He’s alive!

My friend Das, in his gear from 6 years ago (Wrath!!!), with my druid Anacrusa, with whom he raided when he last played. And yes, we danced with each other several times while hanging out in Dalaran, because an occasion like this deserves dancing and singing!

I still play World of Warcraft. I don’t raid in the traditional sense, nor do I PvP. I don’t even succeed at meeting personal goals, like doing an Ironman or whatever. And I haven’t blogged since shortly after I hit 100 on Mushan in December 2014.

But I still play. I do some leveling, holiday events, hit up LFR/LFD on occasion, and have 7 100s. And I do enough garrison crap to not be paying to play anymore.

Sometimes, I think I will be done soon. I was thinking about not getting Legion until I heard some lore-related stuff* that made me reconsider my lack of desire for new content.

*The more “veteran WoW player” I become, the less I want to know about anything new before it comes out, other than mechanics-related info…

But, every once in a while – and this is very rare – something happens that changes perspectives and makes one glad that he/she has stayed the/(some type of) course… and on Saturday night, I got the strongest dose of that feeling that I have ever experienced.

 * * *

Back in the summer of 2013, I wrote a post called “Someone I loved is lost. Is he gone forever? I may never know.” Disregarding the snow we got yesterday, the post is almost three years old.

In the post, I revealed my anguish regarding my friend and former raid-teammate Das, whom I was worried might have killed himself. I had read a post on Facebook from March 2013 that basically gave me no other option – given that he had disappeared from every online means of reaching him – than to seriously concede that the worst could have happened. Without belaboring the content of that post again, I was shocked, scared, and shattered by the idea that my friend could be dead by his own hand.

Over the past couple of years, on occasion, I have retraced my steps and looked for new information avenues in attempts to find out if my friend was still alive. My limit was money: I was unwilling to spend money online to do “searches” with questionably legitimate companies in order to maybe find out nothing. Not being a hacker, or otherwise IT-wise, I looked as far as I knew how for free, and found nothing conclusive.

I didn’t look perpetually: it would be unhealthy to obsess over it, so I wrote that post, shared it with friends and family, and grieved. And, as I said, I retraced my steps from time to time. After the initial shock, however, I quickly settled into a state of unwilling acceptance, that I might never know what happened, and that probably my worst fear had come true.

* * *

On Saturday night, I got home after a long day at work, and logged in to WoW. Mushan’s garrison missions, done. Logged in to Anacrusa, and GUESS WHO LOGGED IN?? My friend Das.

My reaction?

“WHAT THE FUCK??!!” I said, out loud.

“What?” asked my better half.

“Das just logged in!”

“Oh… really?! Holy shit!”

“Yeah, I’m trying to find out if it’s really him.”

I was not convinced it was him. Immediately, my heart told me that, years after my friend apparently did himself in, his account was being hacked by some grave-robbing asshole. So I steeled myself for rejection and ventured a whisper: “Hi Das! :)”

The result was more than I ever could have hoped for. He answered, and answered again and again, and then at some point he addressed me by my IRL first name, and asked me if I still worked where I work, and so on – it was, as far as I could tell, really him.

After further conversation, I can tell you that it’s really him.

My JOY was – and still is – leaping from every fiber of my being.

I don’t have to reference that original post on Das that I linked above to recall that, when I got the scare I got, I spent time frantically searching for closure on him, and, failing that, I became as close to catatonic as I have ever been.

The feeling when my acceptance of that scenario was unraveled/reversed was incredible.

We conversed via pink text (whispers) for over 90 minutes before I broached Real ID, and now we can see each other whenever we’re online. Back in the day, we were in the same guild and I played my druid mainly, but now I have several new alts and I wanted him to be able to find me – and vice versa – if I was not on Ana.

I spent portions of the rest of the evening on Saturday texting some of my old guildmates and family who shared my concerns, in order to share my joy with them. And I suppose this post is a continuation of that process. There were many of you who responded so kindly to my original post almost three years ago, and so if anyone is still interested in what’s happening with Mushan/Anacrusa**, the answer is “not much, but… remember that post? This is the resolution to that situation.”

I am so happy. I am high on joyfulness right now; I just got the best news I could get this year, and I wanted to share that with those of you who read and responded to or were touched by my original post in 2013.

Thank you, to everyone who ever responded to anything I’ve written, and to all who are reading this today. Your interest and friendship means more than I can ever express.

* * *

**A lot of my old guildies know me as Ana, since I mained my druid until late-2010, when I switched to Mushan and eventually started Mushan, Etc. To this day, I am still called Ana more than Mushan, and I consider it an honor. To know those people, AND to have been fortunate to have such an amazing toon that I built so many close relationships while playing, are things I will cherish forever. 

Someone I loved is lost. Is he gone forever? I may never know.

Back in Wrath, I had the pleasure of raiding in our old guild, ThoseGuys, with some great people who no longer play WoW.

One of these was a resto druid; I’ll call him Das. While I was in my early-mid thirties at the time, he was in his late forties. He was a guy with whom I had countless great conversations on vent. He loved jazz, blues, and timeless rock and roll, and would often suggest internet radio stations that he thought I might enjoy. He worked as an independent contractor for a time, setting up and maintaining (as I understand it) internet and communications infrastructure for the military in the Middle East. He was a carpenter, and loved to show photos of his latest woodworking creations, particularly cool furniture that he had built and was trying to sell.

He always said he loved my voice; he called it a “radio voice.” (I do not have a radio voice, FYI.)

During that period of my WoW-playing life, a lot of us were friending one another on Facebook, because it was the thing to do, and it was fun. It also became my sole line of communication with Das, because, due to financial problems and a computer that could no longer handle the game, he quit somewhere around the time that ICC was coming out.

Since then, my experience with Facebook has been intermittent. During the latter half of 2011 – a time when I was using it more regularly – I noticed at a point that Das was no longer my friend. However, since we had messaged one another several times through FB, I clicked his name in one of our messages and went to his page. There was almost nothing on it that I could see. So I sent him a message, both to see how he was and to let him know that we weren’t ‘FB friends’ for some reason. He replied in a long message, telling me that he had un-friended everyone one night in a fit of frustration, adding that it was a “it’s not you, it’s me” kind of thing.

In that message, he told me that he was in a dire situation. He was divorced, broke, and homeless, living with his daughter for a while, although that wasn’t going well. He had no prospects; his money-making projects were all failing miserably. It was an extremely sad message.

At the time, I was also jobless, and powerless to help him. I sent him a response, trying to be encouraging to him, and to let him know that I was there to talk, but he never responded, and he never accepted my re-friend request.

However, he didn’t disappear. He continued to post from time to time on Facebook, ‘publicly,’ videos or articles that he found worth sharing, but there was little direct insight into how he was doing in his life. However, since I wasn’t his FB friend, none of it was in my feed, and I lost track of him.

…

Fast forward to this past Friday. I was puttering around on Facebook late at night, looking through my list of old messages out of sheer boredom. I know, that’s pretty lame, right? Well, anyway, when I got to his name, I clicked to his page to see what he was up to, and I was stunned by what I found.

His last post was from March 31st of this year. Here is the text of the post:

its been a ride. i tried to live well, be kind, help people… I can’t do it anymore. I have no friends, family doesn’t care about me, penniless and I just can’t stand to wake up another day like this.
I hope that every one that I care about has a good life, live long in good health and can keep their friends. obviously, I can offer no good advice. good bye

I was shocked to the core.

The feeling you get when you suddenly fear that someone you care about either is about to commit suicide or may have already done so is a feeling that is incomparable to any other. It’s difficult to describe, but it’s basically panic, and it grips your soul with an iron fist.

My response to the panic was to do several frantic searches. These proved to be basically fruitless, since I know almost nothing about his vital statistics, such as names of family members, names of people who knew him in real life, place of residence, middle name, date of birth, and so on. As I said, he had erased all of that from Facebook. The only things I had to go on were his first and last names (very common ones), the state he had been living in, and his approximate age.

I first searched for obituaries. I searched for arrest records. I changed it up and searched for death notices. Carpentry references with his name. I came to several dead ends. I couldn’t find him – not, at least, without paying a bunch of money to be able to do more in-depth searches of public records and so on. Money I don’t have, I might add.

I sent him a quick email, to the only address I have for him. It immediately came back un-deliverable. I pasted it into Facebook and sent it again. I have heard no response. The only phone number I had for him, from 2010, has been dead for a long time.

When I had exhausted my free options to the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly limited), the next phase of the affect of panic hit me: I became incapable of doing anything for the better part of an hour. I stared at my desktop and wrung my hands. When my girlfriend came over to me and asked what was wrong, I could barely tell her.

Eventually, I got up and went to bed, and was up bright and early Saturday for work. And Saturday night, we raided. And so on. The initial panic was gone, but the fear that my friend is dead is not.

…

I may never find out what happened to Das. I’m already four months ‘too late’ as it is, as regards my searches the other night.

I have to accept that. But I hate it. My only hope is that he is still alive, and that he will rejoin Facebook and respond to my message at some point. But it feels like a dim hope, a chance of slim-to-none.

…

This post is the first of at least two related to this situation. There is something that I have been considering doing lately – an alteration to the way I do things on the internet – and what happened on Friday only reinforces what I’m thinking about. I will likely write more about if and what I decide to do in one of my next few posts.

…

Thanks for reading this post by Mushan at Mushan, Etc.