The room is dark save for the green glow of my gaming console and the blue-white light coming from my television. The room seems silent, save for the rapid clicking of my controller, the crinkle of the bag of Oreos at my left knee (do you know they have double stuffed vanilla ones now?!) The dimmed down light from my bedside radio claims the time is a little after 1:30 in the morning. Through my headpiece, I'm hearing laughter, both light and joking, as well as slightly sinister and gleeful. I put my own two cents in as I pull a trigger and groans of disappointment from whomever I just killed gets followed by one of my own as I get destroyed from behind. I take a swig of a warm soda, munch on a few cookies, and sweep the rest of the game joking with the people on the other side of the headset.
This has become a fairly regular occurrence in the little more than a year since I graduated from Roanoke. After a horribly failed attempt at moving down there and getting a job last October, I reluctantly moved back from my faerie home to the caged life in Warwick. I got a second job a few months back, and try and make all the ends meet without wanting to meet my end. I've become increasingly depressed, but I manage to find a way, even if the road is far rockier than I originally intended, and after all, I am clumsy, so this hike I've been on has been kicking my ass.
I don't really miss going to class, and I certainly don't miss doing homework, studying for exams, stressing out about my grades, and then just feeling like giving up and skipping class altogether. I never really miss sorority or fraternity parties, though I do miss APO from time to time. I miss my old dispatching job, I miss my co-workers. I miss pool in the game room, fighting for the chairs in Kresge, late nights laying on the quad, and Grav Hammer nights with two or three rooms full of screaming, fighting people. I miss those screaming, fighting people.
A few years back, during my one and only trip to Connecticon, Kayla said something along the lines that I was the mom of the group. From there, we evolved into who my children were, who my husband was, so forth and so on. Originally, it was sort of a joke, a little lighthearted tease between a group of friends, we had maybe 10 members. That was in 2007. It's July 2010, and the family has grown a little....drastically. We currently have 34 members. For the most part, it's just a group of friends. Some are closer than others, some are a part of it because they are dating members, or were dating members, and some live very far away from the core group. A majority of the time, we are nothing more than an largely intertwined group of friends, who likes video games, movies, all things otaku, and then some.
Then there are the times things are bad. While I didn't realize it when I first really got the ball rolling, I created a support group. If you were to look at the set of us from the outside, we are the kids most people only give a second glance to because we are dressed strangely, or super loud, or just one of those weird kids you steer your children away from. Almost without fail we eat most of our meals in the back room of the Commons, or 'the toolbox' as many lesser beings refer to it as. In the back, we don't have to really deal with people making fun of us to our faces, and to be honest, it's quieter in the back (unless we are in there, then we get those looks again for being so obnoxious). Family meals generally mean either taking up two of those long tables, or adding tables onto the tables we've already taken up.
There are some things that can't really be put into words. The feeling I get when I see the family for the first time after some time apart. The relief I feel when I get text messages from the members that I hardly hear from. The heartache knowing that there are things I cannot do to help them, regardless of what I try. I even know that there are members of my family that don't really care for me at all, that they are members because they have been for so long, or their friends are all involved, or they just don't want to face me and say that they want out. I know this for certain because I can tell when things change. I'm not sure if they are reading this, but if you really hate me for whatever reasons, and you don't want to tell me about them, or hear my side of whatever it is, that's fine. I'm not petty enough, nor do I have the energy to hate you for not wanting to be a part of my family. All you have to do is ask.
There are certain things I am not allowed to put into words. Secrets, lies, promises, things I would never risk revealing for all the world. I feel that while my primary role in this family is being the matriarch, holding them together, planning family events, and so forth and so on, my real role is confidant. I have an open door policy. Day or night, regardless of time, call or text me and I will be there before you can say "the rain in Spain." I feel that in some way shape or form, helping my Family is the only way to help myself. I'm a worrier by nature, I worry, and I worry, and when I'm done worrying, I worry some more. I know that some people (yes, you, I am talking to you) don't feel like unloading on me because they don't want me to worry, but honestly, I'm gonna worry anyways, and if I know something is up and nothing it said, I worry even more than before. Having an extremely overactive imagination makes thinking about something I don't know the details for all the worse.
Then there are things that I can talk about, things I know what to say, and how to say it. To start off, and put lightly, fuck with my Family, and you fuck with me. I may seem mostly quiet or unassuming from the front, but anyone who has known me for a length of time knows that once the fire is lit, it consumes. I don't follow through with a lot of threats, because in the end, they will hurt the people I love. But I will go out of my way to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible about what you have done. I will not play nice, or be pleasant. It takes up too much energy to put on a facade for the benefit of someone I don't see was worth the time or effort. Certain things have happened to members of the family that I will never let go, even if it seems like its little to them now. You hurt the people I care about, you hurt me, and I don't sit back and take it like a good girl.
So I started writing this at the end of July. It's currently 10:07AM on September 8, 2010. I started writing this in an uncomfortable chair in the Tuxedo Police Department. I'm finishing this in an uncomfortable chair in the basement of Trexler computer lab.
I am home.
