Forgotten (Re)Empire
You've seen it.. I was there.. I promised myself to never engage with that community ever again. I failed..
The forgotten reunion
The spark came to my mind few months ago, when i was drinking with my buddy Lewda (what a name). This dude is part of this group, and me being a bitter fucker, we discuss the group activities or "spilling tea" almost every time we drink together. It's mostly me digging some juicy stuff to feel good about my decision leaving this group two years ago.
Lately, after reviewing my life in retrospect, I've gotten somewhat nostalgic of the times I interacted with the people in this group. And I started replaying my memories, making myself sad and sorry that I left - losing contact with everyone in the process. For the most of my life, I was always playing video games. I've spent more than ten years with this group and I invested a lot of time and energy into this group - so you understand the source of my nostalgic pain.
The feelings were growing even worse and one day I just decided out of the blue (out of drunkiness) that I would rejoin the group and see where it goes from there! So, Lewda sent me an invite (it's based on Discord entirely) and I joined. I was expecting a negative feedback and even mockery - received neither. Instead, I was greeted with excitement and happiness - totally unexpected and it melted my frozen heart a little. Since I was so flabergasted and bamboozled, I kept myself lurking in shadows - silently observing current dynamics in the group and understanding the general vibe. I was afraid to express myself as I was uncertain of the general feeling about me being back - even more so, because before my "forced retirement" I was an admin in this group and now I am just a regular pawn.
I sensed an opportunity to regain some of my glory back when current admins announced a real life meetup of members! Yet, I was once again mixed with feelings about possible reactions of me expressing interest in said meetup. Resulting in me basically blocking myself from the meetup until I reached some kind of resolution with myself.
Weeks went by and I wasn't able to figure out, build positive/negative or decide whether to join or not the meetup. So I scheduled an alcoholic session with Lewda forming a goal for it. I would let Lewda know that I would like to attend the meetup, and I would absolutely consume every single detail of his reaction to the max. I hoped it would help me finally decide, according to the analysis of his reaction. And he was thrilled! He immediatelly built a plan for us to go there together and glorified the entire trip to whole another level. It was decided then.
I still refused to let anyone else know that I want to come, so I told Lewda to be quiet about it. He kept the secret successfully, thanks Lewda! But since I decided at the very last moment (basically T-2 days), I now had to figure out a place to rest and prepare the vehicular transport for me to utilize. Realizing that bookings would be almost impossible by this time, I had to contact "fugasjunior" - another member of the group, actually a guy in charge of the meetup - and tell him my plan. Another thrilled reaction! I regained a lot of my confidence (in my image), and went full in. We've negotiated my attendace at their booked hotel, therefore solving my biggest issue.
Vehicle was not ready and I knew it wouldn't be ready. It was not ready for anything for the past 3 years, it is missing an official technical check-up. And I never bothered enough to take care of it - it's just A-B points transport tool for me at this point. I drive it only to/from my work, we've got a second (family) car for everything else. But I wanted to leave the family car back here for my wife to use, whenever she needs it. This formed a major dilemma for me - do I drive my or family's car? I decided not to overcomplicate things and just drive my car, not worrying much about that. (I regretted this choice later)
Day D
It was time to sail! The plan was that I would drive to Lewda's location, picking him up and together, we would set out to our destination 350km away. Someone had to try and be funny that day though. As it was one of the biggest snowstorms we've had in this country for a long time. Traffic was stopping everywhere and long traffic columns were forming across the entire country. This was a very eventful and very long drive.
The first point on my path was Lewda, the ride was quite uneventful to his place and basically the only interesting thing happening was me taking some pictures of Lewda when I got to his place.
Next one was the capital city of Czechia - Prague. Apart from getting from the full-of-snow hell hole Lewda lived in, the journey was still quite uneventful
After going through the capital, everything went south from there! Not only we were derouted from a highway through the worst roads the country offers, we also were rerouted back to the highway, but straight into a major jam. We had to reverse ourselves back out of there as fast as possible. (Lewda forgot to take a picture......) We then continued through snow-filled offroads until we found another junction joining us to the highway without any jams.. Snow was fierceful though, not letting us go faster than 50km/h, prolonging our journey by 2 hours and more.
It was only just a matter of time (and nerves), until we got to our destination. From planned 3 hours it was a 5+ hour ride. Roads full of snow and idiots that didn't know how to drive properly at times.
When we finally found our way into the hotel lobby - where the initial assembly was supposed to happen - there were already people waiting for us. Well, they expected Lewda, not me. But once again, the surprise was met with success and happy mood. We commenced an exchange of information and shared experiences from our separate journeys, agreeing that we all hate the snow. Once the mood settled, information was shared and time was ripe, we set off on-foot to the pub with reservations, where additional people were awaiting us. Making jokes along the path, some silly stuff happened aswell, but nothing quite extraordinary worth mentioning.
After arriving to the pub, there were already two more members waiting for us at the table. None of them expected my arrival and once again, greeted me with smile and happiness. I was really starting to dig the overall vibe and opening myself more to the group, adjusting my energy to their vibe. Drinks started being poured into hungry necks, and fun meter showed first signs of proper entertainment. I brought a DSLR with me, to capture memories and vault them indefinitely, so I utilized this opportunity and offered everyone to snap anything they'd want to save. The offer was accepted by several people and quite some memories were captured and transformed into a digital format.
After a while, one last member joined us at last. The one I was afraid would cause some trouble. Yet he didn't and met me with the same energy as others. I pondered this moment for a few seconds, deciding if I want to basically "remove" the stain from our friendship just like that - figuring out, that keeping the beef further, would not benefit me in any way anyway. So I stood up, and shook his hand like a chad to a chad. It is still hard to forget the stain, as it still hurts when I think about it. It was still part of my breakdown (non-significant, yet not that insignificant) and it took me a lot of time to be able to even try to forget. But I believe that these conflicts over insignificant statuses, are not really worth beefing over. Cherishing the memories that were created during building the lost statuses are what's important to me - holding that thought, I was able to keep it out of my mind for the entire evening.
