So, my school life was floundering. My personal life? Well, I had zero friends or contacts. When I quit my job I didn’t reach out to any of my former coworkers. In retrospect, I knew I made a mistake, so that was likely a subconscious attempt at punishing myself. ‘You don’t get to talk to people you like for making such a stupid decision.’

I threw myself into World of Warcraft, not because it was inherently addictive, but because it was there. It was a thing that me live in a true fantasy world. I could walk the streets of Stormwind, enjoying the peaceful sounds and sights of idyllic city streets while seeing real, live people of all shapes, sizes and colors! The chat channels were filled with discussion—most of it inane, but it was there for me to engage in or merely observe. Azeroth became my life, because I felt that I had proven myself unworthy of reality.

I did attempt to have a life (such as it was) outside of video games, but still glued to the computer. Twitter became a home where I strove to create an identity. Alas, it was an identity of insincere jabs, shitposting and an unspoken, but all too obvious infatuation with figures of shallow strength. I was not a follower of mindfulness, I adhered to the concept of meme magic. I reveled in new, shiny things that happened because it was another distraction. The boring and typcial repulsed me, it was worthy of mockery and nothing more. Yet even this degeneration is not the biggest shame I have of this year.

What comes next is probably the single most uncomfortable truth of the past decade: that I was so desperate for friends even without acknowledging my desperation, that I latched onto the first person who showed me any attention. Out of respect for them, and an acknowledgment that there’s some things even I won’t share here, I’ll simply say that in them I ended up finding someone who in many ways was a younger me. Perhaps out of a desire to gain control over my life, I became a sort of mentor-friend to them. Unfortunately, I was in no shape to take that role. Suffice it to say that from this point until 2020, my sole point of human contact aside from fleeting bus-stop meetings and family was this single person—and it was a pretty fucked up friendship. Mostly due to my actions, as I really should’ve known how to act, even as deep in my self-imploding as I was.