Sancha

All the friendships I've developed through this game I would call very real. I've met Tiase and Zagar for example and they are both the same wonderful people they are in the game. When you get past the point of the online personality someone has created for themselves, and I am not just speaking in terms of a roleplayed character here, that is when things start to become real.

I myself have not always been honest about who I am, and have got so lost in it I was starting to become dishonest with myself. This was my 'shield' as H describes it developed from a lack of trust if nothing else, hurt by too many people, too much in too short space of time. I am as H herself said a 'squishey' person I get too affected by the problems of my friends be they online, or otherwise and also by my own and the things said to me. I found it helped to have this other personality as a shield "Let people beat on that, it isn't me and I can discard it when I don't need it". But well, in the end the shield started becoming the person and things started to hurt.

So I ran, I ran from the community that I'd been a part of for well... over a year. I ended up here and I started doing the same thing again, old habits or some such. I overcame it, with help that I will always appreciate but it now means I do feel things hit home closer, rawer.

What you guys get now is me, Jack, 21, currently horribly miserable at the fact I am moving back to my parents this saturday, and just freshly denied access to my inheritance for a deposit on a place so I can get back to london asap by my biological father.

I don't know some of you that well, some others I do. It doesn't help having the self confidence of a half dead gnat and being overly self concious but hopefully I'm getting there and gradually talking to more people.