Those Left Behind: Update.
Originally posted here on January 25, 2022.
Hi! It's Valence again. This is a "part two" to something I wrote back in early December. (
"Those We Left Behind: Help.") Basically, it was me talking about how I'm a fictive, but my wife and most of my friends aren't, so it was a really bad time. Better news this time around, and hey, a few other insights, mainly ones I got from Goratrix.
Mostly, though, this is about my wife.
MY WIFE MY WIFE MY WIFE SHE'S HERE SHE'S NOT JUST A CHARACTER SHE'S REAL SHE'S A FICTIVE MY WIFE MY WIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GUESS WHAT! HOST'S PARTNER IS A SYSTEM! HAS BEEN! REALIZED THAT FOR SURE WHEN CASSIE, MY WIFE, SHOWED UP AND STARTED TALKING! MY WIFE MY WIFE MY WIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay. Breathe, Valence. Phew. Okay.
So. From my source, basically, it was just me for a year, then Caspian rolled in back in July. It's been nice having someone from my home, someone familiar, but it didn't stave off how much I missed everyone else, especially my wife, who I am overly dependent on (yes, again, I know, don't get on me about it). It... it kind of really nearly killed me. I'm a really social, really openly loving guy, and to be separated from everyone and everything I'd ever known and loved? It sucked. It sucked so, so much.
Cassie's here now, in our partner system (our! partner system!), and that's just.... it's such a weight off of me. It's so wonderful. It's... not quite the same as being home, of course. It comes with its own challenges, especially since our partner system lives nowhere nearby, but... it's a start. It's a better place than I was in back in early December.
Living through that, though, and helping Cassie cope with the kind of grief and loss of being away from everything else gave me some new insights, though. Special thanks to Goratrix: dick's as wise as he is annoying (affectionate).
Basically... I guess it's easiest to think of it less like "it's not real and never has been" and more "we've changed dimensions to a place where it is a story, but it's still real, back at home." I don't think this approach would work for everyone, of course, but it works for us, and everyone else in the system so far. Like... okay. The story these people are crafting is basically the same as my life, but with some key differences, so obviously my life ISN'T their story, because otherwise they'd get it right, presumably. They'd get my ears or my stripe color right or they'd know more things about me, but they don't, so it's just a weird quirk of the universe that put me here (for me) and it makes perfect sense for a character that the host is familiar with to appear in the system (for Tanix).
Goratrix took that stance, and I was a bit more pessimistic about it until Cassie showed up, agreeing with some of my assessments of differences in our lives from the story, but also... disagreeing. It seems she and I are from slightly different versions of our world--minor differences keep popping up. Nothing big, nothing major, nothing that disrupts our relationship or anything, but just enough to tell us that It's A Thing. You could definitely take a purely psychological perspective on this, but I'm not going to, since doing so makes me super pessimistic and depressed, and a more kind of... magic-y, spiritual explanation makes more sense to me and holds a lot more meaning.
The kind of... parallel life thing that Goratrix described ones happens for me, too--time passes "in-game" and I get memories from that time passing, even if I wasn't "on screen," although I also get stuff from Later, so I think it's less parallel and more "oh, hey, this is reminding me of stuff I forgot", or maybe it is parallel? I don't really know. I've got a tiny bit of "multiple source disease" (as we call it) going on like Kyir does, but I definitely have a solid primary place I'm "from" and the others are more, like.... alternative mes I'm aware of, rather than "I am all of these people and did all of this stuff" like Kyir does.
So I'm coping better, now. Caspian's here, Cassandra's here, and I'm feeling less pessimistic about being away from my home. It sucks, yeah--it sucks pretty bad--but there's some upsides, here, and I'm trying to make the best of it.