After finding Dystopia Rising, a LARP where one pretends to exist in the post-apocalyptic wastes of America, I thought life would be roses and wine. I had found another community of people into which to attach myself, just another blinking light in a silent rectory of servers.

Now I remember why I stopped forming close personal friendships and relationships.

The people I want to be close to do not share that feeling. It would take too long to explain right now, but the degree of emotional investment I made was protracted and, seemingly overnight, one person suddenly withdrew from a budding secondary relationship and the other has very lately been oddly MIA despite being what I thought was a close friend. (I interpret randomly linking arms, holding hands, and kissing as close.)

I am emotionally in agony.

I sometimes wonder, outside of a literal 2 people beyond my wife, if I genuinely matter and am loved, or if I'm just a blinking cursor on a screen, interspersed with ghost sightings every few weeks where I manifest and do things with them.

Julia and Travis are just starting to date and seem to be having a good go of it. I'm happy for them. Oh, I had forgotten to mention we've been polyamorous for nearly a year. Yeah. So their NRE is good, and that's not the source of this sometimes crippling heartache.

What is hardest, I think, is not being able to directly talk with the people involved about how hurtful and deeply troubling this all is for me. The secondary relationship one, KT, is not big on emotional disclosure--and that's what ended up causing her to withdraw a few weeks ago in the first place. The other, RD, is not big on emotionality or kindness. She's a fine person and a great friend, but there's no stability of support there.

So I'm trying to fake being myself online and in person. I can lean on Julia some, but this is something I need to deal with largely on my own.

I just look down the long road, out past the wind-swept icy fields as night hangs low, hearing the crunch of dirt and gravel underneath, and feeling cold. And lost. And searching for something I'm hoping to suddenly recognize out in the middle of nowhere.

This is what happens when I become emotionally dependent on others.

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