Ballad of a Roleplaying Addict

When I was small, I was a role-player. Never a damsel in distress, no, but a kick-ass-and-take-names princess who wiggled her way out of trouble with snark and a cardboard tube to serve as a sword, A goddess, A warrior (my favorite thing to be), A pirate, A manipulator of grand, sweeping fantasies, a freer of slaves, a builder of doomed societies, and flourishing ones, who overthrew the evil queen Rapunzell—my poor Barbies, they never served the purpose they were made for, not really—and installed a new queen, and there were traders, and beggars, and slaves, and plotlines that wove over and under and around and around and I was six years old so of course nobody died or suffered any permanent damage until I was older and understood pain, death, scars, sex, torture, permutations thereof. And I wonder why the idea of fantasy was so appealing to me, and the answer arrives quite quickly. It is not extremely comfortable in this body of mine. I have constant aches around my chest and in my stomach, tentacles sliding black and shining to constrict me, an awful form of corsetry, My mind thrums, it hums, you can hear the gears turning, processing, scrambling, as one half spins too fast and the other not at all, to make sense of emotions and people, to gain power over them, By naming, Categorizing, Analyzing, DATA! Who fits the archetypes of a Five-Man Band, Hero, Lancer, Smart Guy, Big Guy, Chick, one graduated, we need a new Hero, Put names to actions, divide others, divide myself, down to their component parts, Loyal, joyful, mournful, snarky, snappy, charismatic asshole, LET ME HAVE CONTROL! Let me have control. Let me be someone else for a while, give me a script with a character to play, let me make her a mathematical problem, complex, but solvable, once you know how. Take me out of the noise for a while and give me to a different head, one so simple, so easy to label— Matriarchal Mother Bayard, Shy Ermenguarde, Pathetic Estelle, Elderly Philostrate, Bitter Marci, Even living scenery is fine when I stand behind the Drowsy Chaperone. Because behind the playing, the laughter, behind Sybil the Changeling and Fasrin the Khajiit and Leera the Honest Martian, I am nothing special. I am a teller of tales because I long to be special; I won’t deny that little bit of narcissism. I want to reach out and touch those around me, make them think and smile, like Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, I want to be god, because the noise, it won’t let me think, it won’t let me feel, it won’t let me find who precisely I am supposed to BE! So I roleplay. And maybe, amid the falsehoods, I will be able to find just a touch of truth, to recognize that maybe yes, though this doesn’t feel familiar, this does, this is right, I share this with the person I am creating. And slowly I build. I take what I learn from each person I create and it cuts through the noise, shows me another little place where that particular puzzle-piece goes, and a picture begins to emerge, and that picture is me. I will never stop being a roleplayer. Because even if there comes a time when my picture is complete (I doubt it), I could never move away from that thing that showed me, in its own roundabout way, just who and what I am. I am a roleplayer. And you?