Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a happy post. I’m not sure quite what it is - it’s both angsty, and angry. At least, as close as I can still get to anger. When I first started writing I was very pissed off, and by the end was in tears.

Also, this post is visible to everyone except Racheet. I’d be grateful if no-one let him know that it exists.

I’m sorry it’s come to posting this, but I need to get this off my chest - all of it, and as soon as possible. Feel free to just skip it all, it’s not a pleasant read. But… if you have the time and the inclination, please read it. It would make me a lot happier right now to know that someone’d read this, that someone appreciates what went on in my head today.

Right. Business. Can anyone shed any light whatsoever on what the hell’s going on?! Twenty-four hours ago, Racheet seemed fine and normal. Actually, let’s go further back. Around a week ago, Racheet asked me to do him a favour, find out about something for him. I’m not sure how many of you know what this was, but suffice to say I found out for him and told him and it wasn’t the result he wanted. His response, over the phone, was something like “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine with it.” Not a tiny strand of my mind believes that to be the truth.

Racheet is still angsting over it. Clearly still angsting. Although, as I said, twenty-four hours ago he was being focussed on generating characters for his Uresia game and doing a very good job of hiding his emotions. Of course, I dared think at that point that he may actually have gotten over it.

Today… he seemed fairly normal at lunchtime and when he started running the game. Halfway through, he got a call from Neil telling him that there was a birthday party being organised tonight. Today was Racheet’s birthday, if you didn’t know. There’s back-story about this as well. A few weeks ago, he asked me to try and organise a birthday party for him - he said it didn’t matter if it wasn’t much, so long as it was something. But… I failed. Every day, weekends included, it’s been impossible to get everyone together. There were planned trips, to the Dungeon and even the aborted Slimelight trip, that got in the way and threatened to eclipse any idea I had. In the end I latched onto the idea of Nick’s meal this coming weekend as the closest I could get to one.

Then, with just a phone call, Neil organises everything, on the day, with everyone there - including all the friends of Racheet’s that I have no contact with and so could never have convinced to come to a party I was organising. I remarked to Racheet after the call, almost light-heartedly, “I guess that puts me even further down in the failure stakes.” His reply: “Yes. Yes it does.”

That’s it; that breaks me. I’m now incapable of playing the character I’m trying to play in this game, and that makes me angst further, and gets joined by the other two big things I’m currently angsting about and renders me utterly useless. Later on, in the Stag’s Head, I have to go and sit outside for half an hour just to return to a condition in which I could talk to people. Back inside, feeling a little recovered, I bought Racheet a drink and sat down. Barely got to talk to anyone, so resumed angst. By the time I ended up talking to Andy, angst was all I could talk about.

Later, we went to Pizza Hut for a meal, and everything was fine and good. By that time, Mark and Andy had managed to wring most of my angst out of me. We were all laughing and joking as usual, although Racheet was being awfully serious when talking to Donna. Either way, as far as I knew we were all enjoying ourselves.

Next stop, the Dungeon. Again, things seemed to be fine. Racheet seemed a little distracted at times, but nothing out of the ordinary. For a while. Before long he was dashing about all

over the place, looking stressed and unhappy. At one point I offered him my drink, which he downed before heading off somewhere else, but the next time I offered a drink his reply was something like “what’s the point if all I’m going to do is sit and cry over it?”

Shortly afterwards he whispered some instruction to me that I need not repeat here, suffice to say it was a request that involved some minor amount of social manipulation. However, as he and everyone else knows pretty well, I’m socially inept. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel comfortable doing what he asked, I actually had no idea how to do it. His response, I think, was “pathetic”.

I had little to do with him for the rest of the night, I chose to sit with Andy and talk about angsty things instead. I was - as I am now - still unsure what was troubling Racheet: whether it was still fallout from a week ago or whether there was something new, or even if it was my own incompetance. While talking with Andy I resolved that after the club closed, I’d ask Racheet what was up.

One o’clock came, and I approached him. Before I even got a chance to ask, he grabbed me and said “If you’re going to angst at me or be pathetic any time in the next few days, just don’t.”

My reply: “I was going to ask if you were okay; what the problem was.”

“Don’t.”

At that point, I walked off. There was

nothing I felt that I could do.

What am I doing wrong? Does anyone even know?

I spent so long, last year, talking with him about emotional things; telling him how I felt and letting him help. And I’m so very thankful for it.

But why can’t it happen in reverse? Why can’t I help him?

Am I just not worth his time? Am I really that pathetic?

Now that I think about it, a lot of the times that I’ve been near him when he’s been drunk, he’s given me the impression that he thinks I’m pathetic.

Is that the truth of what he feels, does he feel that all the time but only sometimes bother to come out and say it?

Does he even realise how much, no matter how much it’s true, it hurts me to be told?

I want to give up, now. I want to stop caring, I want to not speak to him and not answer the phone and not see him.

But I don’t know if that’s what he really wants, and I don’t know if it’s what I really want.

Why can’t life be simple again? Why can’t people be the people I think they are?

How come everyone can read me so easily, like a book, but I’m so bad at knowing how others feel?

Right at the point that, more than ever, I need to believe and trust in my friends and have them keep me happy and sane, they’re either angsty themselves or just walk all over anything I try to do?

But that’s selfish, isn’t it? I learnt before, three years ago, about being selfish. How I shouldn’t care about myself as much as I care for others, how if I can make others happy at the price of only my own happiness, I should.

But this works differently. I want to make everyone’s unhappiness mine so that everyone can be happy, but I can’t anymore. All I’m doing is making myself unhappy without improving things for anyone else.

Thanks… thankyou to anyone who sat through all of that. I’m sorry for taking up your time so selfishly, but it does me a world of good just to realise that someone out there might read it and understand a part of what’s going on inside my head.