Kane, I always said that CoH was the cheapest therapy around. Believe me, you aren't the only one who feels like there is always a raging beast below your surface.
How very, very true. I often liken it to a chained beast or coiled serpent, ready to strike, a creature that I must regularly watch over, lest it fully emerge and ruin everything I hold dear.
I'm a big believer in the Triune Brain model, and I also fully believe that we're essentially the same hunter-gathering species that we were 20,000 years ago, and that our modern societies and technological development have far, far outpaced our evolution. There are many books and peer-reviewed studies out there to support the notion that the conflict between our old instincts/biology and our modern world contributes to much of the stress and frustration we feel in our everyday lives. For example, we probably shouldn't have fight-or-flight responses because a bill has come due, or because there's a big meeting or test coming and we feel unprepared. However feelings that range from anxiousness to outright terror aren't uncommon when faced with these or similar prospects.
City of Heroes was where I (and so very many of you) could go to find a world that was just a little less complicated than our own, a world that made sense. A world where we could not only fly or leap tall-buildings, but a world where we felt we
mattered, a place where our choices made a difference. In small ways we could save a lady from a Hellion Mugger, and in big ways we could save our entire world.
It was a place where we could be almost anything we wanted to and we could look how we wanted. There we could be as strong and beautiful as we wanted, or as savage and ugly as we wanted if the need arose. It was a place where getting hit by a car only bumped you out of the way, a place where a fall off a tall building would hurt you, but not kill you, and where the donuts had no calories. It was also a place where the only bill that came due within that world itself was for our Base-upkeep (and that's only if you had a Base of your own), and you could work that off by throwing a few Council-jerks into the Zig.
It was also a world where we could find friends with ease: a world where we could chatter and joke to our heart's content. A home where we had comrades.
CoX was all of this and so much more that I don't have the time or words to properly describe or express, and we could enter and leave at will, and make our real-life trials and troubles seem a little less overwhelming, a little less daunting.
But it was also a world that was taken from us: a community that was scattered to the four proverbial winds. Its no wonder that the loss of a place that did so very much for so very many of us has created so much grief and so much anger. To quote Oz from season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
"I miss you. Like, every second. It's like I lost an arm, or worse, a torso."For some of us the pain is often that palpable. Many of us have shed tears. Many of us still do.
All that said, healix is correct: you are not alone. WE are not alone. We are here, together, refugees from that world we loved, "a world that was so very fair" (to quote a passage from the book "War Day"), and because we are here together, its a burden that is fully understood, acknowledged, and shareable. Its a burden that can be lessened.
As heroes, we helped the helpless, the ones too weak to help themselves. Now, here, the heroes (and villains) of CoX can help one-another in our dire time of great need. And, for me, knowing that makes things just a little bit better.
