July was sup­posed to be my catch-up month. The one where I con­nect­ed with a lover instead of being rushed to appre­ci­ate her at every turn; a chance to fin­ish house projects and all the clean­ing I’ve been putting off; maybe even time enough to go for a walk every day, or the patience to work on fret­ting clean­er bar­res instead of emo­tion­al doo­dling and clum­sy inter­pre­ta­tions.

Now here I am, half way through September. Heather and I are at war with our respec­tive pasts, and wait­ing for relief. On top this comes her dad’s diag­no­sis of a metas­ta­sized can­cer of unknown ori­gin. We’re used to being strong for oth­ers, but the uncer­tain­ty of what may come makes us won­der if we’re tru­ly ready.

If only my mind was­n’t already drift­ing back to those unhealthy and all-too-famil­iar thoughts. It’s hard enough let­ting go of the sense that every­thing will fall apart at any sec­ond. The depth of my strug­gle has changed me, and I’m still get­ting used to feel­ing uncon­di­tion­al­ly loved and emo­tion­al­ly secure. Thankfully, I have a part­ner who tells me every sin­gle day that I’m a good per­son, that I’m impor­tant, and that I deserve to be hap­py. Consistent reminders are what I need, how­ev­er small, cause the recov­ery process is going to take far longer than I first thought.

We’ve tak­en to explor­ing the mas­sive world of Tyria in Guild Wars 2 as a way of cop­ing. Even when I’m away from my com­put­er, I think of noth­ing but jour­ney­ing to new loca­tions, instead of the tiny prob­lems that seem impos­si­ble to sur­mount at even my best times. I’ve always been an obses­sive per­son, and my mind would be full of bad things right now if I was­n’t so busy find­ing the next point of inter­est, the next cham­pi­on to kill and loot.

It’s a way for me to get through the dif­fi­cult days, until they turn into a past that I can look at from afar. I know if I can turn the page on this chap­ter, I’ll have a oppor­tu­ni­ty to become the per­son I want to be every day for the rest of my life.