No, they're not related. They're individual topics that I am going to talk about.
So I talked with Gloria again on Friday. She hasn't been online much so I was pleasantly surprised to see her online. After a few lines back and forth, I realized that it was not because she was busy, as I had previously thought, but that she was merely too busy for me. Perhaps I am being self-centered, as usual. Perhaps she is merely too busy for anyone.
She is writing a fictional story. Apparently she has a collection of fans who she tends to by posting daily. It is in Chinese, so I am unable to personally read it. I asked her for the story kind of half-idly, half-interested. I think maybe she has moved on now. For that, I am both relieved and disappointed, thinking that we could still be on close terms. But it seems as though we had nothing more than a list of problems and a shoulder to cry on, and without that our relationship has seemingly dried up. She is finding refuge in writing just as I once did, and I can find nothing wrong with her desire to leave me all behind (not to be dramatic). I've becomed accustomed to this; these behaviors, they are quite common among young people, myself included. How similar our lives end up becoming, despite going different ways. Except now I am on the receiving end, which is none too great. I can only imagine how people felt about me.
In any case, she told me about her story. It sounded like the typical, teenage girl fiction you'd find just about anywhere. With any other subject, I suppose I couldn't have cared less. But writing has always been something very close to me, probably because it was such a huge source of support for me when I was down. I have a lot of passion for stories and writing, as well as critique. I've attempted to write plenty of times now, but I've always ended up throwing them away because they were not up to par. So, in my fits of honesty that no one particularly likes to hear, I told her what I thought. To be honest, I thought there was a lot of potential. She had an interesting storyline with good plot points, but the general feel of the story was the same. Rich, kind, beautiful people. Poor, dull looking, but altruistic. The usual archetypes of a teenage fiction. I have read them countless times, to the point where I am sick of them. Simple personalities... these are not people. People are infinitely more complex. In turn, relationships are also incredibly complex and interact in ways we cannot even think of. I had never imagine my own life to be complicated, but everything that happened to me was a surprise that I had not expected. I think these are the components for an interesting fiction, but I have yet to have read something touching upon these subjects.
But since I cannot actually read her story, it is moot. She assured me that she had tried to avoid such obvious archetypes, but I am skeptical. Because we are all susceptible to such things. I do this because I dislike disappointment, because I don't like to believe my friends can fail. Sometimes I am optimistic, but overall I do not have high expectations for my friends. This is so when they do exceed them (and they do), I can be genuinely happy for them. A little part of me already hopes I am wrong about Gloria, but I guess I will never know. And as long as she is having fun, then it isn't my place to say much about it.
Later that night, I started up Ragnarok Online again for the first time in a few months. It never seems like I could go more than a year without playing RO. It was my first MMORPG (I'm not going to explain what that means; if you don't know you'll just have to look it up), and me and my brother became addicted very quickly. A whole summer was lost to that game, but I made a few friends and by the end, even had my own guild. It was populated by me, my brother, a few of his friends (or just Florence I guess), and a bunch of in-game friends we made. It was an exciting time for me, and I fell in love with it. But I moved on eventually, not being able to stand the disadvantage I was at. No mattered how hard I tried to look for items and cards, people would always be better. It was depressing in a sense because all my friends had the good stuff. Either from each other or other means. And I never asked; I was too proud to do that. I believe in doing things for yourself, and with that I fell out of the game. I left the guild to Florence and moved on to other things. I would come back from time to time, always on a different server (there were many private servers, because the real one costed money at the time). I would give up shortly after though. I just lost interest. Then my girlfriend and I tried to pick it up together during the school year, but I was much too busy to always be playing with her. For her, it was all new and I was happy she found so much enjoyment in it as I used to. Even I enjoyed the first few weeks, playing with her. I realized that I was lacking a purpose; friends to play with; to play for. But my girlfriend changed that, so I happily took it up again.
But I did not like the fact that she would play without me. That she would level beyond me and leave me behind. It took me back to the summer when I played ROSE Online, also an MMORPG, with my friends Nancy and Jenny. She had invited me to play with her so I naturally lept at the idea. ROSE online was also an attractive game to me; it was the second MMORPG I picked up after RO and I had always liked it, but as usual, could never get into. She had picked a magician, so naturally I picked a warrior so I could protect her. A warrior/mage combination isn't uncommon; it's the most efficient way to train both characters. Things were going along well; Jenny joined much later and was often behind. But she tried to catch up, and at some point we were all relatively the same level. But then Nancy would play without me; at first I didn't mind. Why would I? I would do my own things when she was offline, and when she came on we would train together. Or I would help out Jenny. But she got much farther ahead with the help of other players. Pretty soon she left me and Jenny behind by tens of levels. It wasn't possible to play with her because the sheer level gap made it impossible to. I felt abandoned, almost. After that, I think I stopped playing. I would play with Jenny sometimes, with different characters, but I never bothered to sign on back to my warrior. I then started to feel hurt about it.
So I suppose that is why I did not like my girlfriend to play without me. I felt very guilty, and selfish, but when I told her she seemed to be okay with it. But I would catch her playing sometimes, and she would later try to hide it from me. She would be playing on her side character, but she would then tell me something and I would know that she was on her main character. The one she promised not to play with without me. Because I knew the game almost in-and-out. Despite adding new content to the game since I had played, I know a lot about it. And I knew she had been lying to me. If there was anything I couldn't stand, it would be that: betrayal. To be lied to. To be tricked. Deceived. We got into a few arguments over it. She promised me that she wouldn't; assured me that she wanted to play with me and not just the game. And repeatedly, I believed her. Eventually, I didn't want to play anymore (the server we were playing on was really crappy anyway). I told her she could play if she wanted to, but I didn't. And she stopped, then. I felt guilty because I knew I had forced her to stop playing by obligation. And it wasn't right for me to deprive her of that, but I'll make it up to her one day. Maybe we can start again, on a different server. A fun one. And get married in-game like we had planned to all along (yes you can marry in RO). Apparently you can adopt a child too, but let's not go there just yet....
But anyway, I started playing on keroRO with Jenny, after much insisting. I didn't feel like taking up RO for any reason, especially since I had made my girlfriend stop playing. I only decided to after I found out it was Nikko's server. I KNEW keroRO sounded familiar, but I didn't connect that with what he said last year (he even told me what he wanted to name the server). I guess I felt like I wouldn't just be another random person in flooded server. It's nice to know a lot of the people on the server, even if that is only a few. For the most part, Nikko and I were the only ones who knew much about the RO universe. He probably knows even more than me by now, since I am sort of an old-school RO player (there was a LOT of content added when I stopped playing before). But there are a lot of things that are still the same, so I decided to help Jenny out by at least getting her character all leveled up. I didn't think much more of it than that at the time; just create a character that would complement hers and train together. To be honest, I trust her to not ditch me behind, or play without me. Probably because she knows, personally, how that's affected me, but really that's just the kind of person she is and I'm glad for it. And it was fun. The training is starting to drag at this point but, at the least, I have friends to talk to on the server.
Didn't play much over the weekend because Nikko went off the Reno and the servers were, therefore, down. I spent much of that time in between playing Company of Heroes with Jonathan, Patrick, and Daniel. I always loved CoH, and I never got to fully play it out yet. I always feel like I'm the one who wants to play when I invite them, but once we get going it can get pretty fun. Before I would only play with Jonathan, in 1v1. He has gotten considerably better, and Patrick isn't all that bad at it either. Daniel, personally, I don't think he's all that bad, but he has some strategy issues he just needs to get his head around. I am wondering what I could do to help improve his game, maybe 1v1 like I used to with Jonathan. It is easier to see what he is doing wrong/improve his game when there is only me and him on the field.
Parents came over Saturday evening. It was nice for about 15 mins, until we got home. Then I realized how annoying/irritating my parents can get. I wasn't in a good mood after that. I played Red Alert 3 with my brother, again. I had never won against him, but after all that CoH I guess I got better. I beat him twice and was pretty happy with myself. I then decided to try to figure out why my RA3 wasn't working online. I gave up and wrote a poem instead. I had really liked it and wish I could write more poetry, but we'll see. The next day wasn't bad at all. My parents and I were all in a good mood, and I even got Red Alert 3 to work online. My brother wasn't interested in playing with me again so I tried to find a 1v1 game to test out my skills. It was a challenge, but in the end I beat my opponent. RA3 is fun but it's not as grueling (and therefore, cannot be as epic) as CoH. Patrick, Jon, and I played a pretty good game that day in CoH. It probably lasted an hour, but our defenses were spot on. We managed to push back the CPU, and would probably have had enough to destroy their base if the point of the match wasn't to hold/defend some flags. I was really pleased at myself and the teamwork we had, even though we didn't talk much.
The rest of Sunday was more or less uneventful. My girlfriend called me that night, and I decided to pick up to answer her. I hadn't talked to her all weekend because my parents were over, and there wasn't any personal space in my apartment to talk to her. But I couldn't resist and ended up talking to her anyway, though in a more subdued tone. I will most likely talk to her today and am already excited. I tried to go to sleep early but ended up sleeping at 12am (which is early, but not early enough). My parents were leaving at 5am in the morning, and I wanted to go see them before they went off but I have work at 8am. I ended up not going to see them off like I wanted to because I had lacked so much sleep (I didn't get any restful sleep the night before because I had slept on a bundle of clothes as a make-shift pillow).
I had an interesting dream last night, though I can't say I remember much of it as usual. I was in a hotel of sorts, and for some reason I would alway end up outside my hotel room. Naked. And I would have to go back through the hallways to get to my room. Hallways which were not empty and had people coming through once in a while. This was all very interesting to me, not because I was naked or because people knew that I was naked, but because somehow I got dressed and ran into Meagan Sung, my friend from UCSD, at her "room." I like to think Meagan and I are on good terms. She's one of the few friends that I am really grateful for meeting down in UCSD, though we don't talk much now that we have no more classes together. Back to my dream, Meagan and her friend (probably Jinah, who is one of her friends I suppose), apparently greeted me with candy. I was dressed, somehow, and we had a nice time. This is funny to me because Meagan had once come over to my dorm early in the year and insist that I walk with her around campus at 11pm because she had eaten a whole bunch of candy and was hyper. And my campus takes at least 30 minutes to ALMOST walk to one side. I imagined we spent some hour and a half outside, at night, talking. It's actually a very interesting story how Meagan and I had become friends. I met Meagan through one of my orientation friends that I have since fallen out of touch with. All three of us went shopping but my friend went back first while Meagan and I insisted on going to Target or whatever. We ended up talking about our relationships until we got kicked out on the last stop. We went around to the stores there and looked for stuff/bathroom, and had just decided to go home when we realized the bus stopped at 7 something and it was certainly not 7 something anymore. We ended up being stuck together for the whole day, and ate dinner together, finally mooching a ride off one of her friends' parents. Who apparently disapproved of boys and girls being together (though I couldn't tell at the time). It was all very awkward but I was glad I had the opportunity to get to know her better. I'm pretty comfortable around Meagan, but not most of her friends so it is still kind of awkward sometimes. I used to come over to visit her when I had nothing to do since she lived like 2 minutes away from me, but I stopped coming because her suitemates were kind of intimidating.
I wish I would meet more people like her at UCSD. My life would not be so unbearably isolated, with only my girlfriend to be there. Both of us, really, have no one else at UCSD. I would like for us to have some friends down there, for the both of us. Meagan and Wing make for nice company, but they really are only for company. I don't think I would invite them along with my girlfriend to go see a movie or something. In fact I think I have very little friends who I could do that with. Maybe I need more friends who are in a relationship.
Well that is all for now.
Monday, July 27, 2009
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