While I thrash about in my trauma, my mind thinks only of my pain and the bad behavior of people that brought about my pain. But though that is what my mind focuses on, that is not at all representative of the truth of how things are now, as I was, very fortunately, reminded of today.

We have a player who had health issues this week (whom I will not name out of respect for their privacy). They had to be hospitalized because of their situation, and had told us that they probably would not be able to raid this week. But this week, because of all the planned and unplanned absences, and possibly because of the shit drama that happened before, they decided to do whatever they could to lower our stress, by bringing a laptop to the hospital and making the necessary arrangements to still raid with us despite being sick and hospitalized.

One of our healers, 3p, had posted out absences for 2 times within the past couple months. He had posted out very very much in advance, and was really communicative and good about it. But when the time came, he still made both of the nights he posted out on, with at least one of them being because he saw we would struggle without a key healer, and made changes to his real life arrangements so that we don’t need to suffer.

One of our players, sharo, has constantly put the needs of the guild as number one. He had long ago told me he is happy to help recruit for us to lower any stress I may feel. Right now we need to recruit again, and he is absolutely there for us. He also is always hyper aware of any needs the guild may have, as far as roster composition goes, and goes out of his way to get characters ready for us to use as soon as he sees we need them. Spending time and effort all on his own to get them ready, behaving in a way that purely helps the guild without adding any stress or burdens on us by forcing us to use his alts or find time to help gear them.

One of our players, dread, is 99.99% on attendance, and on top of that always makes himself available for any guild activity. When basically no one was attending our strategy meetings, he still made it there to contribute how he could. He also created alt characters that he took upon himself to gear up so that when we needed those characters he could swap and be able to pull us through difficult situations. He also does a ton of preparation work despite not being a raid leader, and therefore is able to perform so well on no matter which class he is on that he can significantly help improve our progression, just through having such strong personal performance.

One of our players, arthaas, whispered me when all the shit drama was going down. He told me how much he appreciated both me and shandare, and how upset he is that with all the hard work and sacrifice we make, we now have to deal with people bashing us. He told us that he really appreciates us. He told us that contrary to people insinuating we don’t listen to them, he found that as long as suggestions are made respectfully, he’s always found us to be very responsive. He told me at a time when I particularly was feeling that everyone in the guild was only thinking about how shandare and I are not good enough. And his support when he saw us being kicked and kicked again while we were down, showed his empathy and the true kindness and goodness of his character.

One of our players, gabe, came from a guild that is probably more social. He has been trying to hang out in our voice communication Discord channel, to promote more socializing and bond-building within the guild. But our guildies are very introverted and people rarely get on to hang out with him. Most people would take this as a rejection and be less willing to make any effort for a place that is not as welcoming as they are used to, yet gabe still continues to be inclusive, social, nice. And continues to speak up in ways during raid to promote positivity and camaraderie.

Several of our players, with cauli as the biggest example, have 100% attendance years at a time, and causes exactly 0 drama or problems (on top of being a top performer like dread). This sort of persistence for so long in itself requires a lot of effort. There is so much frustration built into how this game is played, it is much easier to allow the frustration to get the better of you and either cause you to burn out or rage at times, to do neither for so long, to be so consistent, so reliable, so strong, for SO LONG, is amazing.

This is just a very few people in the guild. I could write speeches about every single person. Even the people who hurt us recently have so many other ways in which they contribute and are good. Reliable, great attendance, strong performance, in many situations willing to be team players, all this and more can be attributed to those who recently hurt us. There is not a single person who is purely bad to and for the guild. And on top of this all, I think it’s especially worth recognizing all the amazing work both shandare and I do for the guild as well.

Shandare spends all his time outside of work basically for the guild. Often doing things he does not enjoy, but that the guild needs. Sacrificing sleep and even doing things like ensuring he gets his vaccine shot at a time where if he has side effects it won’t affect guild raids. He spends 10s of hours every week preparing for the bosses, often making spreadsheets, watching videos over and over, crunching numbers, figuring out any detail of any strat that he doesn’t yet understand. He also spends hours figuring out composition for the raids each week, to maximize the likelihood that each of our 26 players get as many boss kills as possible, considers their loot needs, considers boss kill composition needs, considers the personal situations of each player. When the roster is less healthy, he spends hours assessing potential applicants, conducting voice interviews with them, discussing the pros and cons of each recruit so we can keep the guild healthy long term. When I suggested that he work harder on his own performance, he went above and beyond to study and practice his personal stuff on top of all the stuff he does for the guild. And, to top it off, he works very hard to be as objective and cerebral as he can with all the endless feedback and criticism from guildies. At the end of the last tier he conducted a guild meeting and welcomed people’s feedback so that he might improve as a leader, one of these feedbacks was that he spent too long between pulls discussing unimportant details of stuff, and that we should pull more often. Likely he himself never felt he was discussing unimportant details, but he found a way to make this happen by moving the discussion time outside of raid, and clamping down on his own instinct to discuss details during raid to make sure we pull faster. Now people are telling him, rather rudely, that he should let people discuss more during raid and take their suggestions, because those people do not prepare for raids and therefore can only give suggestions mid-raid. And though both he and I recognize the absurdity and unfairness of this, he still pushes himself to see if it is objectively better that he adjusts himself again, with the only caveat being that he does not want to make any huge changes that he can’t control well in the middle of progression during a tier. What maturity and humility and respect of others is needed to behave like this! How difficult is it for us to change fundamentals about how we think and behave, and to be willing to find what we can do better and do it, even after receiving disrespectful, unkind, and unfair criticism. These traits are amazing in any human, and is something that really makes a leader stand out as someone worth following. At least in my opinion.

I have written a good deal here and there about what I do for the guild. I think it fair to say that I contribute the absolute maximum of what I can without ending up suicidal. And even when suicidal I still contribute enough to allow the guild to not fall apart. And I think it likely that my effort is not useless effort, that not only is there a large amount of it, but it is also effective effort.

Overall, there are some bad things. These bad things happen to be the particular type of thing that triggers my trauma (no surprise because the bad things in all guilds are pretty much the same, so it’s the same things the caused me to be traumatized to begin with). And while I’m in this mental state, I will probably continuously focus on what upsets me. But, I must not overlook that there are a lot of wonderful things still. Wonderful people. People with characters that we would all be fortunate to count as our friends in the real world. It’s easy for me to forget it when I’m wrapped up in the pain of my trauma, but it’s there.

It’s there.