User blog:WaglingtonŒ/All Apologies - 2,000 Edits/Over 1 Year Anniversary Blog

I'm not leaving.

Now that that's out of the way, it's been brought to my attention by a one Ned Edgewalker that, by the time I publish this blogthing, I will have accumulated exactly 2,000 edits. Coming from a budding artist and writer who'd like nothing more than to just find what he wants in life, the entire prospect is a little hard to grasp. People with thousands of edits don't seem to realize that every time they've clicked "Publish," they changed something, whether it be for a few seconds because they're dirty vandals or for the rest of eternity because they're excellent writers, they changed something. Every day, the wiki changes a little more. I've watched this place change from a cesspool of dense prebuscents to a sort of hub for aspiring writers like myself, a place where my friends can escape to when they're down, and a place where you can feel at home because everyone knows your name.

Just like we don't always realize the effect we have on the world around us with every word we type, we never really think about the person on the other side of the screen. What experiences have they had? What brought them here? Was it sheer destiny or just dumb luck? I can't say for sure, but I have known since I was a wee lad that the most important thing to me above all is creativity. Without the ability to write, sing, play guitar, or even type, I don't know where I'd be right now. It's been such a huge aspect - if not the biggest aspect - of my life for so many years, without it I'd be a completely different person. That's what brings us all together, methinks. We came because we had a story to tell and stayed because somehow, some way, we made a friend along the way.

I've never been a very open person, especially to people that I meet online. What would they think of me if I told them my story? Would they think I was just some punk with a dream, or someone who wants to make a difference? It's not my place to say, really; it's never really mattered to me what I think of myself. I could never say my story was good just because I thought it was good. I could never say I was a good kid just because I paid attention in class. It all depended on what other people thought of me. And with an end nowhere in sight, I've never given it much thought whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I've never trusted myself with self-judgment. I never could.

I grew up in rainy Aberdeen with a phlegmy voice and the pure desire to find out what I wanted to do. I spent many of my early days with my friends at the time, whom I trusted with my life above all. Over time, though, I realized that a few things had gone awry, so to say. First and foremost I discovered a flaming homosexual, a secret that I ironically haven't shared with my family to this day, but admit to openly to everyone here. One of the biggest problems I encountered with this little detail of my life was that I soon learned that I couldn't trust anyone with knowing. The moment I told one of my then friends, she set about informing her entire network of contacts. Soon a chunk of people I didn't even know knew that I was gay. Sometimes people just don't realize that it's my choice whether I want to open up to people, and if so, which people. I hated her ever since.

I've had my share of "special friends," during my life, all of them turning out to be just as bad as the one before them. Either they just can't make time for me or think that I'm some open book they can toss around like a toy. I hated them as well, for they were all so phony. Maybe it's the same for straight people. I've never bothered to ask. I can't give a clear answer as to whether it's harder to be gay than it is to be "normal," but it sure is an inconvenience knowing that, at any moment, someone could peep and the secret would be out there, and I'd lose all my friends. Can they really be called friends if I knew they'd ditch me if my secret got out? Not really, no.

One thing I also realized was that I was hyper-sensitive to the events that unfolded around me. When something happens, another kid might have forgotten about it a few days earlier, but on the other hand it'd stick with me for over a decade. I've lost so many friends to stupid things. Too many people want to kill themselves and just can't see their own worth. I've had to forcefully say goodbye to so many people who walked out into traffic, shot themselves full of heroin, or put a bullet in their own head. The pain they feel is heartbreaking. I would know.

By the age of ten I had an approximate understanding of basic politics and would usually flaunt my knowledge to the other kids, most of them never following what I was saying. It was by age 13 that I knew I could never effectively talk with any of my supposed friends about things I really cared about. They called me smart, but I didn't want to be smart. For a while, I convinced myself that I wanted to be stupid instead. I remember the book I read in school, "Flowers for Algernon." That book hit me harder than most. In it, a mentally retarded person is given the chance to participate in a study that could supposedly double his intelligence quotient. He agreed to do it and enjoyed it at first - there was a whole new world open to him. All he had to do was try a little, and he was smarter than most men in history.

But he quickly came to regret his decision. He was smart, yes. But he couldn't talk to anyone anymore. Everything he said sounded like pebbles dropping to them. At least when he was disabled, everyone understood him. He was ridiculed, yes. But he was never any the wiser. He was happy. But when he was smart, with an IQ exceeding 200... he experienced despair for the first time in his life.

Coping with the realization that nobody wanted to talk to me wasn't easy, but I made the most of it, delving deeper into world politics, reading more, focusing more on school, and of course, using the internet. I enjoyed the POTC movies enough to give the MMO a try, and though it was charming, it didn't really have an impact on me. To learn more about it and master my skills, I visited the wiki, and then found the sister site, the PPW. I realized that on the PPW, I could write pretty much anything I wanted as long as it had something to do with POTCO. This was the first real time I started writing.

I had a fun trial run, but eventually left to pursue other things. It was during this few-year hiatus that my sister began to have horrific problems that cost my entire family deeply. She began to hate herself and how she looked, refusing to eat anything and habitually throwing up to get skinny. She got in a relationship with an abusive boyfriend and convinced herself that she belonged to him, doing his every whim without protest. This is when she started doing heroin.

It was around this time that I realized I had my own host of mental problems, as well. For a good few years, my family was convinced I was a sociopath, refusing to show any outward emotion to anyone - for I hated them all so much. The anger bottled up more and more until the hatred became violent. That was the final nail in the coffin for my antisocial tendencies. At the height of these problems, I discovered that the monsters in my closet weren't just my imagination, but instead something far worse.

My family immediately began to attempt to medicate me, putting me on a host of medication, including oh so sweet Lithium, my most hated word in history. Lithium made me the worst person that I had ever been. I found myself in a black hole of depression that would occasionally shift over to a state of manic psychosis. I was never myself again. In an attempt to combat the depression, they put me on anti-depressants, which only gave me an entirely new host of problems I doubted I would ever overcome.

Finally, my psychiatrist realized the various medications were doing more harm than good and agreed to take me off of them, but the hallucinations and manic moods didn't go away. It was then that I decided to self medicate myself, trying an array of drugs, mainly weed, which I of course that I was pretty cool for doing. I became so infatuated with the stuff that it was all I could think about.

Eventually, though, like all sources of pleasure, it too began to dull in effectiveness. I began to explore new ways to free my mind. I vaguely remembered a temporary phase I went through where I tried to convince myself I was a rockstar. During that time, I discovered so many good musicians and hadn't listened to them again for years, until I began to discover my talent with music.

I soon realized that music was all I needed. All day, every day, I would listen to rock music, then I taught myself to play guitar, and eventually honed my singing abilities. And, of course, the elephant in the room: Nirvana. The best band I've ever listened to. I played all their songs on loop, sang all of them, played all of them for what friends I had left, and I realized how similar my struggles were to Kurt's. It was awe-inspiring. When I delved into his past and discovered the wonderful little song called Lithium, I knew I'd found my calling.

The rest, they say, is history. I eventually returned to the PPW through the UGW, and watched it blossom into what it is today: the GFW. So many ideas I had. So many new concepts that I just had to explore and put into words. Even now, I'm planning the next chapter to Invidere. It's shaping up to be my best story yet - mainly because it's my most genuine one so far.

I still don't completely know what route I want to take in the coming years. Finding the GFW had helped me immensely, however. Every day my friends tell me to try something new, and that ideal has stuck with me for years. As my wounds heal and my mind expands, you've all taught me that maybe things aren't so bad after all.

Thank you.

Peace, Love, and Empathy,

Lithium