#I hate that this entire spiel? yeah? This is the /short/ version of my deeplore ok

[chipped-chimera]

Ugh ... I am low-key so worried about how the BG3 ending is gonna play out for Karlach that I'm considering stopping playing and just coming back to it when I can handle it. Some of this shit is just hitting too close to home and I'm not sure I'm cut out for it.

More personal context under the cut if you want.

I relate to Karlach's pain so much. Too much. To the point it makes me teary thinking about it. Both of our lives have been cruel.

It has been hard for me, despite a stable family upbringing that most would envy, in a lower-middle class family that for the large part has been financially stable. I'm also white. I know I'm lucky in that capacity - god I fucking know (and the thought that what I've gone through could be considered a 'lucky' position? What does that mean for others? It keeps me up at night).

But that didn't stop the pain crawling in. I wasn't diagnosed with Autism until 27. I wasn't diagnosed with co-morbid ADHD until I was 28. I wasn't medicated for ADHD until I was 30 (and that was AFTER being told by a psych who also invalidated my Autism diagnosis aka the context for fucking EVERYTHING in my life, I couldn't have ADHD because I could 'read a book').

Before that? I knew I was depressed at 13, but didn't want to burden my family so I did nothing - we may be lower middle class and stable but I knew that was only because my parents tried so fucking hard. We had camping chairs in place of furniture up until I was eight. I lived with the pain because I didn't want to burden them, and without the context of my neurodivergence I just blamed myself for the problem, not being good enough, not trying hard enough - not being ENOUGH. I held onto it until I cracked and couldn't take it anymore at 16. I was diagnosed with Depression and Generalised Anxiety Disorder. It's since been upgraded to chronic Major Depression and it's classed as treatment resistant.

Both of us have had moments of building ourselves up from nothing. Through therapy and medication I was able to feel a bit better, more positive as I left high school. Thinking maybe it was gonna be okay after all, out there in the world.

It felt like I'd slowly reached out into the light, tentatively, hopefully - there'd be something more, that I'd live out the dreams I'd had, the things I'd always wanted to do. I was still optimistic.

Instead it felt like that arm had been immediately lopped off.

The story is long and too complicated to tell without this being longer than it needs to be. But like Karlach, I feel I've lost years of my life. Like Karlach, it's been a decade - ten years. That I cannot get back, that I grieve keenly.

I have been isolated, and then betrayed by those I thought I trusted. First, by the systems that were supposed to help me when I was struggling - my own government's system as they hit me with a debt that I couldn't even pay, on a scheme which has in retrospect been found to be completely illegal, but has left me with lasting trauma and damage and no closure. Not even a sorry. Because I, with my undiagnosed Autism and ADHD and a growing fatigue issue where I was so exhausted from simply being alive I just couldn't fight it. So I let them take money out of my social security payment - which was and still is considered below the poverty line. I was punished for being poor, I was punished for arguably, being disabled.

And then, by the person I trusted most. The person I thought I loved, the person who made it felt like everything was okay - I may be struggling still but there was still a future! There was someone who cared about me, who would be beside me for the rest of my lifetime. He asked me to marry him. We were engaged for three. Years. We'd been dating for 10. I thought everything, despite all the shit happening to me, was going to be okay.

It wasn't.

I had landed some employment for the first time in 3 years. I was working more hours than advised by the psychologist who diagnosed me with Autism but I had no choice - I was literally on the minimum limit available to me, due to the barriers I still have to navigate to qualify for disability supports (again, from a government system that I no longer trusted and gave me the earnest impression that they preferred me dead than 'leeching off their system'). But I was not living. I couldn't handle even 15 hours a week, I was more exhausted than I'd ever been. I felt like a corpse. I spoke with my disability employment coordinator (no, despite what I said, being on disability EMPLOYMENT services does not qualify you getting onto disability support, just means the government will only hound me for a minimum of 15 hrs a week instead of 30 in order for social security, that's a whole other complicated thing) IN CONFIDENCE that I wasn't sure I could keep up with the current work format and hoped I could discuss some solutions. Next minute I find I'm locked out of the work facebook. I was fired, without warning and without protections because I was a casual. Because my employment coordinator told my boss before even discussing anything with me.

My relationship was suffering but I wasn't aware. I was too tired for intimacy, and probably two tired to see the signs. I'd gotten my Autism diagnosis at this point and maybe it was a bit difficult for my fiancée at the time to understand, but he came to terms with it. The ADHD assessment was booked. I had realized at this point pushing myself to be something I wasn't, thinking somehow landing work and earning money for myself would help the depression - it didn't. I was worse than I'd ever been. Then the moment came where I was handed a notice that the government would no longer give me any social security because my partner, on his meager chef's salary was earning too much. All because I'd tried to do the right thing by the government. I'd tried so hard to be good. I'd tried so hard to be ENOUGH.

I wasn't enough.

My fiancée came to me, my fiancée who I'd been talking to about our upcoming wedding plans now the pandemic was over, my fiancée who I'd been cuddling with on the couch last night watching films - he came to me when I was battered, and raw and broken and crying in bed - just said 'I can't do this anymore.' And that was it. It was done. As I processed it, I realised the root of it was, it was because I'd taken the mask off. I decided I wasn't going to try to be something I wasn't anymore, because I knew and it was backed up in countless studies - what I was doing was actively killing me. And he didn't want to deal with that. I wasn't enough, and yet I was too much.

It has been two years since then. My ADHD is medicated. I live in a stable, safe environment with my parents where I don't have to worry about my security. I have set firm boundaries that I learned while I was independent, and they respect them. But the wounds are still deep and it'll take a long time to recover, to get that trust in the world back.

When I look at Karlach, I see some of myself. Someone who has been used, abused and betrayed by those they trusted. Someone who felt abandoned by everything, that there was no hope, no way out. And yet in spite of it all - kept going. Who, deep in their heart kept something soft and safe. Held onto and protected what little shred of optimism left. Because if we don't practice kindness, who will? We want to be the kindness we want to see in the world, because fuck, have we seen so little of it. It is so easy to give up, to fall into despair when you've been through so much shit. It requires so much vigilance and energy and momentum to keep going, when you're wading through a battlefield of carnage and gore in your life, whether metaphorical or literal. We hold on and we are kind because we hope, one day, that kindness will touch us back. That despite it all we try our fucking hardest to wear a smile, and see the good in everything we can.

And I think that's why it hurts so much. Karlach is finally free. And happy. She feels loved. She's finally feeling some of that kindness again kindness that I know, that she knows she fucking deserves. And it's on a fucking time limit.

And that's what's fucking breaking me. I know she's supposed to be some kind of allegory for terminal illness. And I know this isn't my story. I know it's a story that is important to tell, and it will touch others in a different way. But for me it feels like all the wounds I've barely scabbed over are being ripped open again. Because this is not an ending she deserves at all. It makes me sit and wonder, is that all there is for people like us? Just brief windows of happiness in the pain until we die? Don't we deserve saving? Don't we deserve a happy ending? A peaceful one? Don't we deserve to wear that smile, that happiness without us having to fight for every second it with tooth and nail to keep it there? To believe in it?

I don't know the endings in detail for her. But i have seen enough in the vaguest sense to feel it won't be good, and I don't know if I'm ready for that. I have played games with sad themes, like I know Cyberpunk isn't that great either - but I think the difference is who it is happening to. It's somehow easier when it's you, as the player. But when it's someone else? When you know that pain so fucking keenly you would rip yourself apart just to let them escape that hell, it's hard to stomach.

Then there's the disability angle that bothers me so much. Currently her options, as she puts it, are burning up and dying or going back to Avernus. I understand why she's choosing death, like, fuck man I do. Why is it always death though? Why is death better. Why can't she get a replacement heart? Make it shit! It can be a shitty heart that still works, but needs tune ups, and maybe she can't fight like she used to but she gets to fucking live a happy life! Because a shitty, happy life is better than nothing at all. Because as it goes, it feels to me I'm just being told it's easier to just die than submit to the suffering again whenever a piece of media picks an end like this. It's either the cure-all or death, there's never room for something in between. There's never room for making peace with what you have lost and still reclaiming some of your life, grieving what you have lost but still finding something worth having and holding onto. And when you're in that limbo state yourself, it's a hard pill to swallow. And it's hard to let anyone else fall into it.

We both deserve life. We both deserve happiness.

Fuck.