Hello Guild,
I want to tell you how this guild started, why it came about. I am not returning here to stay, but I’m only still here because I’ve wanted for some time to speak about something important to all of you.
When I started this guild, it is because I genuinely felt like the name says. It was a type of artistic therapy for me, an attempt to express such feelings, an outlet for the despair inside. Both a serious and casual endeavor, to relieve what one can’t easily talk about to anyone, or that others would get quickly tired of hearing. I wouldn’t call it a cry for help at all, but more of a self-deprecating, unashamed release of emotions into written word and fantasy lore. Not wallowing in self pity, but acknowledging hurt and emptiness, into an overtly dismal setting, to barely hide my real self in fiction where none would try to shame me for expressing such things – it’s fantasy, after all, no one would think I was serious, except for possibly, those who feel the same. This guild started as a way to create without being swallowed up in depression, to be half serious and half joking while fully venting out my sadness and bitterness.
If you read the guild wiki fully, you’ll probably be able to see the mix of genuine angst, black humor, and shameless mongering in it all. I was depressed, and indeed felt forsaken and wretched. I had always developed an attraction to gloom and grief my whole life, while hating it at the same time, while hating myself for being so weak and feeling weak. For feeling like this person when my life wasn’t bad enough to warrant such an attitude. A combination of sadness, anger, emptiness, shame, and self disgust. I don’t know the reasons why each member joined – for the attraction like myself to dark, “cool” things, or because they felt some semblance to what I’ve expressed. Doesn’t matter, everybody handles everything differently, everyone has different trials in life. Many trials are lesser, many are more, but we all only have our own hardships and life to experience. We can’t balance it out by what is worse for others when we can only deeply feel what happens personally to us. We have empathy of course, but no matter what anyone goes through, we all hurt. My point coming back to, no matter why anyone joined this guild, we all have our own hurts. Perhaps many joined for just fun, and don’t take this game seriously. I understand that, as it was a fun game for me too while being artistic expression. But everybody needs some help and hope in their life, and my purpose writing is to share my own hope and what helped me. To just possibly, encourage even a single person who reads this.
I was depressed most my life and still struggle today. I had passed beyond depression into an emptiness and numbness where I didn’t even care enough about anything to be sad. This is infinitely worse, to be conquered by apathy and not feel human. You stop caring about other people and yourself, and you might even feel alright with it. You might justify it because people can be cruel and life seems meaningless. I got to the point where I became almost remorseless and made a lot of mistakes. I lied constantly, was a very lecherous, selfish, and hateful person. My personal problems morphed out because of my own sense of worthlessness. I was empty, embittered, apathetic, and had no will to live but I was too numb and didn’t want to change it. The only result was too fall farther in, into a facade of living, into superficial, poor company, into hopelessness. I was a creature of reaction, of shallow mind and temper. No reason to do or live beneficially but only to take and chemically react to emotions and circumstances. I used people and tricked them and in return I was used and tricked.
I was a mean person, and I was so sad inside. My only “joys” were cheap thrills like eating, sleeping, video games, and watching movies. That was all I could do. I couldn’t even participate in this game anymore, a zero player action game. I hung onto being leader even though I wasn’t doing a single thing. Like being a control freak hanging onto one paltry achievement. I tried to hang onto people who didn’t care about me, out of desperation to be needed and “loved”, and out of my own lust. I was pitiful, pathetic, and absolutely spent in spirit and heart. I had both of my parents, whom I didn’t call or communicate with half a year because I felt too empty and worthless to speak with – nothing I had to say had value, there was nothing meaningful in my life to speak of. Why speak to them if I was a ghost, hardly living and utterly devoid of care? I could spare no love for other people.
Then something changed. Today, I am not perfect, nowhere near it. I still struggle with apathy. I still struggle with sadness. Still toil against most things I have for my whole life. But there’s a single, life changing difference. It may seem small, but it’s of unlimited wonder. I had finally began speaking to my parents, out of selfishness mostly, to talk to anyone about my misery. My dad told me a one sentence that I had already heard in my life, that I technically knew but didn’t believe, until then. I think only then, after years, my heart was ready to recieve it.
“God will never give up on pursuing you.”
I grew up as a missionary’s child in Cameroon Africa from age 4 to 18. I was fully surrounded by the Gospel of Christ, my childhood circumstance was determined by it. But I never gave my heart, I always defied God my entire life till a fateful moment. I was not indoctrinated, no, at the earliest age I was ready to refuse teaching, I was ready to spite my parent’s urging and God. I wasn’t a rebellious child, but in my heart I had so many problems and complaints against God. And this determined 90% of my current life. But all of a sudden, I turned from all of that, a life’s worth of bitterness and hate, and broke. The single life changing difference was and is Jesus Christ.
Ironically, this guild was built basically as anti-God. But I think in my mind it developed an interesting truth. That is, brokenness is vital, and realizing one’s wretchedness a first step to hope. Those who have everything figured out, or their opinions and views solidly formed, might be the furthest away from understanding and wisdom. I am not here to proselytize, condemn, or guilt though, as I said before, I do this if just only one person is in the slightest encouraged or struck by hope. I have done so many lying, deceitful things here, so I do not come from a position of accusation, but of sharing my hope. People come to play a game, so I might just be laughed off or mocked, that is fine. But my purpose here right now, is to speak of Jesus Christ.
My belief is constantly challenged. I am riddled with doubts. I am under fire from my own mind. I seem to struggle with almost more things nowadays. I still am afraid of sharing Christ’s Word, which makes me feel especially fake and cowardly. But that’s a relief I’ve known today, is that feelings don’t determine who I am or you are. Jesus does, and He determines us as worth his life. Jesus Christ doesn’t see you or me as worthless or meaningless. The hate you give yourself or others give to you or you to others, is not what Jesus Christ gives. Instead, the Lord gives compassion, mercy, grace, and love abundantly. You don’t have to depend on feelings or what you’ve been told or believe about yourself. If anyone has ever said Jesus Christ doesn’t love someone or hates this person for that, they are wrong. He is just, yes, he convicts us gently for our sins, true, but He forgives us for our sins always. You don’t have to be good to come to Him. You can be rotten, and he will forgive you. When you follow him, you won’t be perfect yet, you will only be under a tender convenant of grace and mercy and love. Coming to Jesus Christ, isn’t a one step arrangement. It’s a journey. It took me close to twenty years to even surrender to Him, and I’m far from done, far from being a good person. Yet it’s not in our efforts that we come to Him, rather in his love and saving grace. None of our own works or righteousness will help us.
Isaiah 57: 12 I will expose your righteousness and your works, and they will not benefit you.
“God, Jesus Christ, will never give up on pursuing you”.
I didn’t believe that for the longest time. I really thought I was forsaken. But I was wrong. I am not forsaken, and neither is anyone else. Some people may make themselves comfortable with the notion that God is wrong and cruel, they don’t need Him. I thought that too. I had felt both forsaken, and that God was cruel. I was better than Him. I was wrong. But to each is their personal journey. You must decide whether or not you believe in Christ, whether His promises of salvation and redemption are true, if even his very existence is true. All I can do, is tell you the story of who I was, and the hope I found in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, who loves us enough to die for us on a cross and rise again. To defeat death and sin, so that His creation, His children, can know hope and love. The suffering on earth will not end, physical things may not get better, but through God’s sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ, your heart will be healed and your soul will be saved.
I’ll end with this strangely fitting verse from the book of Lamentations, showing hope in the worst of places.
Lamentations 3:19-32
I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.
Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him.
Let him bury his face in the dust— there may yet be hope.
Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace.
For no one is cast off by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.
And lastly, most important of all:
Hebrews 9:27-28
Everyone must die once, and after that be judged by God. In the same manner Christ also was offered in sacrifice once to take away the sins of many. He will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are waiting for him.
A wonderful song that might touch your heart. God bless you all, and I pray that Jesus Christ will be working in your spirits to bring you to him in salvation. If anyone wants to talk to me, you can friend me here or send me a message at ratssyndrome@gmail.com