Armour

In the older editions of D&D, you get slower and less agile as you don more armour. This intuitively makes sense as someone clanking around in full plate probably isn't going to be the best runner or swimmer in the party. On the other hand, that shifty-looking chap in black leather armour (which always seem to have bright metal studding despite its stealth-negation properties) is probably someone you'd send to walk along that tightrope to grab that McGuffin inexplicably hovering over the chasm.

In these modern times, we don't have too many armoured knights or stealthy rogues around any longer. However, each and every one of us do still don armour, just armour of a different sort. Our weapons are no longer swords and knives but words. As such, we all harden our soul against them to survive.

In my previous life, I had very thick emotional armour on, which also made me rather thick to what was going on around me - but that was exactly what it was meant to do. I survived many conflicts, some of them I didn't even notice. But now,  I don't have as much armour on, partly because I chose to trade security for flexibility and partly because I can't fight biological imperatives.

I can honestly say that I have experienced more pain and heartache in the past few years than I have had in my entire lifetime. But I have also experienced more joy and laughter in the past few years than I have had in my entire lifetime too.

Now, I am at a crossroads once more. I have the option of hardening my soul again, to protect myself so I feel less pain but at the cost of feeling less, period, in life. Or, I could continue down this vulnerable path I'm already on, braving whatever harm existence chooses to incur on me.

I've pondered this for quite a while. In the end, it came down to family, deciding which of the two would bring me closer to them, to comfort them, to laugh, to cry, to share in their lives. In that light, there can be only one choice.

Having emotional armour is great as it stops you from being hurt. But it also stops you from feeling the hugs from those who love you. And for one hug from the kids, I would willingly suffer a thousand unkind words.

Standards

Everyone has standards, even if they're not consciously aware of them. I can say that with confidence because everyone has "lines" they "won't cross", or matters that they espouse to be "right" or "wrong".

I have standards too. However, I have had to re-examine some of them recently from my newfound perspective and discovered that I had to modify or simply invalidate some of those standards outright in my new social role.

Which means to me that standards, like morality, is an illusion that shifts from moment to moment and person to person. Yet we all cling to them as if it was the Word of God and use them to guide our lives.

Well, some of us anyway. Your standards on what constitutes a standard may be different from mine.

Ow, my head hurts. I should really stop thinking about matters like these at midnight...

Authenticity

I have never seen myself as a rebel ever before in my life and I still don't. For as long as I remember, I've worked within whichever system I found myself in, embracing it and changing it from the inside toward what I believed to be a better future.

So it was with quite a bit of surprise when I discovered rather abruptly a few weeks ago that I wasn't as mainstream and lily-white as I thought I was. I still don't consider myself a rebel, as I am not demonstrably bucking the system - I am merely going down the roads less travelled.  In this regard, I am not changing the system for a greater good. I am pursuing personal goals outside of the system, into what is still considered uncharted territory by the majority.

This had been going on for a long time, which was why I never noticed it. This shift accumulated bit by bit over the years until it piled up and could not be ignored. My Condition accounted for a lot of it, but definitely wasn't all of it, not by a long shot. So, with my Condition resolved some time back, this other stuff started coming to the forefront.

Some of it dealt with a past I had buried deep inside me for good reason. I'm still excavating those dark areas and bringing them to light. It is...quite unpleasant.

Some of it dealt with matters I never felt free nor right enough to explore. In these areas, I have found joy, wonderment and best of all, peace.

I can't say that I'm happy with my life right now but for the first time, I am truly and I mean truly living the life that really is mine.