How Many Times Must I Say I’m Sorry?

Let’s get something straight right now. We all have hobbies, right? I mean, there are those of you out there who are seriously interested in WWF wrestling, golf, knitting, scrapbooking, bird-watching, and even bigfoot hunting. I don’t mock. Much. These things are important to you.

I have a tendency to put down my own hobby as being silly and my therapist tries to discourage that because it’s important to me. I try to write-off it’s importance because it’s a “game.” Obviously games are not as important as other things in life and therefore don’t deserve to be worth emotional upset, in my mind. However, my therapist keeps assuring me that it’s o.k. to get upset and express it and not put myself down about being upset about it.

So. I’m upset.

The thing is that really I’m the only one to blame and so I’m mostly pissed at myself, which is easy to do when you generally accept that most things in life are your fault anyway. However in this case, I should have been a better player, but quite frankly the last few months I haven’t put a high priority on my Play-by-e-mail roleplaying games. I’ve kind of let them slide in favor of being depressed and mopey and then I used that as an excuse. I have lots of excuses.

So here’s the thing. I know and knew I wasn’t playing up to par. I’m not stupid or oblivious. It does make me somewhat hypocritical as it’s something I’ve complained about in other players in the past. However, the longer it kept sliding, the harder it was to pull myself back into shape and the longer no one mentioned it, the easier it was to keep letting it slide.

Now, here’s the thing. Just because I know I’m screwing up, it doesn’t mean I like having someone point out to me that I’m screwing up, because that means they know I’m not perfect. Or it means that they’re ruining the illusion I have that everyone might think I’m perfect if I close my eyes and pretend hard.

Really, who likes to be scolded and told they’ve fucked up?

And they (the game moderators) always send my friend N2 to “talk” to me about whatever the issue of the month is and then we get into a pisser. Take two depressives trying to analyze each other and one is trying to tell the other that she screwed up and the other is trying to protect herself by raising her defenses by blaming everyone but herself even though she knows she’s at fault. Shake well.

So, I was in an upward swing the last week or so. I’ve been busy with the cleaning and the puppy visiting and I even told my mother that I was feeling better and was excited about stuff. I’ve been enjoying all the sunlight and I’ve lost a couple of pounds and I’ve been downright chipper.

And usually when I think I’m making progress, I guess that’s when they think it’s time to send N2 in to deal with me. Maybe they think I can’t handle it when I’m “too low”. Usually, N2 “dealing” with me always knocks me back a bit. I think if she discussed it with me while I was down, I’d deal with it better because I’d already be there. Now I’ve got to crawl back out of the hole again.

And this morning, after thinking on it last night and oversleeping and thinking on it this morning, I wrote her a long email. I told her that basically I understand everything she said last night and that I agree that I hadn’t been setting a high priority for the games and that I was willing to change that. I explained that I don’t initially accept criticism well and tried to appologize for that. I thought I was being very mature.

And her response was to basically echo back that she was frustrated from last night about how I was making all those excuses and not accepting responsibility and how most of my problem with my depression is me. She told me that I need to make a decision about whether I’m going to commit to the game because they need me to post for my characters 4 times a week, etc.

And I got really mad and said that I thought my previous email had calmly explained all of that and how frustrated I was that she didn’t seem to understand that.

I haven’t received a response now in several hours.

I sent another email asking if she was pissed at me now. No response there either.

I don’t know. I really just want to get on my life, but I can’t until I know that she’s o.k. with it. That’s just how I am. I have to have closure of some sort or it just keeps eating me. That’s the General Anxiety Disorder.

tags: PBeM, roleplaying, anxiety, dysfunctional drama

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