This week, I stopped feeling lonely.

It’s got nothing to do with needing friends, or feeling left out. I don’t require some miracle cure or displacement activity. All that has been required is basic understanding. Living in the past is potentially dangerous. However much I may have convinced myself that I wasn’t there, so not true at all. Not for the first time, gaming provided the metaphor. Validation is no longer mistaken for consent.

I can be this person and that’s no longer bad.

Now, all I need is a decent night’s kip to cement it all.