Complexity

Samantha: I'm on a down swing again.. it happens from time to time. I thought of posting about this in my own LJ account, but this is more a Legion thing than a Me thing, and I felt it made more sense to do this here.

I'm on a down swing.. feeling a bit depressed, a bit like I'm in the way more than I'm of any use. A burden on a number of people, rather than an actual boon. It's a bunch of little things that add up, and on top if it, my main means of communicating with someone's just flatlined, so I'm having to fight to be able to get in contact with them.

It all sucks.

Where do I start?

Well, someone I trusted with who we are decided to stab me in the back. He decided to hint (and it wasn't even a subtle one) about us in a debate with my brother, Kit, on a public forum, to score points. Then, he essentially denied us the right to be individuals. I'm still not talking to him about it, and I don't think he'll ever apologize about it.

A friend of mine offered to run a solo game for me. This was a high point, nobody does that for me. I've wanted it before, but it didn't happen, and it was exciting and new and I was enjoying myself. It lasted two sessions. After months of waiting, the game got cancelled, and if I'm lucky he's willing to do a few semi-sessions once in a while during the week. Maybe. This one hurts because it was a chance to stretch and be creative and feel like I'm interacting and getting a chance to use my imagination. This isn't something I get a lot of, and he was hitting all the right notes with this game.

I think I put too much pressure on my boyfriend. I try not to.. he's often down and depressed and doesn't have much of a creative drive currently. I want to do things with him.. roleplay, chat, hang out, but he's not in the mood to really roleplay, there's not much to talk about lately, and hanging out seems to drag him down more than it does to pick him up. I feel like, when I'm trying to push and pull him to get him moving, I'm making things worse, not better.

Then of course.. if I'm active, I'm putting a strain on Kit. I'm distracting him from doing his things when I do mine. This upsets me too, because I feel like I can't win with this one. Do I push to be up, knowing that it's killing his chance of doing things. Do I settle back and bide my time, knowing that there's other people who want to do stuff with me, and I'm not there, and that I'm preventing myself doing what I want?

My Guild is a ghost of its former self. There's .. well, there's no regulars. There's me showing up on Sundays, but that's mostly because nobody shows up regularly any other time. Fox's off and on, and Orian and Corin are off and on, and my boyfriend's there for Sundays and that's about it. Everyone else's buggered off to do other things, or to play World of WarCraft.

Do you know how much I hate World of WarCraft? Words don't begin to describe it. It isn't about the game, but it is about what it has taken away from me. I've lost a bunch of friends to that game.. there's people I used to see who I don't anymore. There's people who would play with me on Guild Wars, but WoW is so much better. There's people who would roleplay with us, but they're also playing WoW, so 'oh, can't really concentrate on hanging out with you guys, I'm off playing another fucking game which I'm enjoying more'. Way to show how much you care about our feelings.

Kit does this, sometimes, but he does it the opposite way.. he'll be playing Guild Wars, and doing a mission, and he puts them a bit more at risk because he thinks the feelings of the people he's talking to in another window are more important than the mission he's on. The mission can be repeated later if he fucks up.. but talking to someone? That's a different matter.. trying to be good company's more important. I can at least accept that. If the mission's reasonably important, he'll tell the people he's hanging with he's going to be distracted by Guild Wars, and when the mission's done he turns off the fucking game and gives his attention to the people he's hanging with.

Yeah, we're not bitter. Kit's too nice to really complain about it, but it really gets under his skin. My complaint is that I'm feeling abandoned by people. I'd invited a friend to hang out with my guild more when he lost interest in WoW. It was really an invitation to hang out with me, and.. nothing came of it.

Nothing ever really comes of it..

Who Defines Family?

Samantha: Last night someone decided they could "out" me on a community. He was in an argument with my brother (Kit) about some things, and decided when he was going to talk about Daryl or myself, he'd use " " around the title "brother" and "sister". The community Kit posts to doesn't know about our circumstances, but if you see " " there during a discussion, what's the presumptions you might make?

This pissed me off obviously, and I decided to sleep on it before I said anything. Well, the next morning I wasn't feeling any better about it, and Kit was wondering what to say? If someone doesn't accept your view on these things, you're essentially screwed for any reasonable discussion on the points made. And, of course, you're also probably going to need to try to explain the circumstances and deal with a few hundred people you don't know suddenly judging you. Yeah, it sucks all around.

I shot off a quick reply to the guy, and I wanted to wash my hands of the whole thing. Well, guess what? When I asked him why he did it, one of the things he said was 'you're not his sister. You're not family. Especially now that he's trying to start one'.

Well, fuck that! Nobody gets to decide if I'm family or not except my family. You know what? I'm not going away just because Kit's having a kid. It's already been decided that we'll have to explain ourselves to the kid while they're growing up, and that they'll need to learn to handle it. This isn't some short-term thing we're talking about. I'm not some passing 'phase'. And treating me like a non-person isn't helping matters.

Needless to say, I'm not going to be dealing with this guy anymore.

Imagination

One daydream that we have involves going into the future. We imagine this is normal for some people because of the gadgets and technology available in the future, and maybe that is true for us to some extent, but not as much as you might think.

The thing in the future we wish to find is cloning technology. In our daydreams, we go to the future so that we can be cloned -- split into individuals, and each given our own body. Usually, those of us who are cloned include Samantha, Mark, and Daryl, though at times others among us are given the chance to have our own bodies as well.

Then, usually, we return to the present. Samantha, of course, wants to contact her boyfriend immediately, and let him know the good news, while Mark wants to have the opportunity to sit down with someone he knows, so he can talk with her. Often, though, it is Samantha who wants her own body, and the rest of Legion is more passive on the subject. It does not surprise us that Mark is more hesitant about getting his freedom, since there is less for him in the world than there is for Samantha.

First Group Dream

Kit: Legion doesn't dream often.

Or, to put it another way -- most dreams are marked 'my' dreams, and only a very few dreams I am privy to belong to anyone else. Samantha has had two or three dreams that I am personally aware of, and I'm not certain about anyone else. It just might be that Samantha's stands out because she's a girl, and in her dreams she identifies with being a girl. I don't know.

Last night, however, was the first time that I remember having a dream which involved all of us. It stands out because it was the first dream where we had a 'fit' in the dream itself. It was pretty horrible, because it had all the earmarks of a fit.

For those of you who don't know -- a 'fit' -- is when one or more of us get so upset, that Dark comes out to attack the source of our anger / fear / anxiety / whatever. Because having a feral something go into attack mode is usually inappropriate, we have to try to hold him back, and as we all fight for control... well, we usually collapse and thrash around. It is painful, confusing, and disorienting.

Once we've got him under lock and key, there's a strange hollow feeling, our limbs feel like deadwood, and we usually let one of the younger ones up (Sonic, usually), while we assess what went on and how to deal with it.

So, yeah. Last night involved a dream where mom upset us so much (and I don't remember over what), that we had a fit. We were at someone's house, there was a swimming pool in the back, and everyone was dressed for swimming, I remember that. And I remember the fit starting, me going 'oh crap!' and trying to hold it off, and Dark attacking mom. Usually, if there's a fit in public, there's a few people there to help hold me down -- not this time.

Mom tried to fight him off, and he'd try to push her down so he could bite her and claw at her. At the end of it, we curled up, and the horror of it all sunk in. We felt terrible, and mom was torn between being angry, being terrified, not understanding really what happened, and blaming me for what happened. Nothing she could say, though, could really draw us out, and she eventually take us to the van to try to drive us someplace to eat. It was... a slow process coming out after that.

During the aftershock, though... there was a brief discussion where I mentioned my father's gun, and the passive desire to just finish ourselves off for what we'd done. Mom dismissed it at first, then made sure Dad had the gun hidden, the bullets removed and put somewhere else, and nothing around for us to get our hands on.

We woke up shortly after this whole thing, and I felt very... off. I was upset at the dream, but it also disturbed me on a few other levels as well. We're sort of discussing this with each other, trying to sort it out, and at the moment our skin doesn't feel like it sits 'just right', sort of like what happens when we're not sure who is driving the boat.