GreatRock

Originally Posted by that_darn_lurker

GreatRock- the game you should be moving on to is Eve Online. If you have the stomach for it, join the something awful forums first (costs 10 bux, but you may find it worth it). Spend 4 months posting and making friends, then make a move to join goonfleet in eve online. If you get in, you'll live out all your villainy d
esires you can possibly imagine. Word of caution: during your first 4 months don't let on that you want to join goons or you will be blackballed as a j4g (joined for goons). If that happens you're screwed.

Originally Posted by Impish Kat

Everyone has their own dark tunnels that they must travel through.

Some tunnels are more dark than others.

Originally Posted by Impish Kat

okay... I'm going to go out on a huge limb and share something with you (and consequently everyone else here) that may offer a little perspective...

I am the product of an emotional and physical abuser.
Namely, my mother.

Not many people who know me now would ever guess it, as I am now a fairly well adjusted and generally happy person.

But there was a time when I was a very, very, very angry young lady.

The emotional abuse began rather early, I can remember very specific moments from 4 years and on. It escalated as I got older. By the time I was 8, I was taking the brunt of a lot of crap. By the time I was 12, Mom and I were physically fighting worse than cats and dogs.

We went to counseling at my father's insistence (my parents were divorced, and I had asked to come live with him). The problem was, my mom would spin the truth and the counselor never believed my side of the story. This of course, did absolutely nothing to instil any confidence in authority figures.

Of course, all this turmoil had an effect on my attitude toward others. I would wear a "happy face" when necessary, and I excelled in my academics; but I had what a lot of folks would call a huge chip on my shoulder. Some might even say I was a bit of a bully. I was angry and disdainful of others my age, and only had a few close friends... my trust was a difficult thing to earn.

There came a time, finally, where I decided to take control of my own life.
One night, at the age of 14, I awoke to find myself standing in my bedroom doorway, facing my mother's bedroom across the hall, with a knife in my hand and a fury blazing in my mind.
No joke.
Scared the crap outta myself. I cleared my head, and spent the next several hours mulling over the implications of this event. I came to the conclusion that if I stayed in my environment I would inevitably turn into something/one I did not want to be.

The next morning, I told my mom that I was going to talk to my dad about moving with him at the end of the school year. I did not tell her why (to this day she does not know about that night). She kinda blew it off, as the school year didn't end for a few months yet.

Then came Memorial Day weekend. We packed up and traveled with my aunt and cousins for a weekend in the desert, near some hot springs where another aunt lived. It was a family outing we'd done for several years. But that year... things exploded. Mom and I got into a major blowout, and she became so infuriated that she attacked me, was literally choking me, and my aunt had to pull her off.

I was on a plane the next weekend.

I ended up staying with my grandmother, as my dad was just not ready to handle an angry teen. It was the best thing to ever happen. Gran'ma had just the right amount of patience.

It took nearly a decade for me to recover from a lifetime of hell. It was not always an easy road. It took a lot of venting, introspection, and re-orienting. It took the idea that I had to take control of my own formation, that I couldn't always be blaming my past. At that point, my mistakes were my own. It also took finding trustworthy people who had patience and humor to learn from. And eventually I found Rangle.

Eventually, mom and I came to terms.
It wasn't easy.
I had to step back, and view things from her perspective (which was its own kind of hell). And we eventually had a very emotional conversation wherein she apologized and admitted that she wished she had handled things very differently.

We now accept each other as individuals who have traveled their own rough roads to their own respective destinations.
I try to apply the same acceptance to everyone. They are individuals with different histories that make them unique (for better or worse).

I think of it like a tree.
A tree does not get to choose where it grows, or what grain it has.
But a carver or carpenter can take that tree and determine how to use it. Whether that be to create a beautiful carving, or a sturdy piece of furniture, or a support beam in a house, or whatever...
At some point in your life, you quit being the tree and become the carver. Working with the grain of your own life, you determine your own shape.

In choosing your path, remember:
There is no going back, there is only moving forward.
If you do not move forward, you will drown in the quagmire of your own stagnant emotions.

I agree with some of the other's suggestions; find a focus that transforms your negatives into positives.
For me, it was theatre. In theatre, I was able to express a very wide range of emotions through my characters.
For others, it might be writing, or painting, or sports, or ... games like CoH.

Peace
.

Originally Posted by SteelDominator

Love this family

OMG post number #999

Originally Posted by SteelDominator

I love the game.

Originally Posted by Another_Fan

If it were still a user option I would change my forum name to Emanuel Goldstein. Shame to spoil the staging.

Originally Posted by TonyV

When someone accuses you of stealing money from the community, "I believe you're in error because..." isn't the kind of response that merits.

The point is that I'm really sick and tired that there are three or four trolls that post in every single thread that has anything remotely to do with keeping City of Heroes alive. They tell people they're foolish for keeping up their "false hope", they post "facts" and "reality" that are 180 degrees apart from what's actually going on, and then when anyone challenges them on their unbridled pessimism, they start just making sh*t up to reinforce their doom and gloom predictions and stances--stuff like Plan Z being a deliberate attempt to steal NCsoft's IP, stuff like the game was on its last leg with one foot in the grave, stuff like us wanting to steal people's money, stuff like taking a quote of me saying that at one point in September, things were looking good on selling the game and turned south, and presenting it out of context as if I were saying that this are going really well now.

I've been civil. In fact, the specific reason I don't post here very often any more is because I don't have a lot of time to waste defending our teams against the same tired old lies and misconceptions over and over and over again. But at this point, the same people are posting them, the same people who ought to know better. It's not just a simple misunderstanding. They are misrepresenting the truth with deliberate malice, which is why I said above that I don't want there to be any mistake about it, I'm calling out anyone who feels like they can justify any ludicrous claim of anything like we want to steal IP or we want to rob the community or we want to break the law. If you want to make such outlandish and offensive claims, then you'd better damn well be willing to back them up and I'm not going to worry too much about civility when I refute them.

Originally Posted by MrLiberty

Seeking counseling isn't hard. Schools, Churches, Community centers, etc all usually have someone on hand for that kind of thing. There is no need to directly seek psychiatric help.

The notion that you think there is something wrong with you that needs fixing and that you want to do it yourself points to a pretty normal adolescent behavior. In your free time you might want to look for some books (actual books, not online articles unless they are found on something like the American Psychological Association website) about the psychology of adolesecent behavior. If you can objectively look at what you wrote after reading some of those text you'll likely be able to see the patterns of what you posted mostly falling in line with normal adolescent behavior.

There is even a specific psychological phenomenon where adolescents have the perspective that their problems are truely unique to everyone elses and that others are incapable of understanding them because of said uniqueness. Sadly I've been out of school the better part of a decade so the term escapes me. No one of course wants to hear this (that its just a phase) so usually what happens is if the individual continues to have problems, they are counseled until they get beyond this point of mental development.

Not meant to be inflammatory, just the way it is.

Originally Posted by Fire Man

That is awesome! Just don't drive like the people in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

I play for moving hair.

Originally Posted by JohnRobey

Dear GreatRock,

-snip-

Going out on limb to offer you my layman's nonprofessional opinion (aka playing "armchair psychologist"), parents who call their child "worthless" and "useless" don't sound very loving and nurturing to me. There are such things as emotional neglect and abuse -- no broken bones, no bruises, but the injury is just as real -- and a good counseling psychologist (or related therapist) can assist in the recovery towards building a happier, more fulfillng life for oneself.

-snip-