Been a while...
Jul. 22nd, 2021 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichI don't expect anyone to read this, actually. It's been three years since I've written anything but my counselor is after me to write a journal and truth to tell, while I do have a pen and ink journal, I write faster and more coherently by typing the words. So my leather journal is a mostly-SCA-event item. That does make it fun for me to re-read. She also strongly suggested - more like "insisted" that I quit the SCA as what I'd been dealing with was quite toxic. But she settled for me backing out of our local area's stuff. I still kinda keep track of what is going on, and I'm theoretically teaching a class in August but it is only a workshop for folks who would like to cover their modern camp chairs with cloth. I don't attend any of our meetings anymore and I've been training myself to stay out of discussions on the group's Facebook page. It isn't easy. I'm breaking a 32-year habit of being involved. I'll succeed.
I am down to one SCA protégée now. One was elevated to the Order of the Pelican (YAY), one recently met with me to re-evaluate our relationship and we decided to release it (actually, I think she was looking for an opportunity as we had been growing further and further apart in viewpoints as she absorbs her very-Republican new husband's views) and one asked me to release her so she could swear to a dear friend who had been elevated last September. Her friend took over three protégées on the day of her elevation - more power to her. I could have never done that but they all had been talking about it "when the time comes" for eyars.
That last ex-protégée hurt my feelings today. I had asked her for the name & contact info for her soon-to-be Peer on the day she made her request but she didn't answer me. That bothered me a bit but I figured she was already juggling emotions and plans for her travel back to her old kingdom for the ceremony. Her new Peer lives in a kingdom about 18 hours away from our area, so she needed a local contact person in our polling Orders. Recently I wrote to my ex-protogee about it only to learn that she has asked another Peer who lives in a different barony to be the contact person. And that hurt. I guess that our friendship was more window dressing than reality since she's only known that person for less than a year. How could I have misjudged our relationship so poorly?
And I question myself now. Am I that horrible a person? In less than a year I've lost two protégées. Have I become a toxic individual? Maybe so in these last few dark years. I spent a few years wanting to die, constantly fighting the urge to weep, and trying to hide that. I'm still dealing with depression but that level of it has lifted. I'm starting to have good days now, with goals and activities I only daydreamed about previously. But has the last few years poisoned my personality while I was trying to cope?
I don't know.
I am down to one SCA protégée now. One was elevated to the Order of the Pelican (YAY), one recently met with me to re-evaluate our relationship and we decided to release it (actually, I think she was looking for an opportunity as we had been growing further and further apart in viewpoints as she absorbs her very-Republican new husband's views) and one asked me to release her so she could swear to a dear friend who had been elevated last September. Her friend took over three protégées on the day of her elevation - more power to her. I could have never done that but they all had been talking about it "when the time comes" for eyars.
That last ex-protégée hurt my feelings today. I had asked her for the name & contact info for her soon-to-be Peer on the day she made her request but she didn't answer me. That bothered me a bit but I figured she was already juggling emotions and plans for her travel back to her old kingdom for the ceremony. Her new Peer lives in a kingdom about 18 hours away from our area, so she needed a local contact person in our polling Orders. Recently I wrote to my ex-protogee about it only to learn that she has asked another Peer who lives in a different barony to be the contact person. And that hurt. I guess that our friendship was more window dressing than reality since she's only known that person for less than a year. How could I have misjudged our relationship so poorly?
And I question myself now. Am I that horrible a person? In less than a year I've lost two protégées. Have I become a toxic individual? Maybe so in these last few dark years. I spent a few years wanting to die, constantly fighting the urge to weep, and trying to hide that. I'm still dealing with depression but that level of it has lifted. I'm starting to have good days now, with goals and activities I only daydreamed about previously. But has the last few years poisoned my personality while I was trying to cope?
I don't know.
