I've been trying to do well and take what comes in stride. But lately I feel like my baggage is too great to simply shrug off.

Some of my closest friends have been going away. I haven't heard from beefeater since July, when he abruptly cut me off with an unexpected insult and a universal ignore/block.  superslickslasher lost his Internet access almost as long ago, and I haven't heard a peep from him in months. It's been hard to reach  jkroo for even longer. I was once much better friends with  redrodent, but I've heard from him less and less over the past year.

To add insult to injury, in December I was cruelly banned from the Wild Arms Wiki by a rabidly homophobic admin accusing me of "homosexual sexual agenda" and "political advocacy" for trying to push for the cleanup of abusively gay-bashing language from the Brad Evans article (a topic of particular interest to gay fans of the series) and for mentioning I filed a report with Wikia administration.

When I finally heard back from Wikia admins almost a week later, a nice lesbian admin told me that Wikia wiki creation is first-come-first-serve and they leave it entirely up to the founder of each wiki to make their own rules and try not to interfere. They said that if a wiki founder is being draconian and autocratic and prejudicially derailing the wiki community consensus process, my only course is to clone the wiki, which I did.

Lots of other users from IRC #wikia heard my problem and went to the Wild Arms Wiki to comment on the problem (mostly in my support after reviewing the logs), but the admin there said his opinion was the final word and that anyone commenting in my favor who was not actively involved in the Wild Arms Wiki was "dogpiling him".

Anyway, once the task of cloning the wiki was complete, I realized (A) I didn't actually want to run a wiki, and (B) none of my active friends were active enthusiastic Wild Arms fans, and (C) I was feeling horribly injured and traumatized for reasons I couldn't completely understand. Since then, I've been feeling more on edge, and more afraid of cruel homophobes in positions of authority almost anywhere I go. (I can usually deal with homophobic trolls that have no power over me.) At times I feel like it's all too much, and all I can do is crawl into bed for several hours. It's been hard to even think about Wild Arms without feeling this deep-seated pain that's difficult to describe.

And today, I realized, it may be because I've been doing all these things alone. I have so few best friends now, who talk to me daily and take an active interest in my welfare and hobbies. I do have lots of other friends, but I've lost my emotional rocks of Gibraltar for when times get really, really bad. I've been trying to be strong, but sometimes I'm not so strong, and just want my best friends.

Until then, it's been hard to pursue any of my hobbies with gusto. My MIDIs, my tvtropes work, gaming, my programming, my linguistics projects... I keep having to push myself hard to keep going while trying not to complain, gripe or whine, but lately I've been running on fumes. I'm not sure how long I can keep going until I crash and burn out.

I want my friends. Both in good times and in not-so-good times. Lately, even my few better friends haven't been able to do much more than tell me they don't know what to suggest. To be honest, I think probably what I really want is for my friends to be there, both in fair weather times and in harsh weather times.