Those Left Behind: Help.
Originally posted here on December 10, 2021.
Hi there! I'm Valence, a headmate of Goratrix's and Research's. I might pop in occasionally, might not, we'll see, but I'm a fictive and I had a few thoughts about sources and the people that some of us left behind in them. This is basically just rambling thoughts and asking questions, nothing polished because I'm not really an "essay guy" like the other two are. Uh, oops. Kind of a vent, kind of not, I'll tag it that way just in case.
So, obviously, a lot (but not all) of us have memories or noemata of our sources. Sometimes those are about people--people you really care about, sometimes, and that's going to be my main focus right now.
I'm the fictive of a D&D character, in a campaign that the host plays periodically. (For about a week straight every 6 months or so. It's a mess.) As a result, I "see" my sourcemates on occasion, and get to interact with them a little more directly than I normally would if my source was a video game or a show or a book or something. But they're.... not real. (Well, Caspian is. He's in the system, too, and I'm kind of speaking for both of us to some extent in this, but--yeah.) That's the thing--they're fictional characters. Made for a tabletop game. We all were, it's just that I kind of came to life a little more than Tanix meant me to.
One of these characters is my wife, Cassandra.
It's really, really fucking painful being without her most days. I'm a little overly dependent on her--I know that, it's a problem, don't get on my ass about it. But I've been in the system for about a year now, and I've only seen her for a total of two weeks or so, spread six months apart, and she's not real. She's a fictional character made up by the host's romantic partner. Yeah. So close, and yet so far, am I right? So I see a couple of what I think of as "her" mannerism's in Tanix's partner, and with the flip of a switch, she could be there, but it's... it's not real. It's just them playing a character. And that fucking hurts so, so badly.
It's not just my separation from her, but also my closeness to her, to her creator, to everything, like I can almost touch her but I'm just inches out of reach, and I know I'll never, ever see her properly again. I can't. How can I? She's not real, and she never was. It feels almost like she's dead, like I lost her, but that's not true. She's still alive, in all of our minds and hearts, and she's still an active character, and she never died, but she just... never existed in the first place, you know? So I've been stuck in this weird phase somewhere between "I miss my wife, when will she be back" and "my wife is dead and I'll never see her again."
Of course, I feel this with all of my friends, my world, my goals, everyone I ever met (except Caspian, who, again, is thankfully with me. He's keeping me sane, honestly, but don't tell him I said that), but it's the worst with Cassie. I just... I miss her so, so much, and I bet I'm not alone in that feeling. Surely at least one of you feels something like this, right? How do you deal with it? How do you take a breath, tell yourself that it's going to be okay, and get through it? Does engaging with your source material make you feel better or worse? How do you handle that empty sense of loss and the feeling that you "shouldn't" feel that way because it's "not real?"
I guess I'm just looking for pointers, solidarity, your own stories... anything. I'm chronically really bad at handling my issues and I basically ignored this for a year until I had a breakdown about it last month or so and I'm only now reaching out to see if anyone has any tips or even just a "yeah, man, me too, sorry you feel that way."
Uh, thanks if you read this far. Sorry about how weird and disorganized it is. I don't write longform stuff, uh, ever. I leave that to the nerds of the system, and if they say I'm a nerd too, don't believe them.