Damage Sustained

So okay, I'm going to keep this short; there will be a longer version, but I'll put that over on my Livejournal page, as befits a more personal thing. It does deserve some mention here, though, among the more writerly stuff, hence this.

Earlier this week, I managed to sit myself down at this desk, in this chair, and for the first in forever, I got some story down. Not a ton of words, but a nice enough pile of them. It felt pretty good.
Then I came back the next day, sat down, and did some more.
The day after that, I got down some more, and was finally feeling a little optimistic about things.

Then, randomly and without warning, as this sort of thing often happens, I got a message.
A friend of mine had died--a heart attack, while driving his very young son to daycare.
Just like that, gone.

When I say 'A friend of mine', I don't use those words lightly. I'm reasonably high function, but I've a minor array of emotional issues, several of which combine to make it incredibly difficult for me to befriend people here IRL. As a result, the number of people who are now, or have been my friend is vanishingly small.
And now there's one less.

And the last couple of days have been pretty rough. I'm feeling a bit wrecked, actually, and that very small writing streak fell apart as a result.
But.... No.
No, I'm not going to curl up in a ball and just ignore the world for another six months or year.
Back in the day, my small group of friends and I would play tabletop games every weekend, often for 12 or 16 hours at a stretch. I ran most of those games; Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun, mostly. That's how I learned how to tell a story; it's where I learned how to describe action, how to present a world that felt real to those wandering through it.

Mike was one of my teachers as I learned those things; not by any design, but simply by being there, and pushing me forward with the clever and character-focused way he played.
Later, when I actually got to play a long-running campaign, his character and mine were the core of a Rifts group run by his childhood friend Russ, another dear friend of mine. Mike and I spent a year or so exploring Rifts Earth, and it was the most fun I ever had as a player.

So, as I said before: No.
I'm not going to let this throw me. The best memories I have of Mike are of the stories I told, that were acted out by his character and those of my other friends, and of the stories we walked through when I got to play alongside him.

Stories matter, and we can never have enough of them.
Mike's personal story is done now, but I have an endless number that I'm still waiting to tell.
I think it's only right that I honor the memory of my friend and teacher and fellow adventurer by bringing those stories to light, and sharing them.

Tomorrow I'm going to do the social thing we have to do at times like this.
See his family, look at his empty shell lying there, come home and hide under the blankets for a while, trying to process things.

But then I'll get back to work on these stories, as soon as I possibly can.
And in those stories, just as has been the case all this time, though you never knew, little glints of Mike will be woven in there, along with Russ, and John, and Jeffrey, and Chris.

Okay, sad now. Time to wrap this up.

More soon, guys.
Take care.

Alan
aka
DreamSmith