The likely best subtitle is “No, I’m really not”
I’ll be frank, I’ve had a rough couple of days. I’ll start with straight reportage, move to how it affected me, and conclude with the happy ending. Yes, gentle reader, there is a happy ending to this episode.
Okay, so what the hell has been going on? First off, there’s RL context. Things are all happening at once and they all seem to be landing on or near my head. My wife has surgery on Monday to remove the piece of skull that was temporarily removed following her stroke. It’s being taken out because it is infected and the only thing they can do is take it out and in six months replace it with a prosthesis. Next, we take possession of our new apartment tomorrow and need to get moving on, well, getting moving. Finally, work is piling up and I can tell it is going to be a challenge to stay on top of it.
Now, events in SL. The other day, Miss Wednesdai came online and invited me to join her at a friend’s house. While there, her friend had to step away and she invited us to stay for a while. Miss was called away as well, leaving me there alone. I was nearly ready to head to bed myself, so not a big deal. Except for one minor issue: She had not released my leash before logging out. What this means is that the leash is still active, just not attached to anything. All the restrictions due to the leash remain: No far touch, and most important for this story, no Teleport. I was stuck where I was until Miss returned or summoned me elsewhere. Still not a major problem, I fired off an IM and an email letting Miss know what was going on, stayed logged in with an AntiIdle HUD running and went to bed. As I understood it, Miss was going to be returning before long, she could release the leash and then all would be well.
What I neglected to do was to inform her friend what was going on. She returned, saw me just sitting there afk, needed privacy, so felt she had no choice but to eject/ban me from her property. When I awoke the next morning I found myself floating 800m above the ground, unable to TP anywhere and unable to return to the ground because I was banned from the location. Stuck like I’ve never been stuck before. I apologized to her for the situation, explained what was going on and her reply was essentially “Guess that’s a drawback of running RLV…” Gee, thanks. I appreciate your concern.
Feeling I had no choice at that point, I cheated to return home. I logged out of RLV, logged back in using SLV and selected Home as my entry point. Once there I relogged with RLV and resumed my wait for Miss to return.
In the evening she came online briefly, just long enough to say “Hi” before she was called away from her computer and didn’t return until this morning. All the while I’m unable to leave the pair of islands where our home is located. It is fortunate that there is pretty much always somebody home on the islands so I didn’t spend too much time all by myself, and I had IM with a couple of good friends as well.
Now, let us turn our attention to my mood during all of this. To say that I was unhappy is like saying that the Titanic ran into a piece of ice. I held some of the best pity parties of my life during the long day that I was there, waiting for Miss. You see the other thing that I realised was that Miss and I haven’t actually played with each other since mid February. We’ve spent time together sure, but there has always been something else going on. Miss was building, or looking for a particular outfit for a picture she needed to take, or being evacuated due to wildfires in Australia, or I was being pulled away for RL, or flying back to the US, or… or… or…
Suddenly I was really upset, and there was no rational reason to explain it. I was feeling like I was losing her and I didn’t know what I could do because I didn’t know why I was losing her. I endured this roller coaster four or five times throughout the day, with different people talking me down each time. I was reduced to tears several times each episode and I just didn’t seem to have the strength to stop it. It would rush over me like a tidal wave even as I was telling myself that I was being ridiculous.
I am under tremendous stress in RL, and I am in SL as a way to relieve that stress. I guess one of the consequences of that is I have very little ability to handle stress in SL. It felt like my whole world was crashing in on me and only by the loving help of several friends was I able to get on top of it for a while. I don’t want to be one of those drama queen subs who needs to be the center of attention all the time. I don’t think I am being, but man that was a horrible feeling to have for so long yesterday.
This morning, Miss came online and we had a long conversation. I let her know where I was at, what I had been feeling and expressed the fears that had been ripping me apart all day. Miss listened carefully as I bared my soul and then took me gently in her arms and allayed all my fears. She too had been missing our play time and we’ve resolved to use our time together to play more in all the senses of the word.
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