Hey everyone. I'm not good at this type of thing so this may be just a bunch of stray thought word vomit, but here we go.
To start this off, me leaving is not going to be for the reasons you might think. As some of you may already know, I lost my best friend back in March. I just got back home from a trip to Hawaii (where he and I used to live and where we met) for a week. It was for his celebration of life and a lantern festival for memorial day. He was in the Navy, he had depression, he was an alcoholic that had his depression get worse when he was drinking. You can do the math as to what happened. I never visited him again after I left, one thing or another got in the way. I was never financially stable enough to ever leave. I talked to him every day through discord for around a decade though. The thing that resonated with me throughout all of it was that I wish I could have done more for him. The reality is that I did everything I could have in the situation I was in.
I had other friends that I would hang out with when I lived there, but reflecting on those years, I didn't know if they'd even still care about me or even still want to talk to me. Fast forward to this trip, I didn't expect anything to go well. I hadn't seen these people in 13 years after all with limited contact with anybody else aside from the dude who passed. When I talked with them though, it couldn't have been further from the truth. Everybody was so excited and happy to see me. It was like we picked right back up where we left off. It was surreal. All the good feelings and emotions I had suppressed about everyone to help me move on after I left, all the great times spent just being our whole hearted selves with masks completely off all came flooding right back to me. It made me sit down and really re-evaluate everything. I mean hell 2 of them invited me to their wedding celebrations abroad and I never expected that to ever happen. It made me realize that I should have been there more, I should have kept closer contact, I should have visited. All the memories we all shared about him, all the things he'd say, all the crazy shit all of us would do, it was something of a release for everyone. When I wasn't with them, I was experiencing some of the coolest things nature had to offer. My dad who tagged along, and I went to so many botanical garden hikes and we got to see flowers and plants you can't see anywhere else in the U.S. As a massive botany nerd, it cemented the fact that I would want to work in a place like that. Getting to work even with endangered plant species. It was a perfect way to clear my head and figure out what was important in my life. The trip just helped illuminate what I actually want for my own future. I can't change the past and can't blame myself forever for how things went down, I can change how I approach my future though.
When I first came into this community I was going through one of the worst times in my life right next to losing him. I had just gone through one of the roughest breakups I had experienced. I had been driving myself crazy alone in discord VCs in both my own discord and the discords of other people who had either moved on from the online life, or the things I was interested in. I never knew which. My IRL life wasn't much better. I'm an introvert that struggles in social situations. I had 2 voids that I needed to fill and badly at that. It just so happened that when I got the craving again to play TTT again, @veL had uploaded a video and it sent me down a rabbit hole. I asked around if there was an iteration of SGM kicking around somewhere, and it turned out the day after I asked was what was the grand opening of Giant's Lair. I had seen so many familiar faces, and people that I absolutely loved from previous iterations of the community and it was something that felt nostalgic and was something that I needed in my life at the time. I didn't expect to get where I did, make the friends or the connections that I did, or make the impact that I did. I never thought I was cut out for this type of thing, and in the end I was right. It's time for me to move onto the next chapter of my life.
I'm grateful to each and every person who made my time here what it was. Thank you all for trusting me enough to get here. Thank you all for being (mostly) chill people. I'll still be around. I don't know in what capacity. The best advice I can give to anyone is to not let the past eat you alive, grief is a strange thing that isn't linear and will change you, and it's never too late to reach out to the people you love. I love you guys.
Cheers,
Zeke
To start this off, me leaving is not going to be for the reasons you might think. As some of you may already know, I lost my best friend back in March. I just got back home from a trip to Hawaii (where he and I used to live and where we met) for a week. It was for his celebration of life and a lantern festival for memorial day. He was in the Navy, he had depression, he was an alcoholic that had his depression get worse when he was drinking. You can do the math as to what happened. I never visited him again after I left, one thing or another got in the way. I was never financially stable enough to ever leave. I talked to him every day through discord for around a decade though. The thing that resonated with me throughout all of it was that I wish I could have done more for him. The reality is that I did everything I could have in the situation I was in.
I had other friends that I would hang out with when I lived there, but reflecting on those years, I didn't know if they'd even still care about me or even still want to talk to me. Fast forward to this trip, I didn't expect anything to go well. I hadn't seen these people in 13 years after all with limited contact with anybody else aside from the dude who passed. When I talked with them though, it couldn't have been further from the truth. Everybody was so excited and happy to see me. It was like we picked right back up where we left off. It was surreal. All the good feelings and emotions I had suppressed about everyone to help me move on after I left, all the great times spent just being our whole hearted selves with masks completely off all came flooding right back to me. It made me sit down and really re-evaluate everything. I mean hell 2 of them invited me to their wedding celebrations abroad and I never expected that to ever happen. It made me realize that I should have been there more, I should have kept closer contact, I should have visited. All the memories we all shared about him, all the things he'd say, all the crazy shit all of us would do, it was something of a release for everyone. When I wasn't with them, I was experiencing some of the coolest things nature had to offer. My dad who tagged along, and I went to so many botanical garden hikes and we got to see flowers and plants you can't see anywhere else in the U.S. As a massive botany nerd, it cemented the fact that I would want to work in a place like that. Getting to work even with endangered plant species. It was a perfect way to clear my head and figure out what was important in my life. The trip just helped illuminate what I actually want for my own future. I can't change the past and can't blame myself forever for how things went down, I can change how I approach my future though.
When I first came into this community I was going through one of the worst times in my life right next to losing him. I had just gone through one of the roughest breakups I had experienced. I had been driving myself crazy alone in discord VCs in both my own discord and the discords of other people who had either moved on from the online life, or the things I was interested in. I never knew which. My IRL life wasn't much better. I'm an introvert that struggles in social situations. I had 2 voids that I needed to fill and badly at that. It just so happened that when I got the craving again to play TTT again, @veL had uploaded a video and it sent me down a rabbit hole. I asked around if there was an iteration of SGM kicking around somewhere, and it turned out the day after I asked was what was the grand opening of Giant's Lair. I had seen so many familiar faces, and people that I absolutely loved from previous iterations of the community and it was something that felt nostalgic and was something that I needed in my life at the time. I didn't expect to get where I did, make the friends or the connections that I did, or make the impact that I did. I never thought I was cut out for this type of thing, and in the end I was right. It's time for me to move onto the next chapter of my life.
I'm grateful to each and every person who made my time here what it was. Thank you all for trusting me enough to get here. Thank you all for being (mostly) chill people. I'll still be around. I don't know in what capacity. The best advice I can give to anyone is to not let the past eat you alive, grief is a strange thing that isn't linear and will change you, and it's never too late to reach out to the people you love. I love you guys.
Cheers,
Zeke
