Since I have returned to playing WoW, I have mentally frozen entire aspects related to the game in my mind. Frozen, as in I have put them on some shelf in some freezer, so I know it’s there but I don’t touch it, and if I even come near facing it I shiver and turn away.

One of the aspects is People From The Past. People who were part of Syzygy before I left, or people who were a part of my WoW life when I led Syzygy.

There is a lot that remains on the brink of overwhelming me in this game, despite the fact that I’ve been playing it now for a couple months since I returned, and despite of my working on it in therapy. I am still extremely sensitive to any of the toxicity inherent in many online interactions, especially from strangers/pugs. I am still very upset whenever I notice people being inconsiderate of their leaders who do everything they can for them. Since I have unconsciously taken on more responsibilities again, I am also constantly leery about the fact that current problems get mixed with past memories and trauma, and overwhelm me.

As can be seen in some of my recent posts, I am actually quite regularly being overwhelmed, hit by waves of mental anguish, and then pulling myself back up to stand and try to move forward again.

So, I do what I can to make sure each time a wave knocks me down, that it isn’t too big, or isn’t followed by another wave to prevent me from standing up again. And one of the things I do is put People From The Past in the freezer. My fear is that just talking to any one of them can evoke more memories than I’m ready for in the moment. They knew me while I was in the middle of the struggle, the trauma, the pain. All my interactions with them, my relationships with them, were made and built during this time, and I find it difficult to separate my feelings for them from the mental state I was in.

It is actually a cruel thing to do to these people, especially when some of them truly care for me. I end up completely ignoring them, ghosting them without ever having started talking to them, since I came back. It is something the depression created in my last stint in wow really made clear to me: a person with mental disorders can often hurt others simply by their means of protecting themself. Or at least, I see myself do it, as evidenced in my current policy of freezing anything related to People From The Past.

Of course, my sense of obligation towards Syzygy often supersedes this. And the very few exceptions I’ve made concern People From The Past who still raid (or are likely to raid) with Syzygy. But these exceptions have not been made without pain, and certain previous waves of mental anguish have been caused precisely because of some random memory evoked from some random conversation with a Person From The Past.

Today, I reached out to a random person I found on recruitment forums whom I would consider recruiting. They asked me about a Person From The Past, and I realized they themselves may be a Raider From The Past. And for the moment, I cannot bring myself to continue my conversation with them. The cold from that freezer, as I touch what I have shelved inside, is spreading out to me, and I feel myself freezing over.