Confession time

Recently in her email to me Sisutar made the statement that I was probably a very busy person and so she didn't mind if I kept my reply to her somewhat brief. That made me think about what my offline life really is like, and also made me realise that I feel a need to share a few elements of what it's like. I also understand that you don't want to listen to angst, and drama, at least most likely...you want to hear about WoW. I apologise for that, and realise that this will be over soon...I'll be back to writing about WoW again in the next post. ;-)

I also understand that most people greatly covet the anonymity that the Internet offers us. I have actually tried to be less forthcoming than I usually would be in the case of this blog, primarily because I feared some of the monumentally vicious individuals on the official forum using anything they could find out about my offline life as ammunition. That's about to change.

As well as having the character in WoW that he does, BRK has revealed to us that offline as well, while he may not actually be at that point yet, he is perhaps closer than many of us to what we might define as self-actualisation. He has a beautiful wife, and by all accounts a full life in several other respects as well.

I also understand that, given the image I have been accused on the forum of conveying, it might be assumed that my own existence is similar. However, truthfully it is exactly the opposite. I only recently ended a mutually psychologically abusive five year relationship, which I had only entered because it was my only means of ceasing to live with my parents. Due to moderately severe autism, a number of physical and psychological sexual problems, my ongoing struggle to resist a toxic and militantly codependent immediate family, and a precarious economic situation, I have little hope of obtaining another in either the short or long term future.

I have a ninth grade formal education, and have been unemployed since leaving high school in 1994, which coupled with some physical problems and the autism, renders employment prospects almost entirely non-existent.

In the South Park episode, "Make Love, Not Warcraft," the antagonist was depicted as an overweight man in a white singlet, who sat in an empty house doing nothing but playing World of Warcraft. I can honestly say that without any humour being involved whatsoever, that is closer to my own real life situation than I would usually be comfortable admitting.

It also causes me to realise now, why I continue to play WoW. I'm not like BRK, who has a coherent life offline, and simply has WoW as a form of recreation, and who also carries into WoW the degree of self-actualisation that he has already attained offline.

I continue to play World of Warcraft because, in reality, it provides me with one of the only real means I have, of feeling as though I have a concrete reason to continue to exist. Shadderhorn and the others on the forum who have attacked me and made this accusation were correct, and I'm going to flatly admit it.

I have no offline life.

If I wanted to be truly lame here, I could create an analogy in terms of the Matrix. Neo ended up becoming someone unbelievable; Thomas Anderson was a generic nobody. Likewise, although my behaviour on the forum hasn't always reflected this, I like to think of Mirshalak as representing the better elements of who I am; an individual who, in another life, in another world, and in another scenario, I actually might have been. James Osborn on the other hand is someone who I prefer to spend most of my time trying to avoid thinking about.

I know how negative I can be at times, but I honestly am enormously grateful to everyone who I've been able to correspond with in the process of writing this blog. You've made more of a positive impact than you might think...and literally...at times, you just might have saved a life.