Email from Lyra LastName

It is actually, actively hard work for me to be a decent person. When I’m on autopilot, its the devil’s resume as per the bible. “The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy”, add “lie & cheat” in there and well, recipe for Sinclair.

That’s not fair, its more like I oscillate between that and actually being quite the sensitive, generous, and kind individual, it’s just a lot easier, and happens much more frequently, that I get stuck in that horrid mode of being.

A sugar coating cope would be to tell myself that the hateful, violent reactions I have to people are simply a means of self defense, one of the other “me”s doing their best to keep me from being taken advantage of and betrayed yet again.

Certainly I appreciate his work, but goodness is it jarring.

Well, we have another email.

From Lyra LastName (lyra darling I know your last name already but I shant make it public here I suppose). Ms. LastName writes in regards to my current, emotionally draining playthrough of one Disco Elysium

“it's just really cool to see someone play through it and be deeply affected by it in similar ways.
I appreciate you're honesty with it, like you're not hiding how it's affecting you like I know some people do, you wear it, you live it, and it makes the playthrough more meaningful.”

I worry there’s some praise here for not masking my emotions, but I have a confession dear Lyra. It’s not an ctive choice that I’m making, it’s not a thing of bravery or rebellion against the status quo on what is socially acceptable, but rather, I simply have no control over it. I’ve never been good at hiding my feelings, for so long, years in fact, I simply didn’t have any besides perhaps anger and lust. People refuse to believe this but it’s true, I was so disillusioned and traumatized that I shut off completely, and had to mimic feelings. At one point I could cry on command , it made for a very good reward for people who had done me some great service. And then, the dam burst! My dear wife showed me what it felt to love and to truly be loved, and then (understandably) left me. Now I’m a sorry, drunken, weepy mess.

I simply cant hide that! Though I may never speak about what it is that ails me, it becomes evident in my behavior. This is what my dear ex wife was referring to when they said I punish them harshly. I become so cold and distant, at times I’m convinced I don’t love the person and never did. It happens so quickly, the only reaction the subject of my newfound ire can indeed have is confusion, and perhaps even feelngs of betrayal.

I’m working on it, it takes a lot to unlearn a lot of the falsehoods I was taught about men, and emotions, and communicating them. All that aside. I always argue that the motivations behind things don’t quite matter if they lead to the greater good (in most cases anyway) So! If some good is coming from my very public emotional undoing then, that brings me some joy at least.

Thank you for the email Lyra, I hope life is gentle to you.

Much like in the way of my emotions I can’t quite always hide that I have to work hard to behave like a real human being. I simply forget my lines! So, I keep various wallpapers on my phone screens with images of various characters, signs and symbols, to remind me that I’m to emulate these ideals, that this is the sort of person I want to be.

The current one is a statue of Guanyin, Bodhisattva of compassion, aka everyone’s mommy. There’s an anecdote about how in some parts of China, the only place its socially acceptable for a man to cry really, is in the presence of Guanyin, a statue, or in one of her temples. She soothes everyone’s woes. She is a being of endless compassion. So tonight, I caught myself thinking in harsh horrid ways, and switched the wallpaper to her image, to remind me to pretend to be like her, for a friend in need.

Sometimes its of my favorite silver haired, lazy bastard samurai from one of mine and my wife’s favorite anime. We had that in common you see. He reminds me to go with the flow of things, to be there for my friends, and not pretend to be any better or more pious than I am. A kind sack of shit if you will.

Another is a kafka quote, “the relief of giving into destruction” for when things get too bad and fighting it only makes it worse. So on and so forth.

Images, and keeping them on hand are a very useful tool for me in my quest to become a real boy! There’s one I’ve been looking for for years now, no matter what I googled I couldn’t find it. So, I asked on a shady internet message board I frequent.

“there’s a banner featuring a (presumably) japanese girl holding up a sign, I *think* it says something like “everything is gonna be okay”
If anyone could chuck me the banner or even the source image that would be appreciated”

A few minutes later someone responded with the exact image I was looking for. Isn’t that funny? years of searching by myself, solved in literal minutes once I decided to ask for help. I feel there’s a lesson there.

When I got the image, it was in such a small and compressed size, as it was the way I remembered it. The sign said “everything will be fine” accompanied by her sunshine filled smile.

It was always quite comforting to me, I remembered it often over the years when I needed reassuring.

Out of curiousity I put the image in a reverse search engine to see if I could find its source. A high resolution version popped up.

In actuality, the sign says “Everything. Will Be. Fire.”

Post script.

“I’ve gone and looked again, it actually does say “Everything will be fine.”

This is a great relief, my heart has felt clenched ever since I read it as fire .

post post script.

i removed yujin from my spotify followers, it was the last link.

My heart it aches but I will make room for that.

Alhamdulillah.