To Skye Zeer
To Skye Zeer
Of course, if you want me to remove this or change the names just let me know, either as a comment here or as a message somewhere. I will probably add more to this, but I kinda had to get something out there. Skip to “Growing uncertainty” if you wish to get the shorter post. I’ve also written extensively in 2018, on another post, about my experiences in the game, and some of that, or most of it, overlaps with you.
You’ve had many names. E’jusana Belhi, M’ayonaka Belhi, Mayoto Belhi, Skye Azene and finally Skye Zeer. Each reflects a period of your playtime in XIV, but also a period of our friendship. From the very flirty and laid back E’jusana days, to learning the game and venturing into endgame as M’ayonaka, to succeeding both in terms of romance, but also in terms of endgame content as Mayoto to coming into your own as Skye Azene, finally evolving into Zeer having found your match. Of course, you also have a real name, and I did consider using your first name as the title of this but I decided against doing so. First of all I dunno if you, even just your first name, want to be associated with all of this, and secondly, I’ve known you as ‘Belhi’ not as that other name, sadly. I’m not gonna presume to know how you view the entirety of our friendship, the totality of it, how you view the beginning, the middle or the end, nor where you would even set those marks. What, in your opinion, signals the end of us and why did it come about?
The beginning
To think that this is now six years ago is honestly so cruel.
As with other posts I’ve decided to include some of what I wrote at the beginning of 2018. Though, at the time of writing this our friendship was still stable, and because it was written for something else excuse the “we” and the random stuff.
Tyke and I were just messing around in New Gridania, I told him to glamour a set of full plate armour because “the chicks digs that”. No idea, we were just messing around. I think Tyke went to repair down by the inn when he said “Karma come quickly!”. And right then and there was a huge group of people clearly RPing and messing around and so I joined them. I like to think I’m decently creative, I can go on long tirades and trash talk quite a lot. I’m also in love with cringe to the extent that I can purposely put myself in a position to maximize cringe-capital. I love cashing in, anyway I just started trolling around and flirting with people. Both me and Tyke quickly came in contact with someone else. Eljusiana Belhi.
She was a lot like Tyke when I first met him, very open and very talkative. We all quickly hit it off. I also remember “flirting” with members of Val and also another fellow I thought lost, Koushiar Beor. He would try to flirt with Belhi and I would show up and flirt with him to mess up his plans. It was honestly rather funny, I miss all of that. If not for this event I doubt very much that Bench Buddys would still be around, and again I’m not sure why we invited Belhi to our LS but didn’t invite people before.
Belhi would often try to unsettle me, or be very flirtatious. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, I didn’t bite.
Short little sidetrack, but I included two videos from back in the days. Nothing special, but something still.
The first video is actually from A Realm Reborn, so you changed relatively quickly to M’ayonaka.
The second video is from early Heavensward days. Probably just a few weeks between both of these. It boggles the mind how long ago it all happened. I’m sorry. Back to it:
Due to my sleeping schedule, Belhi’s flirtatious moods and romance in general both Tyke and Belhi hit it off, talking for ages in tells and elsewhere.
I mean who can say no, right?
They would eventually get married and live happily ever after…
Now kiss.
...for a month or whatever when heartbreak happened. It was a sad time for poor Tyke. I believe I lashed out at Belhi in response, calling her names and a cunt. But we all overcame that and lived on, potentially stronger for it.
Can’t deny Belhi was hot. Mostly because she sucked at being a BLM at the time and would set fire to everything, but it would later become her main, right?.
Back to the stuff written now (2020-2021):
We did all kinds of random stuff during those early times. From random duties, to struggling with relationships, to creepy stalkers and stuff. Damn, how I miss it all. Wish I had been better at recording and taking screenshots, there were some truly great things happening.
I think we had just pulled another all nighter here. You, Venator and me, I think Tyke had to log off early for some appointment. Also, can’t really be bothered to edit this so enjoy one of my previously very frequent nightly chats with Emoni Lannis.
Heavensward
At the time of writing this it’s been roughly six years since we all panicked because of the preorders not being available for HWs. Six full years since we prepped for HW. If you entered medical school at that time you’d be a fully fledged MD now. Bizarre.
We did do quite a bit together pre-HW, but it pales in comparison to what we did after. Like I don’t associate ARR with you at all even though we did meet and spent almost half a year together during ARR it was still during HW that our friendship really blossomed. I mean, initially it was kinda me, Yuki and Tyke with you and Venator lagging behind, but you both caught up to us. We did lose Venator relatively quickly into HW, sadly.
The inspiration for leaving these posts is actually in this image, Armisael Kharon. From our T5 clearing.
Relatively early into HW's launch we tried doing some maps. Yuki, Tyke, and I, but you were invited too, though it was a struggle for you considering you hadn't unlocked flying at that point. Anyway, I remember specifically some maps being way harder than others and, of course, we got a ridiculously hard map on "my" map. I think Tyke and Yuki were bickering a little, not paying attention, I was the tank but I was utterly crushed and you, a mere lvl 57 NIN, couldn't really cope with anything so you were crushed as well. I remember being frustrated, but in hindsight it was epic. Wish I had gotten a screenshot or a recording of that, funny moment.
I have argued a little with myself about what to include here. Should I summarize some events? Include a lot of details? You joined my FC, or rather Brii’s FC - Aetheric Rain, but you and a group of the people you got close to broke out of that FC and formed your own community. I don’t remember exactly why that happened anymore, only that it did. Thus you were in AH for a long time. I, in the way that I am, isolated myself, became a stranger and eventually left Brii’s FC. I wandered the world in an FC-less state of being, which I found exhilarating. Though, in hindsight, it wasn’t the best decision. Leaving that FC happened, but I should’ve probably tried to join AH or some other community. I kinda locked myself away a little. Anyway - Shit happens.
I grew really close with Beor during 2015-2016, doing a shit ton of PvP. And we both befriended Yunakari, Damona, and, though I was in Spain at the time of creation, the Fun Club was formed. It got too big, but it had so many people that I considered staples and even some I miss to this day. People I’d never interact with again. Hayat, Yumi and Yume, Beor, Yuna, Damona, plenty of others.
The reason for bringing that up in a post dedicated to you is just to kinda set the stage, give some context and bring you back to that time. Most of these would eventually join your static, and some, like Beor, Yuna, Damona, would stop doing PvP. I’d interact with them less and less, but that’s life.
Back to some of what I wrote in 2018:
That which binds us
I don’t think we specified why we started a FC. We simply did. And that’s the very same FC I’m now in a little over 2 years later. In the beginning it was just Belhi, Tyke and I. And that’s all the members we ever needed. We built the FC but decided to get a house so we donated some gil and worked towards it but then we received a tell from Yuki. She was interested in parting with her FC, it was dead and it had a medium house. We merged our two FCs and The Bench Buddies 2.0 was created, now with a house. Yuki was made a co-leader. The dead FC had another member there already called Rivai Ri, now called Ink Varia who also decided to join us. Belhi was in a relationship with someone and they joined together with a group of friends. Rin Lumoria, Sakurapingu Chan, and Alderin. A few extra too but I can’t remember their names, I’m sorry. We were a decently sized group of individuals now. We could finally do everything in the game be it maps, dungeons, raids or whatever. I felt like the FC was a massive success.
Looking at my screenshots I often would grab one of you so I could craft you some custom made blingbling, surprising you!
I think a few days into patch 3.3 Yuki had a fight with someone, I think she said it was a trans-person or about trans issues of some sort. Sorry, I don’t remember. But this had the consequence of making her a little hostile, she and Tyke discussed some video game and Tyke said something negative about a game, and also called Yuki a “thick fuck”. Yuki kicked Tyke and so I invited Tyke back and he kicked Yuki. Fun and games right except for the fact that it didn’t appear too innocent to people joining. Also the fact that both of them lost their rooms due to it, and with that some rare furnitures. Tyke had treated the room as a storage space for his stuff, so it was a substantial loss.
I talked Yuki down and made her apologize but the damage was done, Yuki would be demoted to Officer for a while, something she didn’t accept and she chose to leave the FC instead. Yuki found another FC and she’s been with them ever since, I did try to reconcile us and also get her back but she didn’t want to so I just couldn’t do anything.
You and I would talk about this event later both recognizing that maybe Tyke should've been demoted as well. Oh well.
I still carry with me, in my inventory, a pineapple I got from Tyke during a map run with the guys, partly because it’s a lucky charm but also because of the obvious memories. In all honesty this is probably the first successful period we had as a FC. Sadly though because our “glue” was the relationship between Belhi and Rin we simply couldn’t survive the break up and their half of the FC simply left. We were now just wandering, Belhi was heartbroken obviously and didn’t really feel like doing anything anymore. Me and Tyke were discouraged because of how emotionally ravaged Belhi was, and also the plans we had for the FC, like we had saved up some maps to do them with the group just prior to all of this happening as an example. It was sad. Understandable but still so sad.
I remember spending some time with you in the Sea of Clouds talking things through. Think we spent like 3-4 hours just chatting, helping you sort through things. Included the screenshot up above for that reason, hope that's ok, I know it wasn't a great relationship.
We all just chugged along until we decided to do some recruiting. We recruited both high levels and low levels, search info, send tell, wait for reply and repeat. We also invited James Windseeker, later to be known as Sushi Rolls to the FC. Me and him did some PVP, but sadly because of the size of our FC we just couldn’t keep it going. He left the FC, then later left the server. Our recruitment was a success though, we got a lot of new members but sadly because we were all level 60s we simply couldn’t connect with newer players in the same way we used to be able to. There’s a certain amount of tension when a high level player joins you, even if it’s incredibly friendly.
We got quite a lot of players into our FC but the fact that I haven’t really mentioned any of them should tell you the state of it all. Sure we had members and sure we did stuff with them, but we didn’t create a group. Fie Claussell would later join us through Rivai Ri. We needed people like Rivai and Fie to work as our glue, after Yuki had left our illusions shattered. We were vulnerable. Luckily both Fie and Rivai worked out in our favor, both had their own issues as most people do but they worked out well with us. At least initially.
Like you would talk to some people, I remember you and Finn chatting for a bit. I do remember some of them, like Hamzi or Vivi. You know what's fucking insane? James joined us in like late 2016, and that's fucking five years ago. It feels like half a year ago.
Back to now-ish:
Stormblood
After the whole situation at the end of 2017 I was never fully the same again, but it started in 2016. Still though, that’s five years ago now, it shouldn’t matter but it did, and it still matters because I haven’t dealt with it on my end before “now”. I took huge breaks from the game throughout 2018 leaving you and Tyke in charge. I remember for a period of time I was the FC-leader but I never logged in, you both asked me to pass the leadership role to one of you, but I just didn’t at first. It wasn’t spite, I just felt like I lost myself completely. And this cloudy outlook had the effect of kinda pushing both you and Tyke away from me. I think this was in 2020, but during one of our fights Tyke said something akin to “you’ve not been the same for 3 years now!” - granted, it wasn’t totally fair, but still there was and is some truth to that. Anyway, you both, you mainly as far as my understanding goes, really tried to revive the FC but it just wouldn’t work because you didn’t quite enjoy the game as much and I wasn’t on at all.
You kept looking for other games, like BLESS or Ark, and in the end this is what I think drove a wedge between us. Not on purpose, I’m not blaming you, but your dissatisfaction with FFXIV manifested differently from my own dissatisfaction. You went out looking for something more, you wanted a new group of friends, a new environment, a new something. Whereas I kept spiraling into myself, my outlook on life growing darker and darker. I was never suicidal, but it did get rather dark. And I did lash out on you both, and I bottled things up, meaningless things, and then I lashed out and exploded and it just wasn’t fair. Like sure, a fight or quarrel or discussion is normal every now and then, but most of them weren’t necessary. There was usually always something underlying. A peaceful talk about some game could devolve into a mess. I wasn’t fully at fault, we just didn’t communicate as well or as often as we used to. We were simply just growing past each other.
In hindsight, upon reading what I wrote back then, all of this is available in a separate post on this blog, btw, it’s become clear what was actually needed. I was struggling, I am struggling, I should’ve been more vocal about that, but I also should’ve done more to alleviate that. Like when we all met in 2015 I was rather a happy individual but I became more and more reclusive, more isolated and spiteful. Dunno. It’s tremendously difficult to accurately state exactly why or how or when shit changed, in many ways I wager they simply didn’t. Or rather, they did by not changing.
2019 was similar in many ways except I didn’t notice any noticeable change in my own life. My education was kinda stalling, I wasn’t at all sure about my choice nor what or who I wanted to be and do. You and I aren’t so different in that regard. With many of the same options and choices made we’re pretty similar, except I guess you actually did get some professional help, but I wallowed in my self-pity.
Growing uncertainty
One thing that hasn’t really changed is how I feel about you. You wondered once why you hadn’t tried to flirt with me or ‘get with me’ back then and, tbh, it’s kinda obvious: I wasn’t available. Like Tyke and you talked in /tells, then shared some personalia and exchanged messages about yourselves, while I was simply this lalafell in FFXIV. I was happy with that because I was really just crashing in terms of self-confidence, this feeling of ineptitude, “I’m not good enough so I’ll just be a lalafell” but that’s a topic for another time. I believe I said something like “we’d have some disastrous fights if we ever hooked up”, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I believe that deep down we’re actually rather similar. We both wanted to work with people, aiming for something like nursing and such. Maybe a relationship between us would’ve ended up in crying and broken hearts but still, at the very least, I think we could’ve been really great friends had we been friends IRL.
A running theme regarding most of my friendships from FFXIV is the lack of voice coms, and I never did that on purpose. Like, I didn’t wake up and go “Ah, another day of no voice, blessed be the harvest!”. It was more like I didn’t realize what I was missing before it got out of hand. Like, when we didn’t play XIV we didn’t talk as much, so when would we talk in voice, and when we did play XIV I hadn’t really used voice in the past so why would I now? I did actually start out playing XIV using voice through Mumble and Teamspeak with some Mi6 peeps, but it was always clunky using a bad laptop together with a controller and a keyboard, my setup was super clunky, eventually I just shut off and became someone else. It’s so stupid in hindsight, should’ve just used voice years ago, but that’s a regret that won’t ever get rectified by thinking of what could’ve been now. One thing is for certain, had we used voice we would’ve been 100x better friends and many of the situations that occured over the years would’ve never happened, at least not the way they did.
The end of the beginning
Do you remember this glitch? -> It feels like it happened a few months ago, but it has actually been years. This was August of 2018. Yikes. I've lost track completely. You didn't deserve that. 2018 could've been a great start to something more for us, but it got dragged down by my own feelings.
The faulty wiring
I want to give you an example of how my mind worked at my darkest moments in 2018-2020. Minecraft was a blessing for me. It really helped me reconnect with all of you and I felt grateful, but, also due to me not being on voice, you didn’t find it as entertaining. Not your fault, the game can be a little stiff, and we don’t all have to like the same things, but still. When you and Tyke stopped playing Minecraft I felt let down, and again - not your fault, my own mind telling me lies. I felt like you did this on purpose, even though I KNEW you didn’t, ofc. “Why won’t they check out what I’ve built?” I asked myself instead of just simply stating “come check out what I’ve made, beautiful!”. Instead of simply asking, I just immediately considered it a “I’m worthless… Ofc they won’t check out my stuff”. This exact thing also happened in FFXIV. I crafted both you and Tyke all the job quest items for all your crafters, and you thanked me for it, it just didn’t ignite anything. Like I can’t explain it completely but it was almost like I tried to substitute my own feelings of inadequacy with your praise, if you get me? Like if you didn’t give me compliments or hang out with me for a period of time I took that as a sign of personal failure, so in my own head I thought “they never ask me for anything…” instead of thinking “I’m gonna ask if they wanna join in doing this!”.
I was in Aiake’s Discord channel, and also in the Mog FC one, and as a ‘cry for help’, I left both in rapid succession, but no one noticed. This fact made me go “oh, so I was right”, instead of thinking “wtf are you doing? Ofc they won’t notice if you don’t say so!”. This faulty logic just made me do all kinds of stupid things, like I’d ‘test’ the waters, see if you’d react, etcetc. Not fair at all, quite toxic, but still something I did. In the end, you see what you wanna see regardless of reassurances, and so I ditched for a bit. Hopeless. Utterly meaningless. I stopped being active, I stopped answering, I figured you had left me in the dirt, and by thinking and doing that I made it real. I was stupid. I felt like I wasn’t good enough for you, and in so thinking and in so doing I kinda made that a reality.
I was quite busy in September and October, working on a book about our family, my uncle passed as I said and I wanted to finish it for him, but instead of saying that I just secretly ditched and when you two didn’t get any messages in reply in our channel you stopped. I stopped. That was that. My uncle’s passing made me recontextualize everything. I haven’t had many people die around me because most of my family members were dead before I was even born. I had 3 living grandparents, but one lived across the country and one died early, the third got dementia. Like, I haven’t had to deal with death often in my own family, often helped others through it like with Tyke and even to some extent yourself, but never personally. His death, though he and I weren’t close, still lit something in me. I freaked out a little, felt like my own life was coming to an end. And instead of seeking solace in you two I stopped. I retreated into myself. I’m sorry.
Everywhere at the end of time
As the years go by. As we climb away from the 2010s towards the 2030s, I hope you’ll remember me as I was once. I hope you will take good care of yourself, both physically and spiritually, both mentally and emotionally. And, more than anything else, I hope you have excellent support, because you will fall, you will fail, and you will suffer, but together with said excellent support, you will persevere. You will be stronger, and you will be bolder and while things may not happen exactly as you wished, nor be exactly as you dreamed, they will still happen for you. My only regret is that I couldn’t be there for you, nor be a part of this journey with you, but I know it will be awful, but also amazing. I will always be available for you, but I think I’m not in a state where I can actually be there for you. Not anymore. Both you and Tyke saw significant changes in your lives, you grew as people, and I just didn't. I stagnated. Take care of yourself, Y, may we meet again and know that, while we maybe never knew each other as greatly as we had wished, I did and do love you, Skye.
Kommentarer
Legg inn en kommentar