Not The Doctor

I regard August 26, 2015 as the happiest day in my life thus far. A month and a half following that date, I threw these images together but only shared them to a select few that knew and followed the backstory of the real-life event that it was based on. (Well, other than the obvious inspiration from this moment from Crusaders of the Lost Mark:)

(Derpibooru)

One year later exactly (August 26, 2016) I posted them publicly for the first time but on a different social platform with an accompanying story, but I may as well reiterate it here a year after that with a two-year (at the time of posting, a three-year) perspective if it makes a difference.

So what happened on this day in 2015?

Well, when you hear about someone losing a friend, what are the first words that come to mind? If you’re thinking of words with negative or depressing connotations, sure, those would be words that’d describe me for the year leading up to that date.

August 26 was a day of a friendship breakup, but would you be surprised to learn that for me it was more of a sense of relief, unburdening, or release of tension, rather than the vibes of depression, guilt, or grief that you were probably expecting?

But I suppose that’s part of being the person that’s doing the cutting. As I said, I consider it the happiest day of my life so far, and one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Nine months prior to that, I was on the other side being cut away and left behind burned bridges where I spent about six days or so pinned down by grief (not sure I’d call it depression, but smallfry compared to what I see from others regardless), only for the person to come back out of guilt after those six days (their own words, by the way).

(Derpibooru)

You might’ve had the experience of having someone that you invest a lot of emotions and effort into, and you wholeheartedly accepted them as one of your friends. You might’ve even considered them your second-best friend at a point in time, because it seemed like they really understood and got you. Bonus points if it seemed like you were one of their only friends, or one of the very few people that looked out for them, so you felt it was your duty and thought, “if not you, then who else?”

Such things aren’t always immune to time and change. Or maybe people can be sociopathic. Whether it was a sudden turn of events or it took you as long as it did to really notice, none of your efforts amounted to anything, but the longevity of the existing friendship as well as the amount you’ve invested emotionally made for a friendship that you just didn’t want to let go that easily or “over nothing”. It had a lot of sentimental value.

You think it’d be easy to just act like it doesn’t bother you and power past it, because it felt like the “right” thing to do even if it was very difficult to pull off or that it was at your expense. Because you just didn’t want to hurt anybody even if it was at your expense, because you felt you could handle these things, right? Or maybe it was that you were afraid to speak up, or didn’t see a point in doing so because this person has shot you down before.

Luckily, you have other friends that are (amazingly) willing to listen to you over the months that this particular friendship would develop in its rollercoaster-esque directions. Despite whatever they say to reassure you, you still feel that what they say is based on one side of the story—your own—and conveniently, none of them are really mutuals with this other friend to learn the other side of the story themselves. For this reason you aren’t quite sure if you want to believe them, even though you want to. You already know that this friend isn’t exactly the most open, and thus are unpredictable, to your frustration, but to you at the time, was worth the frustration. It still works in a way, because said “other friends” would take behavioral cues on what not to do to each other, based on your testimonials of interactions, and just avoid making the same mistakes.

Eventually, something has to give. Fittingly, that phrase was used once or twice in the events that would inevitably lead to what it became. You eventually learn that they just don’t care. That they have no interest, ability, or drive to help themselves, let alone even appreciate or acknowledge you or your efforts. This is after you decide to tell them your full feelings in an essay of an instant message, a few paragraphs’ worth of length. They respond, but not in an understanding or empathetic way, but rather to doubt you. You even give them the full opportunity to tell you why, or their side of the story, but they just take advantage of that and attempt to use it towards guilt tripping you further, claiming that you’re stuck with them and that you won’t really let them go, despite all that you said.

Only then do you realize there’s nothing further that you can do.

That you’re not enough.

...And yet, it didn’t feel like pure failure.

It was relief. Relief that you didn’t have to try anymore, because you knew there was no reason to. Letting them go was suddenly a no-brainer since any of the remaining, smallest redeeming factors possible that you would still account for had just then evaporated.

And what about your other friends? As a result, you all learned a lot more about being better friends to each other because of the whole experience. You feel the emotional trauma and potential future trust issues were worth it, since they led to you being, at least what you feel is, a better person. You’re all closer friends because of it.

...All at the cost of sleep, a couple hours of staffing, a panel or two, and consciousness for a Smash 4 Wii U tournament the next evening.

This is because you had to leave in the middle of Saturday to a nearby FedEx Office, which took a bit longer than you expected, because:

- You had to whip out your laptop to adjust the resolution of the image in Photoshop (your vectoring software exported an image at, roughly, 5x6 inches at a resolution of 850dpi, so you had to modify it to 350dpi to get the desired 11x14 size)

- This particular FedEx Office only had a laser printer as opposed to an inkjet printer, so using glossy paper resulted in several dots and defects. Initially, print jobs were sent to make 3-4 copies to “warm up the nozzles” with the last copy being the “best”, although it still had difficulty with the glossy paper. Thankfully, this was largely solved by using more “matted” paper that barely looked different.

(However, because the employee felt the prints didn’t come out “perfect” enough, he also gave them to you for free.)

- Because it was printed to “actual size” rather than “fit to page” (I didn’t know the results of either until after the fact), the left and right sides were cut in the white bordering. You rectified this not by printing as “fit to page” but by shifting your signature farther away from the right-hand edge, and had to wait for your laptop to export the image and all its gaussian blur effects for a few minutes, and then reformatting in Photoshop on your laptop.

- After resending the file for printing, said employee went out back, while a different employee unaware of the courtesy gesture covering him came and charged you for the print, but you didn’t mind because of all the favors they’d done already. Saving grace was you got to use your student discount.

- You have never actually used the cropping tools to trim the extra bits of paper off before, taking a few extra minutes, which was enough to miss both the autograph session you were planning to attend that day as well as a panel you were thinking of going to.

Getting it signed waited to Sunday.