Quote from: E on December 09, 2020, 03:14:07 PM

Quote from: Coomer on December 09, 2020, 01:26:07 PM

What was the biggest mistake you ever made

I think the biggest mistake I ever made was when I got caught swiping cash from a drug dealer I'd been stalking for a couple weeks. I got sloppy and careless since I was starting to get desperate for food. I broke my rule of stealing ten to twenty dollars and took something like four hundred. The dealer came back home right in the middle of everything and saw my face, but I got away. He had connections with the hell's angels branch in montreal and contacted them. They eventually found me and had me cornered before I could skip town. They beat me with chains, took all my shit and left me there. I've made plenty of mistakes too but that one was physically the most painful that I remember because of how much damage they did to me. Would've been mercy to kill me a that point.

That's fucking hardcore dude
What was recovery like?

Also what got you on this nomadic lifestyle you have going on if you don't mind me asking
You're like Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins

Best I can remember? Two had chains and one had a pipe wrench. Multiple fractures, probably everywhere. Probably a few full on broken bones. The worst parts of my body damaged where my left leg and arm. My left shoulder was dislocated. I popped it back in myself, passed out and woke up again. The nerves in my left arm running up my neck are damaged. The tendons and my siatica nerve are fucked in my left leg, and it was already weak to begin with from a stab wound I got when I was sixteen.

Recovery was shit, probably because I didn't go to the hospital. I was in pain everywhere for months. I finished what I'd come to do in Quebec, which was scatter the ashes of a friend who didn't make it along the way with me to sea. I made myself a splint for my leg. I tried to hop a train out of Quebec but security caught me. I got beaten half to death trying to fight off the dog that was trying to maul me. I just gave up after that and walked. Didn't care if I didn't make it.

The nomadic style. It has a very complicated answer. The very very simple explanation is trauma. I had immense trauma in my childhood. I had a significant other. She was killed when I was twenty. I had gaming buddies, and a small close circle of personal friends. They're all dead. All of these events, I internalized. Never spoke to anybody about them, never spoke to family.

On the surface, I appeared to be a relatively normal, albiet quirky individual. But inside I was fucked up massively, and it was eating me to pieces. Mental breakdowns and two suicide attempts, before the death of a friend, my last personal friend, broke me. But he told me to do something before he died. I tracked down the graves of all of my friends. And I made the best peace I could with them all.

I became nomadic because I shut down and practically died mentally. But I also fixed myself along the way. Quantified my traumas. Sorted all my baggage. Got mt shit in order. I job hopped. Pushed my physical limits to their maximum. I worked three jobs, twenty hour days. Opened up more to my family. Met a shit ton of people on the road. Helped a lot of people too.

I made a tremendous amount of mistakes. And I did things I'm certainly not proud of nor can be forgiven, even if my mental state was absolute shit. Truth be told buddy, I'm not exactly a stranger to this website, or the people here. But I'm not the person that I was when I left.

Before anyone gets upset or takes the piss, I think it's worth giving him some credit for coming forward when he didn't have to.

Pisstaking or upset people would be warranted though. Piss poor mental state or no, it's no justification for what I did, even if what I did was necessary in my own way to make it through. Valid emotions are going to hit people and they'll speak their peace. I'll speak mine as well.

And if you want some more context. I catch myself in mirrors sometimes. I stop and look at that person. I've got all these old memories and events that seem like lifetimes ago. Thinking about them, and then looking at whatever it is that I am now. Well, I don't have any words for it really. That's because I think in my own way I'm still reforming. I'm still quantifying some of my baggage. Still trying to get those ghosts out of me and heal.

I'd go so far as to gamble that even this is quantifying some of my baggage. I made a massive mistake when I left here the way that I did, even if in some way I had to. The people I hurt, or the wounds I might be causing by showing up now. I have to make it right and square.

Glad to hear you are still alive.

I earnestly don't know how to respond to that. But I do know that I can't actually really put into words how much it means to see or recognize some names here, even after all this time. As I've told some others. I've lost a lot of people. That there's names here, that there's people here that are alive and (relatively well). It's just...really, really damn nice. I'm trying to recall your name, but I can't bring anything up. I just don't recognize it. I'm sorry in that instance. But thank you for that.

Quote from: E on December 12, 2020, 04:48:39 AM

Quote from: MarKhan on December 12, 2020, 03:05:44 AM

Glad to hear you are still alive.

I earnestly don't know how to respond to that. But I do know that I can't actually really put into words how much it means to see or recognize some names here, even after all this time. As I've told some others. I've lost a lot of people. That there's names here, that there's people here that are alive and (relatively well). It's just...really, really damn nice. I'm trying to recall your name, but I can't bring anything up. I just don't recognize it. I'm sorry in that instance. But thank you for that.

Nothing to apologize for, I'm not from any Bungie communities and I joined only in 2017.

Would that have been before or after I left? I was talking to somebody else, and they said I'd been gone for five years. I didn't know how long I'd been gone for, actually. I never kept track of the time. I guess if I take a look at my old profile I'll get an idea.

Interesting way to leave, I’ll say

"I probably fucked a lot of people up"  is probably the only real thing you've said

can i use you as an example to cite in a study on psychiatric disorders? i could probably fill a few papers with you

Quote from: E on December 12, 2020, 11:34:59 AM

Quote from: Ender on December 12, 2020, 10:52:31 AM

"I probably fucked a lot of people up"  is probably the only real thing you've said

Only major lie I've ever told in my life was the one I told here. The state I was in, even then it wasn't justifiable. You don't have to believe anything that I say. But when I say that I was fucked up inside, I mean it. And with all of my tendencies being what they were, that I'm solitary, or that I had miles of armour on me that didn't want to let people in, and that I had all of these mental cycles that I was trapped in. I had to fix it. So I left absolutely everything and I started from zero because in that state that was the only way out that I could see other than trying to kill myself again.

Doesn't make it right, and I'll likely pay for that as long as I'm alive. Apologies can't undo the damage done. I'll be the one that'll have to carry that. Any of you here can and will go about your lives regardless of whether or not I'm in the picture. The only difference now is that all the cards are on the table and out in the open.

All I can ask you is a question. Would you rather live in ignorance to something, or know the truth in its entirety, no matter what it was?

It should go without saying, but I definitely wouldn't have wanted the other option to be your actual death. Of course in glad you're actually alive, and I do prefer knowing.

But I don't know if I can just make myself happy enough about it to overshadow the three years of grief, and the upset of learning it's for nothing

Don't go there. It wasn't three years of nothing. What you felt was valid and real in it's own way. When I get back, I'll tell you why it's not for nothing.

when are you gonna tell us about your part in the moon landing

Listen, I'm not happy about this either, but this ain't right

oh, good—so you got to see me finish dark souls after all

In all seriousness, like Ender said, despite everything, you being alive is obviously preferable to you being dead, and knowing the truth really is the most important thing to me in the end. In any case, very few people get to know what people will say about them after they die, so congratulations on that. That must've been surreal.

I went ahead and re-examined all of the interactions we've had on this new account of yours, given that they've been thoroughly recontextualized. It was an interesting experience. I've never really had a negative interaction with you as Sandtrap, which I can't really say about almost anyone else here, so I'm happy to say that we've more or less always been on good terms, even under this new identity of yours. A few philosophical disagreements here and there, but if my memory serves correctly, we've never really fought over much.

There were a number of users who called your bluff, and I won't lie and say that I wasn't the least bit skeptical myself, but I chose to give you the benefit of the doubt, because it seemed like the right attitude to have at the time—and I stand by that.

However, simultaneously, I think it's very important for you to understand what you've really done here. People lie, that's whatever. But lying about your own death, I think, is somewhat of a jumping off point for your trustworthiness. It tends to call everything you've ever said to us into question, because if you're willing to lie about something like that, it begs the question as to what you wouldn't lie about. You know what I mean? It's the only logical question I have left to ask.

I don't know how we proceed at this point, but that's how I'm feeling about this little plot twist here at the moment. To reiterate, I'm glad you're okay, because I'm glad when anyone's okay, but I guess I'm still trying to process a lot of this.

Lmao wtf

It's funny. Many of the E posts I've read I've thought to myself, "This sounds like Sandtrap."

You could notice it earlier when E said that he uses Garry Mod for art.

can i use you as an example to cite in a study on psychiatric disorders? i could probably fill a few papers with you

You can if you'd like. I can name you my conditions, since I spent some of that time talking to multiple proffessionals and trying to fix things.

C-PTSD
Severe long term depression
Acute trauma or what they'd nickname a "moral wound"
Emotional Numbness/Distancing
Low levels of dissociative disorder

Most of these things are sorted or managed now. But I won't shy away from them. If you're not taking the piss then neither am I. Use me as an example of what not to do when you have a child to take care of.

Sorry I took so long. Got stuck at the hospital. Have to bear with me on this one, because there's going to be a lot of subject bouncing. I'll try to condense it. I want to clarify. These aren't excuses to justify things. They're perspectives to show you why those three years matter to your life.

The first reason why those three years still mean something Ender, is this. Think with me in hypotheticals and certainties. The first certain thing was this. I was going to mentally collapse, no matter what I did. The second, was that my friend, Quiet, was going to die. The last straw that snapped me in two. The third certainty was that I was going to leave here. I had to beat my dependency on the internet, which had become my last and only crutch, which fed all my internal bullshit. So one way or another, I was going to leave.

Had I ghosted, I would have left everybody asking questions. I've been ghosted. I know how much not knowing eats you. Result? Pain. I could try and say my goodbyes, but that would have caused a level of pain too. "Hey guys, I've mentally gone off the deep end and I have no intent of surviving, k thanks bye." More pain.

There was no scenario were nobody got hurt. But I needed a scenario strong enough to push me away from the internet. Quiet surmised that we use death as a blocker. I'd feel guilty in doing it, but guilt would keep me at bay for a long time while I attempted to sort my shit out. So, essentially Ender, I would've caused you three years of some kind of pain no matter what I did.

Onto another perspective then. I had a significant other, Ender. A gaming buddy. Met her when I was fourteen. I knew her until I was twenty. She was killed by a drunk driver. She was my equal. Imagine me, but better than I am. Less damaged, more optimistic. We helped each other out mentally quite a bit. When she died, my entire world went dark. I was, and still am half a person without her. And I internalized all of that pain, and never spoke a word of it for years to anybody.

However. If I got a document signed by god himself telling me that if I lit myself on fire and jumped into an oil pit, I could bring her back, or any of my other friends for that matter, I'd do it. If I had to re live every single bad day of my life over and over again just to see her smile, one more time, I'd do it Ender. What I'm trying to get at is this.

All of my bad days played their part in writing portions of how my future turned out. I had to go through the bad days, and the good days to meet that person whom I loved so deeply. So I'd like you to think. I caused you a shit ton of bad days, yes. But who did they lead you to? Is it not fair to assume that those bad days played their part in who you're involved with now? It's not a justification, but a simple fact. Those bad days determined on some level how things played out. You have in your life what I no longer have, in a small part because I made the fuckup that I did.

Thirdly, Ender. Life is damage. We can't avoid it no matter how hard we try. But it's what we do with that damage that counts. The greatest trick I ever learned was this. Invert the negative emotional response caused by damage. You hear people say to themselves all the time "I'll never get married." Many hold true. Because when we become damaged, our brain is temporarily more elastic than usual. As we reform and pull ourselves together, we think of new ideas and they become like cement in our otherwise inflexible mind.

Invert the negative response into a positive one and you can get blown apart again and again, and come out a better, stronger person each time. I know that there's some stuff you can't walk away from, naturally. But for the most part, you can. And that's exactly what you did. You went through your shit. You made it this far. And you didn't come out fucked up like I did.

Fourth, Ender. I might not have died. But the fact is, in your life, you are going to lose people. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but it will come. None of us can avoid it. Your experience with my "death" was as real as any other. So the next time when you take a hit like that, you'll be able to weather it better because of it.

When I got back to this province Ender, I had been here for only about six months when my sister's husband died of a heart attack. She called me at six in the morning. I drove at two hundred kph to catch that fucking ambulance. And I was there with my sister for every step of the way. And I'm still here, helping her through the biggest pain of her life, because I myself carry that pain.

All those people I lost? I'd do it again if it meant that I could weather the death of my brother in law like I did. I didn't buckle or break like I would have in the past. I did what needed to be done. I was the person that needed to be there for my sister because of all those deaths I have behind me. In their own way, all of that shit prepared me.

Your experience with my death brought valid emotions. And some day Ender, you'll have those emotions visit you again, because nobody can dodge death. And you'll be strong enough to weather it in part because of what you experienced with me.

And fifth. You would've mourned for me, no doubt, like a lot of others. When I left Quiet's grave I had no intention of living. I had every intent to die. And out and about in my travels, I did. I blew myself apart mentally, and I fought for years to pull myself back together the best I could. Best I can seem to do is half a person.

I'm emotionally vacant save for a few emotional responses. The very strongest ones I have left. I've been working on trying to get them back. No luck yet. You can hardly call me alive unless my sense of humor is at play or my compassion for others is functioning. For everything else, I'm cold and distant, almost mechanical. I have no care about what happens to me, I have no fear response. What's still keeping me moving are two things.

I made a promise to my significant other after I tried to blow my head off with a shotgun. That I'd never sink so low again. I'd never bend nor break again. And the promise that I made to my brother in law as I took his wedding ring off on the operating table. That I'd protect my sister and niece until I die. That they won't get all the shit I had to go through in my life. That's the job, and nothing else matters.

I've had to change those parameters and take better care of myself. Try to have some fun or hobbies in my life, claw my way back to normalcy inch by inch. But I won't lie to you and tell you that I'm a fully "alive" person. I can't fool myself and pretend that. I'm still fixing myself.

In any case Ender. Those years you spent mattered. They lead you to somebody you care about. They gave you strength and definition, identity. The ability to overcome damage. You almost failed, but you didn't, and you're here now because of that.