EPTI am not sure where I will go with this. I guess sometimes you just have to share. Do I look for advice or shoulder clapping or a load off? Maybe! More to the truth, I think this read is a hiding place for stories. Whether this is a good place or not is not for me to say, but I have a feeling that this site and this read will mutually benefit from another. For it is a thing of the heart, gaming, sharing about the experiences of gaming. And each heart should be heard, at least given a chance to be vocal about its needs, its whereabouts, its hungers and joys. This is the platform I chose, because Starcraft and this site has given me plenty of opportunities to listen to the hearts of others, in this making my life very special. Not in a big way. But still in a comforting and pleasurable way. So my heart will speak, and mind you, I am not very good at this, in hope that others will listen. And for that I am just grateful. This will not be about gaming, this will be about heart, the will, happiness and purpose. And about love.
Last year I had a pulmonary embolism. For weeks now I had felt pain in my right calf, after a workout I was feeling ill, left without much steam, a little bit nauseated, I thought I had just upped it too much. A few hours later I was in a car with my girlfriend and our daughters, then age four and two, on a way to my aunts wedding. While on this ride a deep and intermittent pain in my left upper chest did get a hold on me. On our arrival everybody told me how ill I looked. Because my condition worsened, fever had crept in, I was taken to a hospital. In one of those surveys the doctor asked me if I had pain in my legs. Why? I asked, because it looks like you have a pulmonary embolism, which is often caused by a leg-thrombosis, he said. And there I was!
Just to give you a perspective. I was 34 years old then, pretty good in shape and with a deliberately diet. But my health-condition was that of a much older person. Not only had I an embolism, but in the last six to seven years I was ill on a regular basis, often two times a month, bedridden three to five days. After I survived the hospital I went to every doctor, to every inspection to every physical testing known to mankind. To sum it up, I was healthy! Yes, they discovered a genetically caused blood irregularity, which is shared by approximately 15 percent of man, otherwise I was fine.
So I thought!
You already know that nearly five years before this event I had become a father. And with that came the feelings! First it was anger, even wrath, searing behind my forehead, brought to surface through little things that my daughter, and later, daughters, or my misunderstandings of them did. I did not noticed it as what it was, the whole thing crawled on to me very slowly, but I did not hit them, I very seldom yelled at or even degraded them.
Now, I was known as a person with a very, very thick skin. Nothing could unsettle me, dissing bounced off of me. Actually I was known for my every time up-heights mood. Fear, anger, sadness, guilt, shame, you name it, I really did not know very good at all. Yes, I had spikes of them, spikes very thin and very weak. For that I acquired a reputation as a person who to better not to play the game of he-will-not-do-it with, because my limits of shame and fear were that small. I am very glad that I am not utterly stupid, which has kept me from doing the most embarrassing and dangerous things. Basically I had three emotional states. Good. Void. Bad.
And then, very suddenly, that rage! Rage against two of the most unbelievable beings I have ever known. Most of the time it was the white sort of rage, not hot, flaming red, but quiet, glowing. White. Against these beautiful daughters. So beautiful you will not believe it. So free, so unruly, so fragile, so full of life, so beautiful. So unbelievable beautiful. How could I not love them? I had to, I could not help it. Sometimes the rage was not directed against them at all, but against my girlfriend or me.
In hindsight it seems queer that rage showed me love.
To this day I honestly think that I can not remember to have felt any love before I had the chance to get to know my children. This seems harsh to my girlfriends or parents or my brother. But it is the truth. As it is the truth as well that through love I discovered my potential for fear. Because a few weeks after my embolism, just on the way through the door of the kindergarten to my children, I was paralyzed by fear. I am still not sure what this fear meant, I was just terrified. I could not face my kids. Something was deeply wrong. So depression loomed and blossomed. That and other things led to the decision to visit a shrink. I have to admit here that my girlfriend is becoming a psychotherapist herself, so the advise came somewhat naturally.
In this therapy I had a couple of shocking discoveries. First, that I am an emotional cripple. Second that I am very dependent on other persons, even if I do not know them I will somehow suit myself to them. And mind you, at a very early age, before I even knew kantian philosophy, I preached to others that everyone is free, has to be free. I was never even that! Cool how you can betray yourself. And third that I am not really able to live my own life, thinking that I am a very weak person, having these problems, seeing a shrink. Did I say shocking?
I have had a hard time to swallow this and to accept it. The combination of a very low self-esteem, mixed with the denial of myself led to not knowing me very well at all, which automatically stifled all my ambitions. Out of school, into the army, into a year of jobbing as a janitor, into college to study Japanese and history, dropping out of college , into an apprenticeship as a travel agent, after completing this with success I ended it because I could not stand it, into college, to become a teacher for history and German, dropping out of it to become an owner of a cybercafe specialised in gaming, crashing that badly, then into college to become a teacher for ethics and history. Which I am studying the last 5 years now, nearly at an end. I do have to catch up though, because I neglected my studies, it would be hard but it can be done. But I realise that I do not want to become a teacher! Maybe that is a flight-reaction. Maybe. I have a history of fleeing, going the easy way. Screw that!
That leaves the question what I will do instead? I am not able to answer this yet. I have a few lingering shadows, some unfinished thoughts. Perhaps in sharing I will be able to find it.
I am at the crossroads! Looking back I am astonished what history, and I do not mean it on a merely personal level, has done to my ways, possibilities and older crossroads. So the next installment of my story will be about history.
