for the better, see how that made me feel, then move onto the next thing.
If I was sad and couldn’t figure out why, I would go find food. We determined early in the pregnancy that if we couldn’t go out to eat as often as we’d like, then goddamnit, we were going to get on food stamps and learn to cook the food we liked. Being raised rich gave us a very specific and refined palate, and Texas doesn’t skimp when it comes to food stamps for pregnant people.
When pregnancy put the body in so much fucking pain I could no longer walk, I swallowed my pride and rolled with the punches – and purchased my first wheelchair. If we didn’t like something, we’d take one step at a time to change it. I learned to accept my rage as a part of me that loved me due to a conversation with a very wise friend that winter, as well, and learned to trust it more than I trusted any human being, and learned to use it constructively.
I learned to set boundaries so that that rage didn’t consume me, and learned how to channel my enormous wrath into huge projects that got me through the harrowing next year of my life. I hated myself at the beginning of this process, but by changing one thing that I disliked about myself or about my environment and then moving on to the next thing, I didn’t get overwhelmed by looking at the whole picture all at once, and learned to accept myself in full in the process.
It wasn’t a perfect process, nor was I a perfect person. However, it worked, and it worked damn well. In moments where I felt insecure and alone, which happened often when I faced something I had never seen before, I reminded myself of all the times during this process that I’d figured extremely complicated things out that I’d never seen before and that I can and will find or make a way through this challenge, too. That approach helped me build a life that worked for me and mine without even realizing it, piece by piece. I only realized what I had done if I had the time and space to reflect, which wasn’t often. But over time, quietly, I began to trust myself because I had proven to myself that I was worthy of that honor time and again.
Because of that self-trust, which is now something close to implicit, I survived some of the worst years of my life. Nobody came to my rescue in major ways, but my friends and then partner came to my rescue in every way they could largely from a distance ten thousand smaller ways. In the process of cultivating that self-trust, ironically, I became the person that would have protected the system from the horrors they experienced when they were younger because I had the courage to save myself and begin to heal.
So if you’re struggling with self-trust, here’s my advice. First, take a few deep breaths. Six or seven will do well to start and will help you stave off your panic/anger/what have you. Next, change one thing for the better. Then, take a break, pat yourself on the back, what have you. Finally, once that’s done, rinse and repeat. Take it from a guy who had to build and rebuild this shit, piece by piece. The small changes are the pieces by which you build the life you want. They will snowball into bigger and bigger changes you’ll be able to make with greater changes once you’ve mastered the small ones. These changes are also a lot bigger than you think. The above is of the before and the below is of the above, so the changes you make will affect you profoundly in the long run. Godspeed, you lovely gremlin!
As always, stay tuned for more magic!
Eight, Chief Executive of Functioning ( am just kidding…or am I? Either way, I just made that title up)
I don’t think I will be sharing this post on my main socials so that I can write more freely. Siege didn’t share the last one on our main channels, either. So I suppose that whoever comes across these next few posts is meant to see them and whatever happens happens.
Truth be told, we haven’t been doing great. We have been very stressed since moving out of Zelda’s place and into our own place with Emerson across the street. The move has put a lot of strain on our relationship with Emerson, as well, and we’ve found ourselves on the business end of a lot of verbal violence from him and dishing a fair bit out in return. None of it has been okay, and Allēna has been in front for the better part of the past week and then some trying to make sure the vessel continues to function and the bills are paid on time. She’s also been hard at work reopening a dialogue with Zelda after the nasty falling out that led to us moving out in the first place.
In many ways, we feel caught between two houses, two paths, and are of two minds about a lot of shit. Lēna has spent most of this time extremely depersonalized, and has felt little to nothing but anger, muted anger at that. Mostly she just felt nothing. Emerson has been terrified that we were going to leave him and mourning us and everything we bring with us, while our depersonalization has gotten so bad it’s showing the early signs of depression, something that haunted us for a fucking decade with no reprieve and that I am not pleased seems to be darkening my mental doorstep once more. Additionally, we have been showing signs of the most dangerous element of our depression spells – what we call a “hot streak”.
These hot streaks are depression fueled periods of intense creative output, often when we feel trapped in a terrible situation with no hope of reprieve anytime in the near future. Launching this blog and the frantic flurry of initial posts is absolutely hot streak territory. If I had to estimate we hammered out at least thirty thousand words – over half of the minimum word count needed for a novel as it is traditionally defined – in a bit over a month, and that wasn’t anywhere close to all we did. I have taken up visual art once more in an attempt to communicate what my kicked hornet’s nest of a brain is doing when I’m so tired words fail me, and Allēna appears to have followed in my footsteps. We’ve created a pair of pieces, Desperation and Agoraphobia. I’ll post them below:
Desperation (2024), by meAgoraphobia (2024), by Allēna
And this isn’t everything. We’ve been recording music here and there, as well. Allēna, fittingly, recorded a strange cover of “Numb” by Linkin Park, which seems like startling fare for musicians known for work that makes its home in the intersection between folk, jazz, and blues. I think that was the point. She got the idea from a conversation with Zelda and was feeling…well, numb, and was in the mood for a challenge. We all enjoy a good opportunity to shock and awe people, too. Nobody expects Linkin Park out of the feral blues system.
Today was a bit less numb but still painful. The depersonalization floodgates broke open and Allēna ended up crying at Emerson for a good long while and telling him how not okay we’ve fucking been. It ended up being really vulnerable on both of our sides and honestly quite productive.
However, the conversation took a darker turn when Emerson and Allēna started talking about the death of the mutual ex that I had actually met Emerson through. This ex died on my system’s birthday, and it’s increasingly suspected that it was a suicide. From everything Emerson can tell, his depression and already ailing physical health had gotten worse in the year and a quarter since I’d gotten sick of his bullshit and left him, taking Emerson and a whole virtual village’s worth of power, prestige, and everything he’d ever wanted with me in the process. Emerson suspects that by doing so, that loss killed him slowly.
This is the same reason why Emerson had been in mourning. He was worried he was going to lose everything if we packed up and headed out, too. This floored Allēna because she had never considered that by doing something as simple – to her – as leaving and removing assholes from her life and various social circles and organizations, it can destroy lives. Her mindset is very much that of “If they can’t be bothered to treat me with respect, what happens after I leave is not my problem”.
She’s secure enough in herself to not let her love for someone stop her from maintaining her boundaries and boot a person from our life if they’re being an ass and refuse to take accountability for their bullshit, but it did help her get a better sense of responsibility for the position she’s in. Those sorts of situations make me far more anxious than they do her, as I can often see how things might play out months before anything actually happens, so good on her, honestly.
Speaking of watching things play out, I have no idea how things are going to go from here. I am going to try and get some rest, though. We’ll just take this one day at a time, I guess.
