don't get near me, I'll only sear your skin, in the state I'm in

And then, another night fell, a darker day dawned...



I am not at all happy to have you back.



I suppose I should at least thank you for the warmth...



It's been mentioned recently that I court my own destruction to reinforce my brand. Which is laughable, in one sense, but...I have based this entire blog on emotional pain. Am I truly surprised that it then keeps...cropping...up?

The question now is...how do I change that?



And I am so, so very tired...



Maybe I can push it back through the mirror. Think there's a chance of that?



In the meantime, this is where we are. Hagalaz, the rain of hail. The eye of the storm. Crisis, catastrophe, the emergence of the shadow to stain the light...The acceptance of the unalterable.

That's depressing.

Spun out to get here, spun out once I leave, the intensity for current pain inflicted, to ensure the lack of pain in future. And the chill in the air grows...Hagall brings it all to my door. With the tenuous hope of crops to feed the soul in future...if I accept the upheaval of now.

I never wanted this upheaval. But here I am again, anyway. Best to find more coal, the way this thing is burning.

At least one good thing happened today. It's something to smile about, at least. There may be precious little of that for a while...

I don't know if I can open up, I'm not a birthday present

Oh, hello trainwreck. Guess this is your station. Keen.

I meant to mention Buzzard's earlier this year; I'd been asked to come to the combination dance/live performance/wake for the fellow the troupe who built this haunt lost in 2021. It was...I mean, wakes are also melancholy, but also, sadness and joy, drinking and dance, and in that sense, it was a good time.



But, between one thing and another, I didn't get back to go through the haunt for days. Due to...well. Still. Here now.



The main haunt seems to be your typical insane aslyum-gone-wrong, a trope I'm not particularly fond of, but there are some nice touches. Like this guy. And the occasional bit of "Dominique playing randomly in the background, a song which was used to stunning effect in American Horror Story, and has a bit of a haunted history all its own.



Let's bring up game rips again. I hate them. I hate haunts that use them. But at least here, they're used thematically--the mad children from American McGee's Alice, Alice herself shows up in one of the rooms in a straightjacket, another version of her does slowly spinning circles in a wheelchair--it's still not great, but it could be worse. This particular one, the Little Sister model from Bioshock, I could honestly see in an asylum setting.



Most of the upstairs is the Childrens' Ward, and again, some nice little details here and there. This very very purple bed and bunny, for example.



Once you've gone through the labyrinth, you find yourself in the remnants of a destroyed city, which leads to a lovely haunted walk to the next attraction. Again, several nice little details here and there.



And I have always loved this clock piece. I used to know who made it, I've forgotten since. Someday it will be mine if it's still available.



And this was another wonderful little effect.

All in all, I have to knock off a skull for the game rips, but even with that, they get four full skulls. A lot of heart went into this, and you can tell. Kudos to them.

tables turned, I'm the one who's burning now

There are times the path is very clear. The steps to take are bright, and visible, and easy to navigate. Other times the path is shadowed, hard to make out, half-buried, missing. I must stand in the trees and by the roadsides, listening for clues, searching out the smallest pebbles of the potential path forward.

And then there are the times something blows up the path in front, and my choice is to walk through the shrapnel, and risk getting cut, or wait until it settles, and maybe lose the chance to get close enough to know why it happened.



I'm usually the charge-in-and-patch-later type with most issues, because I'm used to being cut, but some...some still freeze me in place, barely daring to breathe, wondering which direction holds pain, and which holds more pain. Instinctive reaction, still, to fold up the walls and fix them tight again, but...at this point, the box only has five sides. For some, the front panel never employs, and I am left exposed, vulnerable, visible, easily hurt. This is by design. Doesn't mean it hurts any less.



Still trying to figure out the best option, the best way to follow the barest hints of clues, over the field I know is mined. And I know it's mined because I put some of the mines in place. I know it's mine because I recognize the terrain.

And there are signposts along the way, there always are. Some are long since worn away. Some are snapped in half from the last frustrated traveler along the paths. Some are written in languages I can't read. Some are just blank shapes, emotion pouring from them, the drive to do, to be, to change, to have things unsaid entirely. Regret tastes like copper dusted with citric acid.



And it is not lost on me that tonight's wandering, trying to sort for clarity, was done in a skin with markings not my own, painting a map to experiences I'm still struggling to process. And all of this is happening two days before I get to invoke the goddess in a ritual for which I should be calm, and open, and receptive to all light and pleasure....So I have less than two days to restore balance.

Sure. No problem. That's possible.



In the end, on the path or off, what price faith? What price trust? How much is too much, and when do I finally learn these lessons? And how best do I guard my tongue from here, so I am not the one playing revelation roulette at the end of the day?



As many questions as there are missing paving stones I'm needing to reconstruct. And what path there is seems to be leading back to the forest, and the shadows, dotted with ruby-jeweled eyes gleaming in the dark. And the trees are moving.



Is it better to take the step forward, take the risk, take the pain that is inevitable on the shadowed path, or...stand in the sinking sunset glow, and wait, and slowly reconstruct the path by moonlight? Because I could breathe easier outside the forest, away from the doubts in the dark.

But the point this time may not be respiration, it may not even be reconstruction. It may be adaptation and reconfiguration. Rebuilding from the ground up? No, not even close. But enough for scaffolding to support the walls that need to be removed, to make room for new structures. Here we go again.

(Sims visited included the Leafminer Parkway, New London (Adult sim), Chapelle St. Marc, Beinn Dubh, Blyth, London 1940, Scapa Flow, Moonbase Alpha, Tailspinners' Rest, and Spirit of Fire. Not all shots taken were used, though. Written to No Time to Die from Billie Eilish, Safe and Sound from the Civil Wars and Taylor Swift, Feel It Twice from Camila Cabello, Poison from Nicole Scherzinger, Only Time Makes It Human from King Princess, In the End from Snow Patrol, My Dark Disquiet from Poets of the Fall, and Lost on You from LP.)

all is good and nothingness is dead

wonder how you sleep
I wonder what you think of me
if I could go back
would you have ever been with me?

I live a lot in the past. I hang a lot on 'should'. Neither is particular effective, supportive, or at all helpful. That's known, but--so far, at least--unchanging.



I want you to be unused
I want you to remember
I want you to believe in me
I want you on my side

And I'm staring at the sign across the way that asks, What if all this didn't happen? Oh, I don't mean at all, I mean, in conversations with another involved in all this, it was mentioned he should have cut things off the first time there was a spastic disconnect in understanding.



come on and lay it down
I've always been with you
here and now, give all that's within you
be my savior
and I'll be your downfall

And my answer was--after this week or so of thinking, poking at trauma new and old, trying to figure myself out from the inside of the cage--that I wouldn't want to have lost the months in between, because--even a tentative almost-now, could-be-more-later? Is better in my eyes than just--nothing, *poof,* over and done.



here we go again
ashamed of being broken in
we're getting off track
I wanna get you back again

And he nodded. Because...that was his point. I'm hurting more now, he thinks, because he didn't step in back then and call a halt to things. That all of this could have been avoidable if he'd just said, Right, you're done, you're never seeing him again the first time.



I want you to trouble me
I wanted you to linger
I want you to agree with me
I want so much so bad

And...I mean, maybe? I told him I'm too close to it to tell, still, but--part of me scoffs and says it would have happened anyway--my heart goes where it will, not where I'd necessarily choose to go--but the other part isn't sure. Because he did allow things to still happen. He did make the choice that he thought that other hand learned from the first schism, or at least learned enough to move forward with me safely.

And now I can't help factoring that in to the end analysis of what's happening now.



come on and lay it down
I've always been with you
here and now, give all that's within you
be my savior
and I'll be your downfall

So...on the one hand, sure. Rationally, I wouldn't have this flinching away, I wouldn't have this trembling, I wouldn't have the soft, constant swaddling of anguish over everything. Would I have been better off? Would I have been happier?



yeah, be my savior
(only love can save us now)
(don't lay me down)
(only love can save us now)

And as I said, I'm still too close to tell. And it's consigned to the territory of should anyway, because--things are not going to miraculously go back and alter at this point.



now I'm back on my own
hear my feet, they're made of stone
man, I make you go where I go
well hell, you, can I take you home
well, I'm coming home on my back
kissing me, your lips painted black


I am beginning to make peace with things. I am beginning to adapt. It would be nice if other parts of the life weren't so haywire--the world burning to the ground, the employment in acid stasis--but I really can't do anything about any of that right now. Not even this current situation. I can't fix it, I can only try to understand it, and hope I'm reaching the right conclusions, and adapt to the sea changes as I find them.

There's too much salt in my system, too much desert in my eyes, but I'm not sinking to the ocean floor again. No, if I'm going to be up here, I'm going to be present, and relearn how to breathe, relearn how to walk instead of swim. No more hiding.

No more disconnection.

(Pictures taken on JAMBO, Fallen Angel, Kingsport, The Docklands at Bay City, Leafminer, BAE Bean Coffee, the FeverZone, the House of the Spirits, and Lyrics from Matchbox Twenty's "Downfall".)

but my dreams, they aren't as empty, as my conscience seems to be

There are nights where I want to start screaming and just...get everything out. I don't, because first, I'd have to explain why, if I wasn't around people familiar with everything, and second, I might not stop. And I have to stop.

Or not start. It's easier just not to start.

All right. Breathe. Breathe. You can do this. Just relax.

Too much instruction in how to sing a scream, I think. I can't just yell myself hoarse. I'm not performing anymore and it's still there in the back brain--must never damage the voice. It takes too long to heal.

Of course, so do other things, and that never stopped me...Girl has a brand after all, I didn't get that accidentally.



I'm watching myself make all the right moves and all the wrong moves and my hands itch from wanting to seize my own shoulders and shake some sense back into me.

You haven't needed gills to breathe for a long time now. Just calm down.

I can't keep insisting nothing's wrong. I can't keep insisting everything's wrong. There's a middle ground, damn it. Somewhere, there's a center point. I need to find that, figure out where it is. Figure out why it is.

Figure out how to keep it in view.



Past pattern reflective and back again, and I can't even say this is a new situation, that's the utterly galling thing. I have been here before, damn it. I have stood on these shores. The bones in these sands are not recent, and they're not all mine.

I have been the one deciding the relationship can't continue and I've been the one who's told the relationship can't continue, and no, I don't mean ending things, I mean, the choice to end one aspect and retain just the friendship.

Though I will say, of the times it's happened before...I don't have those friendships anymore, either. Something else always got in the way.



Breathe. Breathe. You have space now. You have time. Everything is not on fire.

Are you sure?

And the tender car's been full of coal and it's been full of cavorite and at least once it was blood frozen stiff and solid and now, now, I think we're on charnel bones and fractured bits of personal history--

The whole point of the exercise is to stop making the same mistakes. Why am I making the same mistakes?



And I'm still getting it wrong, and I have no clue if there's a way to get it right, and the shards are poking through the bandages...

In. Out. Count if that's all you've got. If you control nothing else, you always control this. Over-control this on occasion, far too often. Slow it down and concentrate. Live second by second if you have to. Get. A damned. Grip.

I feel too much when it doesn't matter, and when it does I'm confused on what I feel at all, and this is drowning, not waving, but maybe I just need to sink...Maybe I forgot something on the ocean floor.

Maybe I brought the train up too soon. Maybe I should have stayed in the sea.



Ultimately, it's simple. Complicated and frustrating and obvious and stunningly arduous, but...simple. I have. To stop. Using people. Just because I'm flailing, just because I'm confused, just because I'm in freefall again because I'm trying to overcompensate...I need to stop. I have to stop.

Because it's not fair to them, it's not fair to me, and it won't help, and it needs to help. I need to help.

I need help.



And ring the changes rung before, again again again and for what? I left the doll long ago and she's back watching me, I never had the little to leave, and I've never felt smaller when anyone holds me now. I've walked away from everything so many times, did I just drag it all with me? Don't I know how to let anything go?

Just breathe. Just breathe. You bypassed easy mode a long time ago because you didn't learn the lesson. It's not one and done yet but it's getting close. Just. Calm. Down.

It's not even that there are no second chances left, it's that there are too many second chances and too many choices and too much could go wrong and too much did go wrong and it's too big. I can't contain this.

You're not supposed to.

I'm supposed to let it go and pick up the pieces later, but there are too many pieces--



I'm not okay.

You're not supposed to be.

I'm trying to be.

Too soon.

And I'm existing in a vacuum on top of everything else, all raw nerve endings and exposed organs and shatterglass eyes, and I did this to myself, damn it, and--

I need to stop.



--I need to rely on other people, and--

It's terrifying. It will never not be terrifying. It will never stop being necessary. It will never stop being hard.

There are too many directions to go and not enough of me to path them all out and I can't move, I can't MOVE--

And when one holds me I can breathe...And when the other holds me I can start to put the pieces back together...

Okay. Okay. I'm breathing. I'm not good at it, but I am breathing. I'm not good at trusting other people, either. I do trust, I do, but...I'm not good at it.

Time to learn.

And far past time to move forward.

Move forward.

I'm not sayin' there was nothing wrong

oh oh oh, oh oh--
into the unknown--

It's not exactly new territory, precisely, but...it is the first time I've had this struggle from go. Normally, once an ex exes, so to speak, I stop hearing from them. The last one and I are still struggling to find the balance, but he didn't start working on a friendship again until, oh, easily a year out from the breakup, maybe more. The big loss before that--no, not that one, before that one--did stick around, but there were additional complications with that. Like stalking. That tends to go above and beyond that desire to reconnect.



I can hear you
but I won't
some look for trouble
while others don't

And this particular situation...I mean, sure, I could go the closed route. Ban him, block him, mute him, whatever. The thing is...for several reasons, from rational to social to potentially unworthy entirely, I don't want to do that. The lines of communications are open. The lines of communication were requested to be open. There's support for keeping those ties, so...



there's a thousand reasons
I should go about my day
and ignore your whispers
which I wish would go away, oh oh oh--



I don't precisely wish they'd go away. I'm fine with the conversations, with the figuring out together what "friendship" after mad passion entails. Honestly, I'd much rather talk than argue, overall. It just makes quashing the the parts of me still yearning for other forms of connection more difficult. I'm engaged in the practice, but I'm having to go back to start more often than I want, because...well. Still not over things yet.

you're not a voice
you're just a ringing in my ear
and if I heard you, which I don't
I'm spoken for I fear--

I'm honest enough with myself to admit that, at least on my side, it wasn't just bruising. There was that, but...there also appears to be some shattering. Not enough to cripple, not enough to cause complete reconstruction--done that before, wasn't great, 2/10 would not do again--but a certain amount. Which yes, why thank you for pointing that out, does indicate I had deeper feelings. Yes, I'd already gotten there, thanks for that spritz of lemon juice on the raw emotions.



everyone I've ever loved is here within these walls
I'm sorry, secret siren, but I'm blocking out your calls
I've had my adventure, I don't need something new
I'm afraid of what I'm risking if I follow you

I wouldn't even know who to pray to at this point for aid and succor. I mean, Erzulie's right out, no iteration of her will exactly help. Kali's just laughable--oh, she'll help, sure, but by breaking down the barriers I've laboriously constructed as temporary shelters, by telling the absolute truth in all things, no matter how painful, and...yeah, okay, I get the value or I wouldn't be on her side? But right now, leave me with a few illusions, okay? Thanks.



into the unknown
into the unknown
oh oh oh--

Is it unknown, though? I mean, I'm so used to being in similar situations I developed an entire reality around the train wreck. It's happened so often that I'm used to it, or at least, familiar. I don't think anyone gets used to these things, really.

The trick is, I'm trying to learn from this one, to keep it from happening again, but...this situation isn't exactly the rank and file. It's a breakup that's not a breakup; it's a severance that leaves a connection; it's want, take, have slashed through and replaced with want, yearn, can never have again--and that's the galling part. That was the shock of ice water from the depths I was not expecting.

No amount of platitudes covers this.



what do you want? 'cause you've been keeping me awake
are you here to distract me so I make a big mistake?
or are you someone out there who's a little bit like me?
who knows deep down I'm not where I'm meant to be?



So, more rust on the gears, more blood oiling them so they can keep spinning, sure. Been there, done that, sold t-shirts at the concession stand. And eventually, if for no other reason, I'll snap out of the reflection just because I'm disgusted with the analysis. At some point, it's going to become 'no one cares' as the answer to 'why'.

Not there yet, but...I've gotten there before.

every day's a little harder as I feel your power grow
don't you know there's part of me that longs to go
into the unknown
into the unknown



are you out there?
do you know me?
can you feel me?
can you show me?

And where is the train going next? Got me. I'm only the conductor, it's not like people give me maps. My responsibility is just to drive the beast, not to navigate.

But maybe that's part of the problem.

(Pictures taken on Deathlands, Munisa Roleplay on the Leeward Islands, After the Fall and SLMC's Impact Site. Lyrics are from Panic! At the Disco, "Into the Unknown", from Frozen 2.)

if I fall along the way, pick me up and dust me off

It's an odd thing, relationships. Over the course of the life, I've wanted to be in them, I've wanted to be out of them, I've wanted to improve, or mend, or break apart the ones I have. But I don't think I've ever thought, even to myself, I am looking for a love. It's always something I've fallen into, something that happens almost by accident, or something I actively resist because I just don't need the complication. Because if nothing else, relationships are that--vastly complicated, complex, and emotional things.



I said as much to a dear friend yesterday--that while I love new relationship energy, and I love when the relationship leaves that flushed, first intensity and mellows into ongoing care, I actively resist the actual falling. Part of it is, I think people are far too casual about saying they love each other, but I also know that's only a surface excuse. There is something in me that is almost...how do I phrase this...angry about the falling in love. Everything from how dare you disrupt things to I don't need this right now to...every emotion in between. I think also, a lot of it is I rarely know, once I have fallen in love, whether or not I should raise that with anyone, because...there's a bit of do they know, do they love me back, are they going to refuse me if I tell them, but there's also a fair amount of why would they fall in love with me? Hello, low self-esteem.



Some of it's made easier, at least on the grid, because few of my exes still log into SL. The vampire, the incubus, the occultist, the neko, the opportunist...they've all either fallen by the wayside or changed to alts I don't know. I'm still here. I'm still standing in the pixel space, trying to figure myself, and it, out. And while there are some I would potentially enjoy contacting again, there's not a single one that I would take back. Some because the breakups were just so savage; some because...we lost the feel of each other long before we stopped dating.



But I am enough addicted to nostalgia that I reflect, often. Where are they now? What are they doing? Have they changed? Does it matter? The idealist in me wants to know if they're happy, now, lo these many years later; the pessimist just wants to know if they learned anything from the loss. Not that I think I'm that much of a catch; far from it. I'm far more likely to be damage instead of desire, and I well know it.



But I do wonder. Less 'Do they ever think of me?', more--'What did they learn from me?' Did they learn anything? Did I change them? Because even if it's just in small ways that only I recognize, every love I've ever had has changed me. Some for better, some for worse, but always, always, there is change.



ALways, there's change anyway. Change is inevitable. Change happens whether we will or no, whether we fight it, or give in. I fight change a lot; the change I'm fighting never cares. Change is its own unstoppable process. Perhaps that's why it's feared by so many--because change, like death, is always out there, waiting. The inevitability of alteration; the inevitability of excision; the inevitability of abandon. In this, it truly doesn't matter what road we're on, all roads go through the woods.



My road is somewhere different. Far past time to bring the train to shore. Now we'll see how we fare without saltwater erosion and the weight of water eternally pressing. Of course, this does mean the train might catch fire again, but...I'm used to that, too.