I’m still waiting for a call from home office about my old retail job (the one where I have 2 national awards for my customer service skills — I know, right?). I’ve no doubt I’ll get back on with the company, but the wait leaves a lot to be desired.
Yesterday afternoon, I was feeling energized. I think it’s the first time I’d gone 4 days without putting something mind-altering in my system in at least 2 years. Some friends and I completed an extremely difficult dungeon in Elder Scrolls Online. It was very gratifying to finally kill the final boss. In all my years of playing this game, I’ve never once fought a boss and thought, “this guy is really trying to kill me!” Literally, one of the mechanics involves the boss dropping a magma boulder the size of a Volkswagen Beetle on you. For the last twenty percent of the fight, everything’s on fire, which is not fun at all since my character is a vampire.
Afterward, I attended a LGBT+ group meeting, where I met five new friends and got some tea on the local scene. Turns out, we’re not small in numbers at all, here. And we even have a trans specific group meeting that occurs once a month. I’m a bit excited about that, to say the least (more like over the moon about it). Our monthly PFLAG is meeting next week — of course, I’m going to be there. I am also going to look into volunteering with them for some of the future events. In addition to that, I got some numbers for an affirming doctor and an OB-GYN to get back on HRT, which honestly, that endeavour wasn’t even in my mind. I also got information on an affirming counselor in the neighborhood who might be better for me than the one I planned on going to. I’d rather keep the reason private.
After the group meeting, I hit up an NA session. I’ve never seen the place so packed, not that I’ve been going that long. There had to be at least 60 people there. I think I counted 12 years worth of clean time picked up, which really inspired me. The topic was “any clean addict is a miracle. We keep this miracle alive in ongoing recovery with positive attitudes.” (page 95 from the NA Basic Text, if anyone is following along). The shares were a mix of lighthearted and funny to serious and somber.
One spoke the difficult truth about how, even right now as I write this, an addict is sleeping in prison and nobody is calling or writing them. Right now, an addict is putting a gun to their head because the pain of their addiction is too great to leverage. Right now, a baby is being born addicted because they weren’t given time to be born clean. And yet right now (as of the meeting) we were all celebrating our clean time. Some of us have been in those dark places. But not right now. If that’s not enough to make a person feel grateful, I don’t know what is.
When I came home, I hooked up with my in-game friends again for some style page farming. It’s for the Zaan mask in Scalecaller Peak (hey! I know that voice actor!), and it’s a style I plan on putting on my Zaan doppelganger character. I ended up getting it. So yesterday was a good lucky day.