A Lesson in Fear
When I first came back, I was afraid.

World of Warcraft had been the only game that I'd stopped playing for reasons other than disliking the game itself. Final Fantasy XI, Guild Wars, City of Heroes... I broke up with those girls because I wasn't interested in dating them any longer, not because I didn't get along with their parents, to use an obtuse analogy. So there was fear when I went back to Warcraft again, that I would be driven away by the same things that had pushed me off the first time. I tried to leave it behind and start again, start all over, take things in from a different angle.

To my surprise, it caught. I kept playing, and then I started in with Elaine as well. The fear diminished quickly, and how quickly my reluctance became enthusiasm and comfort. Because it'd be wrong to call Azeroth anything but comforting, even at the worst of times. Once you've invested enough time and effort in, there's a massive feeling of accomplishment and inalienable privilege. Nothing can take your epic mount, or epic flyer, or anything of the sort away from you, barring someone hacking your account. The world is maleable.

You are in control. And there is always more to do, always more mountains to climb, enemies to kill, bosses to down, recipes to learn, and so on.

And it became a blanket. Which is fine when you need to keep yourself warm for a bit, but not so great when you really need to get out of bed, look around, and figure out what's going on from here on out. It's an easy and perfectly safe escape, one so easy to justify that it becomes habit. Justify and forget, and be someone else, whether or not you roleplay.

Tonight I had to take a hard look at myself, look inward more closely than I had in quite some time. I looked and I realized that I had turned from someone with a variety of interests into someone who had one real interest alone, that my life was being deformed by the pull exerted by playing other people's lives. When I looked forward to the expansion, I didn't think it would be fun - I hoped it would make things fun again.

And that was what hit me completely. It had stopped being fun on its own merits. Each accomplishment had started to be less fun and more of a momentary sense of triumph before moving on to the next accomplishment. What I wanted from the expansion was to inject fun into something I now found tedious. Yet more time and effort and emotion got shuffled into that void anyway, and the pattern wasn't going to get easier when the link was severed, because it would just reveal how much had atrophied into nothing in the time that had been consumed. There was a distinct slope and I was on it.

When I sprang into action, when I saw who I was and what I needed to do, I knew that one of the first things I had to do was end it. Cancel. Opt out. Let it stop now, before I had another set of goals to bounce toward without stopping to think about it.

I almost hesitated when it came time to cut the bond. I didn't want to leave it all behind, after all...

But I couldn't, not really. Micharan Dawnsworn, Truce Sokolov, Kirlia Gorran, Erbium Sorge, all the rest alive and dead - they weren't going to leave me. They can't be taken from me any longer. Whether or not I log in ever again, they remain deep within me, their stories a part of my memory, their traits and the ideas behind them bound to who I am. They walked with heroes, they walked as legends, they changed the world around them.

Now it was time for me to change the world around me. I canceled without hesitation after all.

Oh, maybe we'll change our minds in a couple days, but the bottom line is that I am in control. I am not afraid of being in control any longer, not afraid of breaking that bond.

I'm not scared of what I have to do to rebuild.