I just wrote a very sad email. A friend had asked, several times actually, if we wanted to come to the LARP she's organising this spring. I've been avoiding giving her an answer, but today I did. I wrote and said no thank you. We simply can't. And the moment I hit the send button, my heart felt like it was bursting.
I want to!! I want to keep my friends! I want to go to LARPs! I want to fantasize, roleplay, sleep in the woods and cook over an open fire. I want to wear the outfits I've sewn myself and for a moment, a few hours or a few days, enter a different reality, become someone else. I want that!
But I know that whatever I might fantasize about now, the last ten times we've tried it I haven't really been up for it. Sometimes I've skipped out in the last minute (a shitty thing to do) and sometimes I've gone through with it, out of duty more than enjoyment, and not gotten that much out of it.
I'm afraid that if we ever do have the time and energy again that all our friends will have forgotten us. Forgotten me. They do a hundred fun things every week (so I read on Facebook) and I don't. I'm not there. For the first few years I always thought that well, they'll be there when I get back to it, but I wonder how long that window will stay open? How long before any attempt to rejoin the ranks would be met with "who are you?"
And at the same time I simply can't work up enough enthusiasm about it. I like being home at the evening at week nights. I don't like going out after dinner, I'm tired and I want to be with Mistress the few hours we have alone together. I can go out, but the truth is I don't want to.
And our weekends are hard work taking care of little S. We've tried, numerous times, to bring her to things we enjoy, but she doesn't enjoy them and that ruins it for us. Of course we can go to a meeting and have her with us - but at least one of us will spend the entire time focusing on her, because otherwise she'll either destroy something, throw a tantrum or disappear, and that's not much of a meeting.
The truth is that the free time we do get we need to spend in a way that gives immediate satisfaction. Not planning for fun things that are going to happen in three months - we can't afford that. We need things that are fun now.
And I do get to see friends. The few I have that are 1) not super busy having a life and a hobby and not have time for me or living in a different city and 2) those that I've come close enough to actually call without anything specific in mind, those that want to go grab a coffee with me in particular, those that I can talk to about anything and nothing and simply enjoy the company of. I have those, and maybe the thing is that that is enough.
And also, the Master thesis. For once I'm doing a project at school. School takes up most of my energy not spent on little S, and that means I don't have much left. I actually enjoy what we're doing right now, but it drains me. I come home and I mostly want to sleep. Or kill things on the Playstation.
I don't know. I guess it's not the end of the world if I'm not one of the cool kids and all my acquaintances forget about me. Maybe what I'm grieving is a phase in my life that is over? LARPing saved my life (literary - it was at one of those times during my upbringing when I was a the brink of suicide) when I was seventeen, and has been my main thing in life until now. Or maybe until a couple of years ago.
Maybe I'm growing up - prioritising home life, school and job application, being a mom and having a nice home, over hobby and projects. I don't know. And I don't know whether it's a good thing or not. It is as it is, I guess, for the time being.
Showing posts with label LARP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LARP. Show all posts
Apr 14, 2013
Aug 10, 2012
At medieval week
We're on one of the most beuatiful places I know, the town of Visby on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. It's Medieval Week, a yearly event that gathers thousands of people, including most of my and Mistress' friends. I haven't been here for five years, and it's still magical.
The old part of town is surrounded by a city wall, built around the thirtenth century, and the surrounded area has countless ruins, churches and medieval buildings, and the streets have the same crazy layouts that all medieval cities had - the go in every direction, and are very narrow.
We haven't been all that much in medieval garb ourselves, it's been raining and we've been doing other stuff too. But tonight me and Mistress are going to a show, dressed up, and tomorrow we'll be at the market place and other event-related things all day. It's not the same to be here with a little kid, not to mention sharing a flat with my mother, but it's still good.
And it's been a great way to handle the depression. I haven't been this active in ages, and the somber thoughts are all but gone. They're there when I wake up, but then I get thrown into such a lot of fun activities that I get distracted. The city wall, the ocean, the smells and sounds, the people, and my family - it all makes me happy.
And two days ago we went to an ale-house in a medieval cellar after little S hade fallen asleep, and had some beer with a couple of friends, and listened to live musicians playing scabrous music, and I haven't laughed like that in a year or so. The day after I had a hangover, but I was still actually happier and less tired than I've been all summer. A hangover is apparently nothing compared to the continous dreariness of depression and fatigue.
With mother in the same apartment, everything kinky or remotely sexual or looking like power excange is kept to a minimum. But I'm hers as much as always, and I feel that in my heart every day.
The old part of town is surrounded by a city wall, built around the thirtenth century, and the surrounded area has countless ruins, churches and medieval buildings, and the streets have the same crazy layouts that all medieval cities had - the go in every direction, and are very narrow.
We haven't been all that much in medieval garb ourselves, it's been raining and we've been doing other stuff too. But tonight me and Mistress are going to a show, dressed up, and tomorrow we'll be at the market place and other event-related things all day. It's not the same to be here with a little kid, not to mention sharing a flat with my mother, but it's still good.
And it's been a great way to handle the depression. I haven't been this active in ages, and the somber thoughts are all but gone. They're there when I wake up, but then I get thrown into such a lot of fun activities that I get distracted. The city wall, the ocean, the smells and sounds, the people, and my family - it all makes me happy.
And two days ago we went to an ale-house in a medieval cellar after little S hade fallen asleep, and had some beer with a couple of friends, and listened to live musicians playing scabrous music, and I haven't laughed like that in a year or so. The day after I had a hangover, but I was still actually happier and less tired than I've been all summer. A hangover is apparently nothing compared to the continous dreariness of depression and fatigue.
With mother in the same apartment, everything kinky or remotely sexual or looking like power excange is kept to a minimum. But I'm hers as much as always, and I feel that in my heart every day.
Jun 18, 2012
Back in the business! Yey!
We went to a LARP (Live Action Role Playing) this weekend, Mistress' parents took care of little S and we were away all Saturday into the night, we didn't get home until two. Except for something very akin a hangover because of the sleep disruption (the event didn't allow any alcohol, so it must have been the sleep-thing) it was great.
The thing is, me and Mistress met for the first time during the preparations before a LARP in 1997. I was seventeen, she was 26 and the oldest of the group of four who invited me to join them in playing soldiers in a fantasysetting depicting two army camps fighting over a small village. It was my first event, and it was life changing for me. I found friends and an interest that stills holds me, and I finally somehow found a place were I fit in. The LARP itself lasted for five days that time (that's a long long time to be playing, actually) but the consequenses lasted a life time.
Mistress and the others were involved in one specific society, a small organisation with something like 50 members, and I joined too. I did a lot of other stuff too, I participated in making a magazine about larping and went to a lot of different types of events with different settings and was very involved in the hobby for a few years in my early twenties.
Eventually I toned down my commitment and focused more on real life things, like getting a job and with time getting in to the university program I'm attending now. I started the relationship with my ex, and Mistress entered into it as the third party- much inspired actually by an event we participated in, were the setting was S/F and everyone lived in marriages of four people. That's one way larping changes lifes - it illustrates things that could be, allows one to try and feel and experience different realities, different solutions.
But all the time, I was still a member of this first society, or at least a hangaround - I haven't paid the members fee every year since -97, but I have been connected to it all the time. 2001, if I remember correctly, Mistress and I organised our first own event in this society, that focuses on one specific made up fantasy-world, that has been consistent since 1985, and lives in the hearts and heads of the players who creates an re-creates it at and in-between events. It's somehow both my own creation and my second home, as well as belonging to all my friends.
When I got pregnant and little S was born, we more or less stopped. We went to a few events, once when little S was four months old and Mistress participated once alone a while later. But our hearst wasn't in it, and we both decided that we didn't want to play our characters anymore. They had been around for a while, mine for eight years but Mistress' for something like twenty years. And still, for a variety of reasons, it was time to end them. So we did, on those events. Both were actually brutally murdered, in two unrelated scenes, by the evil evil bastards that always in exists in fantasy settings about epic struggles between good and evil.
But now, it's time to start again, and it makes me really really happy. Something has been missing from our lifes. It wasn't really a voluntary hiatus from our hobby, it was a forced on, a result of us bowing to the inevitable of sleeplessness and sickness and a gruesome workload. Having a kid was something like a thousand times more work and pain than I ever thought it would be. Not to mention pregnancy and delivery... It's not until now we have the time and energy to focus on something that isn't day to day stuff, firmly related to our reality.
And for some reason, we need this escapism. It was so great seeing Mistress doing something fun, something besides taking care of little S or me or working. She's so responsible, so hardworking, so very very conscientous - it was a relief simply to see her do something she likes, for herself. I'm better at that most days, I've kept breathing holes for myself, but she hasn't in many ways, and I'm so glad the pressure is letting up a bit.
We made new characters that was great fun to enact, and we had good equipment, we finally finished some things that has been waiting for us (I made a scabbard for a long sword I got for my twentieth birthday but haven't been able to use because I've had nothing to keep it in, for one thing) and I was proud of us. And the best thing is that we'll be able to keep these characters in the future, and keep playing them in a campaing friends of ours are organising for the next year or so, maybe once every third month. I'm so excited about that.
In a way it feels like getting my life back. My life, the one it appeared I accidentally traded in when we decided to become parents. I didn't get a child because I disliked my previous life, and I grieved that loss quite a lot when I realised what had happened during that first year we had little S. Now it seems it may have been a more temporary thing than I thought it was. I hope so!
This is me, and it's not until I got it back that I realised just how much it meant to me, to my feeling of being myself, and to my happiness. Getting out of this world now and then makes it so much better to live in.
The thing is, me and Mistress met for the first time during the preparations before a LARP in 1997. I was seventeen, she was 26 and the oldest of the group of four who invited me to join them in playing soldiers in a fantasysetting depicting two army camps fighting over a small village. It was my first event, and it was life changing for me. I found friends and an interest that stills holds me, and I finally somehow found a place were I fit in. The LARP itself lasted for five days that time (that's a long long time to be playing, actually) but the consequenses lasted a life time.
Mistress and the others were involved in one specific society, a small organisation with something like 50 members, and I joined too. I did a lot of other stuff too, I participated in making a magazine about larping and went to a lot of different types of events with different settings and was very involved in the hobby for a few years in my early twenties.
Eventually I toned down my commitment and focused more on real life things, like getting a job and with time getting in to the university program I'm attending now. I started the relationship with my ex, and Mistress entered into it as the third party- much inspired actually by an event we participated in, were the setting was S/F and everyone lived in marriages of four people. That's one way larping changes lifes - it illustrates things that could be, allows one to try and feel and experience different realities, different solutions.
But all the time, I was still a member of this first society, or at least a hangaround - I haven't paid the members fee every year since -97, but I have been connected to it all the time. 2001, if I remember correctly, Mistress and I organised our first own event in this society, that focuses on one specific made up fantasy-world, that has been consistent since 1985, and lives in the hearts and heads of the players who creates an re-creates it at and in-between events. It's somehow both my own creation and my second home, as well as belonging to all my friends.
When I got pregnant and little S was born, we more or less stopped. We went to a few events, once when little S was four months old and Mistress participated once alone a while later. But our hearst wasn't in it, and we both decided that we didn't want to play our characters anymore. They had been around for a while, mine for eight years but Mistress' for something like twenty years. And still, for a variety of reasons, it was time to end them. So we did, on those events. Both were actually brutally murdered, in two unrelated scenes, by the evil evil bastards that always in exists in fantasy settings about epic struggles between good and evil.
But now, it's time to start again, and it makes me really really happy. Something has been missing from our lifes. It wasn't really a voluntary hiatus from our hobby, it was a forced on, a result of us bowing to the inevitable of sleeplessness and sickness and a gruesome workload. Having a kid was something like a thousand times more work and pain than I ever thought it would be. Not to mention pregnancy and delivery... It's not until now we have the time and energy to focus on something that isn't day to day stuff, firmly related to our reality.
And for some reason, we need this escapism. It was so great seeing Mistress doing something fun, something besides taking care of little S or me or working. She's so responsible, so hardworking, so very very conscientous - it was a relief simply to see her do something she likes, for herself. I'm better at that most days, I've kept breathing holes for myself, but she hasn't in many ways, and I'm so glad the pressure is letting up a bit.
We made new characters that was great fun to enact, and we had good equipment, we finally finished some things that has been waiting for us (I made a scabbard for a long sword I got for my twentieth birthday but haven't been able to use because I've had nothing to keep it in, for one thing) and I was proud of us. And the best thing is that we'll be able to keep these characters in the future, and keep playing them in a campaing friends of ours are organising for the next year or so, maybe once every third month. I'm so excited about that.
In a way it feels like getting my life back. My life, the one it appeared I accidentally traded in when we decided to become parents. I didn't get a child because I disliked my previous life, and I grieved that loss quite a lot when I realised what had happened during that first year we had little S. Now it seems it may have been a more temporary thing than I thought it was. I hope so!
This is me, and it's not until I got it back that I realised just how much it meant to me, to my feeling of being myself, and to my happiness. Getting out of this world now and then makes it so much better to live in.
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